race

Yes, that's me wearing a Team Zoom uniform. Folsom and Pac Grove are two big team events and I got pulled in to race for team. Hopefully I'll get a free Sailfish wetsuit out of this. The last couple of years, I found myself driving to races the morning of, solo, and leaving right after the race; in other words, racing had become work. With Folsom, I traveled up the night before with a friend, stayed in an an awesome house 10 minutes from the race start and thus, I was more relaxed and feeling like this was a vacation. In the days leading up to the race, I was pretty calm, and my only thought was that come race day, I was going to make myself hurt. Got to the race a bit late so no bike warm-up , a short run and barely a swim warm-up, but I just rolled with it. My plan was to swim hard but within 5 minutes, I knew it was going to be an average swim, so I just focused on pulling water and keeping a consistent stroke rate. And with this race, I'm officially retiring my Zooth Zenith wetsuit, it'll be on Craigslist soon [I'm going back to my circa 2004 Orca P-Flex]. However, I am thankful that I can swim a straight line and sight well in the open water. I was going to draft off this really fast guy but soon realized that I would be swimming about 500 more yards because he couldn't stay on course to save his life. I struck out on my own and what do you know, got to the beach the same time as Mr. Fast. Out on the bike my plan was to utilize my newfound power and push bigger gears and keep a lower cadence. It was a strength course with rollers and some wind, which suits me. I was shocked to pass not one, not two, but three guys in my age group on the bike, either my swim sucked more than I thought or there were some fast swimmers. It was nice to experience something different though because usually I would be riding scared in the front holding off the chasers. I had a great ride, feeling strong and powerful and shaving close to two minutes off my time from last year. Only one guy passed me on the bike and it was in the last 3 miles or so when I was starting to shut things down in preparation for the run; also, he had tree trunks for legs and well, you just know when to let someone go. I was most nervous about the run leg because I've been running so well. Funny how the psyche works, you worry most about the discipline that you've trained the best--I think it's because you have higher expectations which leads to a greater fear of failure or disappointment. The plan was to run 2 miles at natural turnover off the bike and find easy speed, then push the next two miles finding mummy breathing [you know, you're running so hard that you've got to make mummy noises to push air out and keeps rhythm], maintain the 5th mile, and then balls to the walls for the last mile plus 0.2. I had some twitching here and there but knew the cramps would subside as long as I focused on my breathing and ran at easy speed. I came around and started to pick it up a bit too soon and by mile 3 I knew I was feeling the hurt that should have come with being at mile 4. Thankfully, around mile 4.5 we hit single track dirt trails and being the zen trail runner that I am, I was rejuvenated and got my head back into racing. I definitely felt my improved speed on the run, but the only problem is that I didn't capitalize on it; in other words, I could have run faster and made it hurt more. But, I was soundly in first place and had run my way into third overall and found myself very content. No voice from Scottie [or Sam McGlone] to push hard or hurt more, guess he must have been content as well on this day. So he and I strolled through the last bit of single track, wooded trail, and emerged onto the finishing chute. Not only did I stick around for the awards, but I did a warm-down run AND a warm-down swim AND a warm-down bike, all with teammates and socializing away. I have to say that I'm totally proud to be a Team Zoom member on this day as we went 1-2-3 overall and had almost every guy in the top 20...and we looked damn sharp doing it, I'll post pictures of our team uniform.