They got the relay swimmers in line first, then began to queue us up behind them according to race number. I was lucky #13, so I was one of the first folks to slip over the edge of the dock and into the water. One by one we moved up to the end of the dock, and when it was our turn to go they called out our number, entered it into the timing clock, and said "Go!" and off I went. I went wide all the way out to the sighting buoys to try and catch what little bit of current there might be, but the Tennessee River is so big and sluggish by this point as it is starting to back up into Lake Nickajack that the current was all but non existent. In my last race I went out way too hard and sort of blew up; this time around I just took it easy and cruised for the first 10 minutes or so. I picked it up a little bit after that and with about 10 more minutes to go latched on to feet that were swimming just a little bit faster than I wanted to. When I spotted the last buoy I began to angle in and around the dock that was hiding the swim exit from view. I felt kind of wobbly and it took me an extra second or two to get my feet underneath me on the stairs, but once I stood up, pulled off my swim cap and goggles, and dashed off like a rocket up the stairs toward the transition area. Once at the top I unzipped my swimskin and got it down around my race on the run.



While not my fastest-ever Olympic swim, I still wouldn't change a thing. I didn't wear a watch on this swim so I had no idea what my time was until after the race. I was very pleased to find out that it was in the 24s considering how easy I swam. I was nice and relaxed when I got out of the water and HR was about 10 beats lower than usual when I hit the bike - nice!

I fairly sprinted through T1 - though the chicane and right to my bike.

Since I started up front with the fishes, I was prepared to see my bike siting there all by itself, but it was not - only a few from the very far end of the rack were gone - SWEET! First indication that my swim was decent. Helmet on and buckled first, then my suit came of easily, shoes on with no issues, and I went ahead and cinched them tight as the run to the exit was long. Out to the mount line and away quickly - this T-1 went like clockwork compared to my last.


Again - wouldn't change a thing - this one was perfect. I keep wondering if I should race with my shoes on the bike and do a flying mount (I have a good one) but every time I see all those jokers going slow and weaving all over the place trying to kill me on the ride out of transition I think better of it. I clocked the fastest transition in the group AND I got up to speed fast on the bike. I honestly just cannot see how it would be faster.

Got right up to speed but then almost steered right into a curb by simply not paying attention. Accident avoided, like always I started working on catching folks up the road. I was able to get right to it a little quicker than usual again since I took the swim a little easier. Within the first mile the course turns up a cloverleaf interchange and onto a controlled access 4 land divided highway that is currently under construction for almost the entire out-and-back route. We rode in the inside lane, with concrete barricades to our left with no median for much of the ride, and cones to the right separating us from traffic to our right. Road surface was OK in some places, but we would periodically do lane shifts and the surface would change to grooves and be generally shitty all around. Lots of folks complained about the hills, but I found them to be fine, just long and gradual like you would find on any high speed highway.



Right around mile five I hit a hard transition and before I knew it all hell broke loose: my right aerobar pad went out from under me, my elbow shot out into space and for a brief second (that seemed like an eternity) I was staring down at my extended arm and my fingertips which seemed like they were about to touch the ground and I thought "oh fuck - why aren't you holding on to the extension you idiot?!?!?!" Funny the things you think in moments like that. Still holding on to the left extension, I somehow got the bike whipped back in the opposite direction toward the concrete barrier, while still waving my right hand wildly around in the air. I jerked it back straight and finally got both hands on the pursuits and coasted down to assess what the hell happened. I rolled to a stop against the barrier, and found that the hard strike had somehow caused my right extension to come loose, and the aerobar pad was now pointing down toward the ground. I then looked down and saw that the cover for the integrated bento box was gone, and my nutrition, electrolytes, flat kit, and multitool had yardsaled down the road somewhere over the past quarter of mile or so. I considered for half a second making my way back down the road to find the cover, but then thought better of it as I would have to go against race AND automobile traffic. Since I had also lost my multi-tool though I couldn’t fix my aerobar pad either - so putting out of my brain I immediately started off back down the road in the direction I was going. I quickly found that I either had to hold my arm upon the air or lay it all the way down on the base bar, neither of which was pleasant. It was the toughest on the long climbs as I could really leverage on the right extension. I put it out of my brain and just went on down the road. It was a little tougher running folks down, but I just kept working it while keeping one eye on my power meter on the climbs keeping it fairly conservative. After the turn around I was fairly out in no-man's land, and unfortunately began to let my mind wander a bit since there was no one that I could see up the road. I kept catching myself letting my power drop as I would lose focus. With about 5 miles to go I finally could glimpse a few cyclists up the road and seemed to get my mojo back and was able to close them down just before T2. Checked my time and a little disappointed to see I was over 1:10; that was about a minute slower than I thought I would be on this course.

Well THAT doesn't look so good....


1) Well, before every race my coach always tells me to "check and torque all the bolts on my bike to spec." Did I this time? No. Duly noted - lesson learned. Would it have helped to check the torque on my extensions? Not sure, but it wouldn't have hurt.
2) On any number of rides I have thought that I really needed to secure the bento box lid with some tape - as much as I love,love,love the Felt IA FRD, the integrated storage lid is one of the worst pieces of industrial designs I have used. Nothing that a little electrical tape can't fix, you just shouldn't have to on a rather expensive bike.

I didn't pre-ride or scope out the end of the bike course like I usually do and I thought I was a little closer to the finish than I actually was when I took my feet out of my shoes, so I had to ride in shoeless a little further than I would like. Perfect running dismount and off quick and sprinting to my rack. I was totally JACKED to see the racks completely empty around me; evidently my ride was not as slow as I thought, at least relative to the field - Whoo-Hoo! Helmet off, shoes on with no problems, grabbed my visor, glasses, and race belt and out on the run.


I don't think this could have been quicker, but I do need to remember to pay a little better attention to the final ride in to the dismount line.

Stoked to get up the road, forgot my exit routine and got real fumbly with getting my kit organized coming out of transition. I started out trying to get my garmin on first, and I know that should always be last - I just got a little scattered as I was looking up the road to assess where I was. "First things first, you idiot stick," I said to myself, settled in and got my shit together. Visor on, glasses, race belt, THEN garmin. Perfect.

Then I realized that my hands were empty - evidently in my fumbling I had dropped my electrolytes that I planned to pop on the way out to the run course. Great! lost them on the bike AND the run. Now I am rather suspect that they actually DO anything for me except work as a placebo against cramps, but that is the ting about a placebo: it still works even if not for the physiological reasons you think it does. Ah, well - no worries, I still had an "emergency" gel stuck in my rear pocket.



Up the big hill just out of transition with quick feet but tiny steps and I caught a couple of guys immediately, and feeling great - heart rate well in check. At the top of the hill we then had to go up three flights of stairs to get on the River Walk, and despite wanting to sprint up them two at a time, I instead took my coach's advice and hit every stair. I caught another guy going up the stairs. I could hear two folks right behind pacing off me but that was the last person I saw in front for a long time. After the top of the stairs there is a short but steep descent back down to the water, and then the middle four miles or so of the race are along a nice, flat part of the River Walk. I picked up the pace a little bit, but started to feel the first little twinges of cramps in my adductors, which is a little unusual for me on the run. On the bike, yeah, but usually not an issue on the run. At mile two I grab as much water as I can and down a gel and settled in at a pace that seemed juuuuuuuust manageable to avoid my legs from locking down - right at a 6:50 pace. I had really hoped to be a good bit quicker than that in the flat section, but there you go. At least I was beginning to open up a gap on the two folks that were on my heels. I was beginning to wonder if I had somehow gotten of course, as I kept expecting the race leaders to come by headed in the other direction. Finally they did and I started to count them off, one at a time. By the time I hit the turn around with only 19 folks up the road, and a big gap behind me. The little cramps still kept coming and going but I was still able to hold a stead pace on the return trip. The traffic headed outbound on the path started to get a little congested and folks were taking the shortest path around the twisting corners, so you had to be really watchful for collisions. On the upside I started to see teammates headed out and the sharing "attaboys" and finger-fives helped boost the energy just enough. With two miles to go I finally began to see some more racers up in front and I se eked to be closing the gap rather quickly. I caught one guy who was reduced to run/walking and then another just before the steep uphill before the final descent to the finish. When I hit this final little climb I was supposed to burn any matches I had left to get to the top quickly, and I did the best I could but still couldn't open it up all the way due to the incessant little adductor twinges that just kept coming and coming. About three-quarters of the way up the hill I heard feet coming up behind me, and FAST! As they came around me I tried to go along with him but only made it about 3 steps (I actually counted in my head, "one, two, three, FUCK!") and he was gone like I was going backwards.

As I got nearer to the top of the hill I scanned the crowd briefly for my friend Todd, who I knew was going to hose me down with nice giant stout beer (a little tradition of ours that goes back more than two decades whenever we find ourselves spectating at each others races) but he was nowhere to be seen, which was a little weird as I knew he would want to catch me at the slowest part of the race.

When I finally crested the hill I was wide open, but he was already about 40 meters up the road and still moving. I bared down anyway, and heard a spectator shout "GO! GO! GO! YOU CAN CATCH HIM!!!" to which I just snickered a little in my head and thought, "Yeah, right - if only you knew that dude just caught ME - HA!" At any rate, It was good to have him up the road a bit as it reminded me that this was a time trial race and I needed to keep my foot on the gas all the way to the finish.

With hands on my knees for a second or two and a bottle of water shoved in my hands by a race volunteer, I was finally able to look up and I saw Jennifer jumping up and down in the crowd along the edge of the finish chute. "Rusty, Rusty! you did great! You did great! Molly had a really bad crash on the bike and is being transported to the hospital ight now - she is hurt very badly!!!"

What?

Oh, shit.

I jumped out of the finish area and Jennifer filled me in. My friend Todd (Molly's husband) was on the way to the hospital along with another good friend Kelly who was there spectating. Another one of our close friends (Wes, Kelly's husband) actually came up on the accident after it happened and was able to piece together what went down. It seems that a guy overtook Molly and then cut her off as he came around her and drove her into the cones and out into traffic. The witnesses who stopped said they had no idea how she kept from getting hit by a car as she skittered into the travel lane.

Just damn.


I really do think that cramps are by-and-large simply caused by a lack of race-specific fitness and preparation rather than some sort of nutritional issue, but I STILL sure wish I hadn't lost all my electrolytes!

So we got mobilized - Jennifer was command central and was in regular contact with Todd and she also went back to the hotel and got Todd & Molly's room packed up along with ours (I sure am glad she was feeling a little better than the previous two days!) I got with race officials and they let me into transition to gather up Molly's stuff and I also collected her bike when they transported it back in from the course.

We still had a lot of friends out on the course, so after all the transition stuff was gathered up I went back out to watch them come in one-by-one and let them know what was going on. Wes actually continued on with the race after they got Molly loaded on the ambulance (they wouldn't let him ride with her) and I thought it was really cool that he finished the race. Once everyone was in we went back to the hotel and got cleaned up, loaded the cars, and then made it back to the awards ceremony just as the rain began to roll in.



Miraculously Molly seems to have "only" suffered a badly broken right collar bone and more road rash than I have ever seen on a single person, and I have seen a lot. It really could have been much, much worse. It is really crazy that both she and Todd crashed out this week - what are the odds? Particularly tough as well as they would have both grabbed spots in their age groups as well - Molly especially was really aiming at this race.

So it goes.



I did well, but I thought going in I would race a 2:19. had I actually done all the prep work that I know and normally do I think I would have been spot-on. With just a few minutes of race visualization and a once-over for mechanical issues I could have easily saved those two minutes. Still feel pretty good over-all, but execution is usually my thing. On the upside I was very happy to find that I still do well in the heat - I never really thought about it at all.



Featuring both hills and heat, I think this race really plays well to my particular strengths. Therese and Faye put on the best races you will ever do, hands-down. The only thing that would make this race better would be if all the construction on the bike course was finished up.