The run felt fine in general but my legs didn't seem to have much speed in them. It's unusual for me to see so many guys pulling off ahead but I needed to run my race and not try to stick with people who were probably either faster or better prepared (tapered). I just maintained what I thought was a reasonable effort considering I still had a 40k ride and 5k run coming up.

Transition was uneventful. My glasses fogged up when I put them on but by the time I got rolling on the bike they were fine. The transition was set up in a grass field with long chutes in and out.

The bike course was a disappointment...I expected better for a National Championship event. I've never seen so much carnaige on a bike course...wrecks, road rash, flat tires, broken parts, ejected water bottles. I didn't know the course and it was also wet by the time we got on the bike so I was riding conservative, especially on the longer downhills. The switchbacks climbing the steep hill out of transition were fairly tight turns but the wet surface made them dangerous...several people went down. It turns out the Rt1/301 bridge was covered with tons of broken glass. We crossed this bridge a total of 8 times. One official I talked to said he counted 24 flat tires just himself. I managed to make it off the bike without any problems but later found that both of my $120 tubulars have several shards of glass stuck in them and my front was flat by the time I packed up to leave. I'm very disappointed that USAT and the city of Richmond didn't get out there to clean the course. To add to the all the flat tire problems, there were several very dangerous corners and I personally saw at least 6 people with some nasty road rash from going down. Finally, at the far end of the course there was a series of sharp turns through a very rough (gravel and potholes) parking lot complex at Forest Hill Park. It almost seemed like the needed to add another 1/4mile to the loop so they weaved it around to pick up the extra distance. One of the more dangerous turns on the course was actually completely flat in a big parking lot. The ground was wet and it was covered with loose gravel where we had to make a wide U-turn. I saw several people picking themselves up off the ground and collecting their bikes at that spot. It was amazing to see literally dozens of people walking it in from all over the bike course. The official results show 41 DNFs and 286 finishers. I'd guess the majority of those were flats and then injuries due to falls. I wasn't about to take a chance of hurting myself or my bike so I was definitely playing it safe.

I wouldn't race this course again.

I had a long run in from the road to my spot on the rack. Since transition was in a grassy field and it had been raining all night I decided to stay in my cycling shoes to keep my socks from soaking up a lot of water and mud. I fumbled a little getting my shoes off but otherwise transition went pretty quickly.

I came out of transition with one guy just on my heels but he dropped of pretty quickly. I couldn't see anyone up in front of me for at least 400m but I didn't know who might be coming from behind so i held a pretty decent pace over the foot bridge and along the river. About 1.5 mile in there is a short out-back section over an old wooden bridge and that gave me an opportunity to see what type of gaps I had. The next guy up was a good min+ ahead and I had a very comfortable gap behind me so I kind of settled in to hold position and cruised back over the bridge and shut it down the final 200m into the finish line.

Grabbed some water and a banana then took a 10min jog back over the foot bridge.


I didn't come into this race with any expectations. I wasn't going to win my AG and while qualifying for Worlds is cool I have no intention of taking a trip to Italy at my personal expense to race for 2 hours so it didn't really matter if I qualified or not. So with that in mind I raced a 1/2 IM last Sat, bike intervals on Tue, ran a challenging 15 miles (7min/mile average) on Wed, and did a 3hr 1/2 IM race pace ride with 30min transition run on Friday, and got 3 swims in also...not exactly a taper. I felt fine on race morning but I suppose the training load was wearing on my body and probably hurt my performance. I also definitely gave up a couple of min on the bike course to make sure I finished with all of my skin.


This event had potential. I can't hold the weather against the race but the bike course left much to be desired for a National Championship event. I think USAT and the cirt of Richmond dropped the ball on this one. I'm probably out $200+ for new tubulars and there are definitely others who are in the same situation, not to mention those who ended up injured.