The weekend of the race in Show Low was very wet. It would be sunny in the morning, then rain in the afternoon. This does not make for very good trails, especially because the mud in the White Mountains is like peanut butter.


My swim went pretty well. My swims in Show Low are always much longer time-wise because the elevation really gets to me, but this year I took another 2 minutes off of my time, coming out of the 800 yard swim in 17:39.

I hit the bike and was hoping for a better time from all the mountain bike races we had done. Didn't happen. The course was crazy muddy, and my bike tires were suddenly two huge chocolate donuts with rock sprinkles. There was much hike-a-bike, and I kept having to pick the bike up and drop it to remove rocks that would get stuck in the frame and freeze my rear wheel. The purple cinder road was the only good part, because that allowed most of the mud to spin off. I came into transition 8 minutes slower than last year's time. I was not happy.

On the run I tried to push myself because I really wanted to be in the 12 minute mile average range. I finished the run in 1:03:12, which was an improvement over last year of 9 minutes. I finished in 3:12:05, with an improvement of 11 minutes over last year, but missed 3rd place by 4 minutes. I was really hoping to break 3 hours, and adding 8 minutes on the bike totally screwed that up. Oh well...next year.