I didn't want to blow myself out early and I knew my legs were probably a bit fried from Clearwater last week so I just went out and tried to settle into a reasonable pace. There were 3 guys who went off the front immediatley and I knew that 2 of them would be battling for the OA victory so I didn't worry about them. The other 5 guys that started to string out in front of me I didn't know anything about but I wasn't going to let them take me out of my race...let them go.

Coming out of T1 there was a kid in front of me who obviously hadn't done a tri/du before. He was riding in the middle and when I yelled "on your left" he kind of moved left. I yelled again and he turned around and saw me but by now I had decided it was going to be safer to just let him stay where he was and zip past on the right. He got all flustered as I came by but managed to stay put and we both went about our morning without major issues. The bike course was a boring 3 loop affair. Atlantic Ave in Fort Story isn't the smoothest road in the area and there was a decent cross wind at spots where the trees were cut away leaving an opening to the to the beach/ocean. I wasn't looking to cruch the bike, just ride a good steady effort leaving something in the legs for the run. There was a lot of slower traffic on laps 2 and 3 but it was only an issue when we came past transition and there were folks just leaving on the bike and the last lap when I needed to get back into transition with people still coming out.

Coming off the bike I had 1 goal...hold my current position. I told myself that I just needed to run fast enough to not let anyone pass me...although I didn't know what kind of athletes were behind me so I still needed to hold a good pace. Coming out of T2 I saw another guy about 200m ahead and he was obviously not a runner. Okay, goal #2 - pass the roadie trying to act like a multisport guy :) There was a u-turn short of the 1 mile marker so I had a chance to see how close the next guys were. I had a good 300m lead so I started to feel comfortable with my position but didn't want to back down just yet. I ended up running just slightly slower splits compared to the first run over the first 2 miles. Once I passed the 2 mile marker and made another turn up the final hill I could see that there wasn't anyone in sight behind me so I throttled back a bit and started to relax. Coming down the final hill and making the turn with 600m to go I felt confident that IF someone happened to make a surge from behind I'd be able to out-kick him to the line but that wasn't necessary. I took a quick glance back as I came down the final 100m and jogged in. I'd say I could have run 30+ sec faster over the 5k if I had to.

NOTHING :)


Racing Clearwater 70.3 last weekend.


They did a great job for a first year event and it was nice to see 200+ show up. The course is decent, although the bike was a bit boring. I'll definitely be back for this next season.