Lucky here reporting in from Boise Idaho after a great weekend in McCall with Guy "it's not a perm it's natural!' Crawford and Kate "I let Mark win as I feel sorry for him" Bevilaqua, racing the McCall Olympic distance triathlon.
McCall is the most beautiful town I have ever been too (I'm not that well "travelled") with stunning woods and an amazing fresh water lake. Oh also it's at 5000 feet
After a really enjoyable night of celebrating Guy and Kate's birthday at this amazing place on Friday night, we were up at 5.30am for the 2 hour drive to the race. It was PAIN but we made it there without a hitch. Upon arrival Guy decided due to a nagging cold he would be dns-ing. To say I was excited was an understatement
No but seriously I wasn't actually happy for him not racing, I was looking forward to see whether I would be in his zip code, but it did increase my chances of over all victory!
This race was a super small 'rack your bike anywhere' kind of country race. After a bit of a rushed set up Kate and I were ready to roll. With a lot of travel under my belt, 'the sniffles' and 5000 feet of altitude I had no idea what I was in for. It was a mass start and after a quick briefing we were lined up ready to go
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The gun went and I took of like a *insert funny and appropriate analogy here*. It was a 2 lap swim out and back with a small run in between. I managed to get a small gap at the end of the first lap, where I was joined by a team swimmer, 'Teamy McSwimmington'. Unfortunately I managed to loose her feet a few hundred meters from the end of the swim but managed to come out with a little gap on the rest of the field which included Andy Potts, Clayton Fettel and Michael Phelps swimming in a team (true story).
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After the worlds slowest T1 according to Guy, I was off onto the 40k of PAIN. Unfortunately I had neglected to bring my bike Garmin to the states so I was riding without power. They say your learn something new about yourself in every race. Well in this race, I learnt, I have the worst internal gauge of perceived power in the history of personnel power perceiving people who try to personally perceive their own power ever.
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Guy advised me to race pretty hard, so heeding his advice, I went for it hard on the bike. The course was absolutely STUNNING but there wasn't much time to view. I was riding like a Jack Russell on speed and the road was quite bumpy and pot-holey. Also I had Chris Lieto and Norman Stadler trying to out ride me.
I reached the 20k turn around in "record time" according to the polite marshall and headed for home. I saw I had a gap of maybe a couple of minutes on the next couple of competitors that included Kate, who thanks to the $740 I paid her earlier was keeping the agreed upon distance back.
The rest of the ride was pain mixed with stunning scenery mixed with squires mixed with "oh cool a squirrel" mixed with pain. I made it back to T2 and after a quick dismount the running shoes were on and I was off for 10k. The run down hill made me feel like Usain Bolt's world record was in reach, next up Mo Farrah was in my sites. The next 6 meter 1% small hill dispelled any chance of that, oh dear, pain was back.
The run took us through some suburbed area then onto some cool but extremely taxing trails. I saw Guy a few k in, and it looked like he was taking a video on my phone. As a result I ran closer to him and yelled "HI MUM". This resulted in an extremely awkward embarrassing photo of me mouth wide open waving mid stride. Smooth.
After completing the first lap it was back out on the same to finish up. I pushed pretty hard in the last 5k and some drooling and funny noises ensued. However I managed to stop these as Kate and I crossed paths, I had to maintain my 'image of ultimate coolness' in front of her....yep, that's probably the worst joke of the whole blog.. here's a picture to ease your pain..
Finally I reached the finish line and boy was I glad to get there! It was a tough day but it was great to blow the cobwebs out. Kate crossed the finish line a few minutes later she also had a tough one. After the race we hung around for presentations and free beer! (Rocking the Total Tri hoody below)
So what do you do as a triathlete when you have been suffering for 2 hours? GO AND GET PANCAKES FROM THE PANCAKE HOUSE. Boy that was awesome but the inevitable carb high that followed was short lived, I crashed soon after and managed a good 12 hours sleep.
So now it's 2 weeks until vegas and I have a really good week or so before taper. I'll write another post before that. Until then thanks for the sympathy laughs when reading my jokes.
Cheers
