Good swim. Beach start. I lined up towards the rear and outside. My plan was to take the swim easy knowing the bike and run segments would be physically demanding. Swim went as planned. Drafting went easy, sighting was easy too. I did lots of passing and was passed by a couple of fast swimmers in the wave behind me. I drafted off of them for a while but decided to let up to conserve energy for later that day

Maybe go a bit harder towards the latter half of the swim?

Nothing exciting to report. Ho-hum average transition for me

do things faster

I believe I made the correct bike choice for this course. The 29er hard tail did excellent. The course itself was not very technical. There was about 1 mile of tight single track which was the most technical of the entire course. In this area there were many short drops and climbs followed by a sharp turn. It you were to come of f the bike here it would be hard to get your rhythm back. If you stayed on the bike it was not too bad. Much of the course we very sandy (think beach sand) that made travel slow going. You really had to push on the pedals and every inch of forward progress was earned. Tire pressure was off on race day. I may have been running too high a pressure as the front end on several turns. I had to dab several times and actually lost the bike underneath me twice. The sand was really made things challenging.

Push on the pedals harder

do things faster

Hot. Hot. Hot. We had some relief off of the bike as the first mile or so was in the woods. Like the bike course, the sand was prevalent throughout. In the woods, the trail was pretty tight. There were sections that you had to weave yourself around trees. As customary on the run segment of an Xterra there are fun bits of technical terrain to negotiate, sandy uphill stretches, down trees to climb over, small creeks to leap across. Once out of the woods you had a good slog around the lake in the soft sand under the baking sun. During the run segment my quads began to cramp so I eased up a bit and tried to walk. I found that my legs would try to cramp even more if I walked so I had no choice but to shuffle along in a slow jog. It was a slow run indeed. After looking at other’s results I don’t feel so bad as a friend of mine who is normally a 6 min per mile trail runner only managed to do 9 min something that day. That was a testament as to how physically and mentally demanding the race was on that day.

Do more bike to run workouts. Run more in the sand

grabbed a water and doused myself with it. Talked story with peeps at finish line.


The heat and sand on the course


Hopefully next year it won't be as dry so the course would be a bit more tacky. This year's race was BRUTAL because of the heat and sand.