May 21: The Wildflower race report is loooong overdue, so sorry. I just wrapped up coaching my high school swim season (my team won the conference championships by a very close 4 points) and I am just catching up.  Looking back at Wildflower, I have very mixed emotions about the race. On the one hand, I PR'ed by two minutes (4:49.18) and had a fairly smart and even race. I only had one bad patch, at mile 11 of the run and responded by surging instead of slowing and managed to pass two others in the last mile of the run. No cramping so I was smart with my nutrition and my swim was a PR by one minute. Why the mixed emotions then? Aging up this year, I was expecting to finish pretty high as the youngin' of the 35-39 age-group and I was very happy to be out of the competitive 30-34 age-group. I was wrong, very wrong as the top amateur was in my new age-group and the deepest field came from my age-goup (I finished in 13th place). All too often I find myself gauging my races by how I stack up against others--finish ahead of him, great race, finish behind, bad race. This thinking boggles my rational mind...oh well, looks like I'll have to try and get 'em at the next one. Putting the race itself aside, there were many highlights at Wildflower this year. Russ, a former student of mine, raced his first half-ironman and defied the statement that you can't be out of shape and race well at Wildflower. Nursing a foot injury, Russ hadn't run in two weeks and even before the injury, I think his longest run was 80 minutes...and he did that ONCE. I call Russ the CAMEL because in my eight years of coaching him, I have yet to see him bonk. I've seen him really tired, but never bonk (when you're so tired that you just want to hop off your bike and take a nap in the bushes). Russ is a study in efficiency, he could probably make one gel stretch for 4 hours if he had to. On his limited training, Russ finished 24th overall, good enough for second in the 20-24 age-goup and an overall time of 4:45.13; and he earned himself a spot on the Zoom Team. It's been two years since Russ and I traveled to a race and it was nice to catch up and spend some time with him. I continue to tell him that his ultimate distance will be ironman, which he views as a curse right now. The second highlight was spending some time with the Zoom Team. Faye and Jen (Keith and Andrew's wives respectively) took great care of us. Jen made homemade lasagna and Faye is a great host with her outgoing and bubbly personality. Keith, Andrew, and team mechanic James, were all great support throughout the weekend. And then there's Karen, the designer of the Z1 wetzoot from Zoot sports. Sensing my struggle with my new Z1 wetzoot (wetsuit) by Zoot, Karen popped out of nowhere 10 minutes before the start of my race to help me with the wetsuit. I guess I showed signs of distress as I tried to get comfortable in my new wetsuit. Karen jumps up, casually tells me I look like I need help getting the suit to fit and that she, being the designer of the suit, was gonna take over. A couple of pinches here, a tug there and she increased the range of motion in the arms. The final fit involved Karen giving me one swift upward yank in the "nether" region and the crotch of the suit no longer felt like it was down by my knees. In my new wetsuit, I PR'ed by one minute and I KNOW it was due to the wetsuit, because I definitely did not train to go that fast. Thanks Karen! Sorry, no pics this time, spaced out and forgot the camera. But if I did have a camera, I would be holding the #3 becaaaaaause...