Downs and Ups

I know it's supposed to be ups and downs, but that's not the way it went!

Pigman HIM was supposed to be my big last race rehearsal and give me big confidence for IMOO. Instead, the bike portion of the race was largely in a huge wind and rain storm, and then it dried out and got warm. I had GI problems (thank goodness for the portapotty on mile 9 of the run), and bonked on the run. Hard. I still finished in 5:26, but this was a big comedown from the 5:08 at KS, and my contemporaries had times that were much more comparable to their KS efforts. I had lots of potential excuses, but I don't really know...

For most of a week, this was a big problem for me. I kept wondering if all this work was going to happen, and then I still suck. Big confidence problem.

But last weekend made things a lot better again. All I did was ride an easy century (is that an oxymoron?) on Saturday, then run 16 mi (albeit pretty easy, about 8:30 pace) on Sunday. Nutrition was no problem on Saturday, and the run on Sunday went fine with nary a water or nutrition stop.

Oh, and I got to watch Christopher at the Hickory Grove Tri. He averaged 21 mph on the bike for the first time and came in 3rd among all competitors 24 and under, 1st among everyone 19 and under. 19th out of 420 overall. Not bad for a 14 year old. His friends/teammates came in pretty much right behind him. Awesome.

Now it's Tuesday, and the legs feel fresh again. Life is good. Onward.

The Best Race Ever

At least so far.

Sorry for taking this long to write about it!

Christopher and I raced in the Big Creek Olympic Triathlon a few weeks ago.  He had done a 2:26 on a relatively slow HyVee course and had been plotting all summer how to get down to 2:20.  I, of course, lost to him at HyVee, but had not tapered.  Big Creek was going to be the same.  The family had gotten me an aero helmet for my birthday, but I let Christopher wear it because it was his big race.

We got started with me in the penultimate wave and Christopher in the last, with a 4 minute gap.  Well, he's going to dust me in the swim by more than 4 minutes I know, so the big question I had was would I ever see him!

I had found a good draft on the swim for the first ~1000 m.  Shortly after the last turn going in, some guy blasts by and yells at me.   Who is it?  Of course it's Christopher letting me know who's boss.  Passing me was fine, but it was downright rude of him to break up my draft!

In a way, I was a little disappointed to catch up to him on the bike.  I thought maybe he would go out and absolutely tear it up.  But catch him I did.  I challenged him to keep up with me, which he misinterpreted as an invitation to draft, which he loudly dismissed.  Good for him!

I thought I was putting on more time against him than I did.  When I got into T2, I had a shoe mishap (coming off my bike) and ran around for a little while trying to find it.  Surely less than a minute, but longer than I should have.  By that time, he had caught up, and we ran out of T2 almost together, him actually a touch ahead.

Dad was running just a touch faster that day.  This irritated Christopher who wanted me to come up right away, instead of taking a while to catch him.  We ran together for a mile or more, which was just great. Eventually, I pulled slowly away and played catch as catch can with other guys.  But as I finished, Christopher was only about a minute behind.

Times - Christopher 2:20, Me 2:23.  PRs for both of us!  I was so proud of him, and happy for myself.

The coincidence of the start time and everything may have been unique.  But I'll remember this one for a long time.