Quick race report for the Hammerhead Olympic Triathlon, aka the HOT. The race is held at Camp Blanding, a Guard base located in the sticks south of Middleburg. It's a great venue, with the swim in a beautiful lake (Kingsley Lake), and the bike and run on zero traffic roads inside the base.

Our club puts this race on, and after volunteering last year, I decided it'd be much easier to race this year, so I signed up. We've had a tropical storm here for much of the week, but it cleared up somewhat on Saturday, and I went out and helped clean up the bike course for the race.

Sunday morning the weather looked great. Scattered clouds, a beautiful sunrise, and the lake water was fairly cool thanks to all the rain. I arrived early, got my gear set up, and stood around catching up with everyone. Lots of BTers and other friends at this race, and it was great to see you all!

I have been concentrating on bike racing this year, so I went into this race with lots of bike miles and almost no swimming or running. I've had several problems with minor calf tears that have kept the running low, in particular -- run mileage this month so far -- 3 miles. That's OK, I knew I could cruise through those unimportant portions of the race. :)

The race started with BT's own snikpos (Sharon) playing the National Anthem on her flute. This was a vast improvement over at least one year prior when we had a woman who seemed to be practicing for her American Idol tryout; I thought she'd never finish!

The swim was pretty much uneventful; I may have taken a bit longer to get into a rhythm than I would've liked. Came out a couple of minutes slower than previous years, but nothing too out of whack.

I got on the bike and started passing people; I wanted to turn in a good performance there, at least. I'd ridden pretty hard on Saturday and was feeling it for a while with some knee pain and soreness in my left leg, especially. Sucks getting older! I eventually settled into a pretty decent pace.

About three quarters of the way through the first lap, a guy absolutely blew past me. He was wearing full cycling kit and was a big guy, so I figured he was doing a relay and thought I might know who it was. Turned out to be Jeff Kopp, owner of the Trek Store, former pro football player, and now Cat 1 cyclist. He turned in a 56.44 for the bike. :)

Memorable sights on the bike: one guy had a reflective triangular caution flag on the back of his bike, another one rode with a screamingly bright OSHA yellow jersey. We see you, guys. Really.

Nobody else passed me and I came in with a 1:05 and change, decent but not specacular. I think it was good for 10th fastest bike split overall, with the addition of Kopp and my buddy Andy Brittingham, who also did a relay and beat me by a few seconds.

I set out to run with the feeling I often have in triathlons. Nothing really hurts too badly, stomach's OK, but I just can't get the stride rate up. My overall goal was 2:30 but I knew I'd have to run a 47 minute 10k to get there and it wasn't happening. Considering this was only my second run of the month (!) I couldn't really be too upset.

At about mile 1 of the run, I saw the winner, Danny Domingo, headed home. He looked like he had his own zip code; nobody was even close to him. He ended up with a 2:02, an amazing time for this course.

Closing in on the last mile, I knew I could at least beat 2:40, so I tried to pick up the pace. Immediately I felt the familiar pain as my calf muscle decided to part ways with the rest of my leg. I limped it home at 2:39:46, with my family screaming at me to pick it up as I went by their water station near the finish line. :)

As always, the post-race party was enjoyable with BBQ and lots of friends to talk to. I went back home to find all of my girls taking a nap, worn out by all of the screaming they'd been doing at their water station. I hope to see everyone out there again next year!