Musselman Race report

So this one is a little late, but better late than never....right?

I had high hopes for Musselman this year, because I've had aforementioned "beef" with the course. To let you all know my true goal was to be in the 4:3X range. I had a rough race for a variety of reasons. First, the weather was crazy, second, I made a ROOKIE mistake by cramming 600 calories down my gullet in the first hour on the bike and it just wasn't m day i guess. The one thing that I wanted to do though was to have a solid run because I have always felt that I've fallen apart on that course.

Swim - my goal was a 28:xx because I thought I could pull a sub 30 out of my butt. The weather and the waves had another thing in mind I guess. there were 2-3 foot waves and one of the middle bouys came loose and drifted causing many people to get a little confused on the swim. Also they sent the pink capped wave out first and in conjunction with the waves, that made it hard to appropriately sight where we were all going. I hit the beach and was happy to be on dry land. I was 32:xx something so a little displeased, but happy to have that portion over.

Bike - there was this new course that they made this year. It's good, got one solid hill in it and a terribbly rough section thru the park in Geneva. I borrowed a pair of Zipp 303's from my buddy Alan and they helped a ton, but since I had drank 600 calories in the first hour and jammed up my stomach, I was bloated and threw up about 2-3 times on the bike. (You know how hard it is to vomit to the side and still control your bike??!!) No fun. My good friend Joe Meyer passed me with about 5 miles to go when it began raining and he was a wave behind me (4 minute deficit). I limped back to T2.

Run - All I wanted was a good run, Joe and I went out together and ran shoulder to shoulder for a few miles. I told Joe of my woes of vomiting on the bike and he told me that one of his shifting cables had popped causing him to ride the course in the small ring up front. Not fun. JOe was yelling and trying to encourage me to HTFU and keep it going on the run, but I was actually feeling a little ok. 5 miles in, I had pulled away from Joe a little and slammed a Gu at the aid station to see what would happen. The gu went in, then imediately out, along with the remaining contents of my stomach... I think I may have hit Joe with a little of it as he ran by. Ewwww. He yelled at me some more and suddenly I felt great. I had nothing in my stomach and had cleared everythign in my system. I began to drop the hammer. There were 8 miles left and I just ran like I wanted to. I ended up ripping off a sub 6 mile and putting in 6 minutes into Joe (thereby beating him by 2 minutes overall with the wave differential) and closing with a 1:24 half marathon (good enough to be in the top 4 half marathon times that day)

Overall I still had a 2minute PR, but it was not how I wanted it to go. I was pleased to have ran a 4:41, and winning my age group (ran down the first place guy in the AG in the last mile) and got a really nice bottle of wine for it :o) This was a rough race and it was definitely a stupid mistake that caused me to vomit everywhere.

Well enough of that, I went up to Placid the next weekend and watched the race in the rain and registered with Joe for IMLP 2009. I saw some amazing results there too! congrats again! and can't wait to go head-to-head with Joe there in 2009. (Last time he raced it, he went a 10:23, I went a 10:27 last year) He's the only guy around my age that's gone faster than me and it willbe a good showdown next summer. I know we both are already looking forward to it! Alright I'm gona ost some good pics in the next one of upgrades I've gotten (think bike Pr0n) so I have to go grab those photos.

Tomorrow is a 6 hour ride followed by a 4 mile run and 2 mile swim, Sunday is a 20 mile run folowed by a 2 mile swim. This will cap out an 18 hr training week. I'm tapering after this! Woo-hoo, see you on the flip side folks. Cheers.