A brief race report from HyVee:
My swim was excellent! I exited the water in the front pack only 30 seconds down from the leaders. This was great since my swim was off for the first few races of the season. Onto the bike I was in the front pack within half of a lap (2.5K of riding) – the only problem was that it was just so much harder than normal to get there. When I was safely in the pack I tried to rest and recover at the back knowing the field would soon string out again as we exited transition onto lap two, but it was like I couldn’t get in enough oxygen. When the field finally did string out I got DROPPED!!! At this point I knew something must be wrong, so I pulled over to check out my bike. A quick visual inspection revealed nothing out of the ordinary – no brakes rubbing, no flat tires, no gremlins slowly dismantling my bike. I looked back to see the Chris Foster train rounding the corner, so I quickly remounted my bike and got up to speed. I joined Chris’ chase group, regrouped mentally, helped out a bit in the pace line and eventually re-made the front pack. Huh? I just got dropped by these guys, how am I helping to bridge back up? The rest of the bike was hard for me as the accelerations out of each turn were almost too much for me to handle. Onto the run my struggle continued and I fought hard for 48th place. Ouch!
Needless to say it is my opinion that this race doesn’t reflect my current fitness in any way. The only other time I felt that bad in a race was the 2008 Scott Tinley’s Adventure’s Triathlon where I got beat by almost everyone including the girls! Ha, I’m pretty pathetic sometimes. Anyways, it’s back to the training for now and I should be back to racing in Hamburg next month.