May Part 1

Drive started snowy on the way to St. George

Ended in the dry desert.

I am a bit relieved May is behind us and I figure I need to get caught up from the 5 races I did among other activities.  These will be rather brief updates as I try to get things on track.  Right at the end of April I had raced St. Anthony’s Triathlon in Florida and the following week I drove out to St. George, UT for the Ironman 70.3 US Pro Championship.  Back to back racing is tough and to make things harder I was going from a very stacked field at St. Anthony’s to an equally tough field in St. George.  The race started perfectly, I really pushed the first half of the swim as was able to do what I knew I was capable of and just hung on to the tail end of the lead pack out of the water.  I worked hard the first few miles of the bike to solidify my position in the group.  It was crazy how easy it was being in that group, even though we were riding according to the rules there was still a significant advantage sitting 4-5 guys back from the front.  About 15miles in on the bike I decided to move up in the pack.  Unfortunately the ref saw my move differently than I did and when I slid back in to line after passing a couple people.  I got my first penalty in a triathlon in 13 years of racing, according to the ref I moved in to a space that was too small, meaning that the distance between the two riders was right at the draft distance.  I saw the distance was larger since there was a smaller space between the two riders I had just passed.  It sucks since it is a complete judgment call by the ref and I suffered the consequence of a four-minute penalty on course where I watched everyone ride by.  In the end I lost 8 minutes as the group I was riding with ended up going 2:12 for the bike and I ended up with a bike time of 2:20.  Once on the run I started steady but unfortunately could not maintain the pace and slowly slid backwards.  It was a tough day because of the penalty and another learning experience in a 70.3 race.

Incredible homestay support thank you to the Guymon family for all the support through the weekend!

Training Peaks did a post race analysis of a few of the Pro's power files and I was lucky enough to be include in that group, you can see their analysis here: Training Peaks IM 70.3 St. George.

A couple weeks later I got to return to the fun side of racing at XTERRA Southeast Championship in Alabama.  The lead up to the race was perfect then the rain came in Friday night and everything changed.  It was enough to drop the water temperature down to wetsuit legal and quite a few pros, myself included were left scrambling trying to find one.  Huge thanks to Casey Fannin for letting me use his after he raced in the short course race before our race, and congrats on the win in coming back from back surgery.  Wetsuit may have been a bit tight or maybe I was just off my game but struggled to keep with the front group and was about 10 seconds down going into T1 but that is much better than the 2 minutes I would have lost without a wetsuit.  The rain changed the trail as well, they were conditions I don’t get to ride in in Colorado, I was more timid riding as I had a good crash in Canada last year on wet roots and I didn’t want to repeat that.  I did hook one of my bar ends on a tree which I forgot to switch before I traveled to Alabama and went down hard Josiah and Brad Weiss both passed as I had to pull vines out of my rear wheel and straighten my handlebar.  I rode the rest of the course pretty clean but newbie pro Nick Fisher caught me towards the end of the bike and we headed out on the run together.  He was faster at the start and opened up a good gap through the first lap of the run.  On the second lap I didn’t know it till very late in the run but I had been closing the gap back down but ran out of trail to catch him and ended up 6^th.