This past weekend was the finale of the Lifetime Series. I did Minneapolis and Chicago this year and qualified for this race at each of them. This time I would be on the start line with most of the top amateurs in the country. As opposed to the other races where a bunch of guys who have gone a certain time at another race get on the line and have to duke it out for the first 300m there were only 11 of us. Mentally it has its plusses and minuses. It is good because the start is much less of a fist fight and bad because all 11 of those guys have a chance of winning on a given day.
Into the water we dove and I knew that I had to stay with the front pack no matter what. Weather that be if a few guys go off the front and everyone else packs up or if it is a smaller group. By the second buoy it had turned into 3 guys off the front and a pack of 4. I was in the pack of 4 and content with that.
Into T1 I knew most of the guys around me and that I had to get out quick and start hammering. As soon as I grabbed the bike off the rack I should have slowed down a bit and made sure everything went smoothly. Through the transition my shoes were hitting the ground and my bike was jumping all over. As I went to mount a shoe hit and the bike went down with me on top of it. My first thought was "wow did that really happen? Just get up and go!" I got up and looked down at the bike. The bars were way out of alignment and a spoke had broken. At this point I was thinking "Crap, I came all of the way down here to do a swim. This sucks." And then I took a look at my arm which was dripping blood. At that point the medical people came over and started bandaging up my arm. The only thing she said to me was that i would probably need stitches. All I said back was "ya looks like it." While I was getting bandaged up the bike mechanics had grabbed my bike and started fixing the bars and getting me a new front wheel. At this point there was hope that I would be able to keep going. I think about 3 min had gone by but I was back at it.
Nothing really hurt and I really just wanted to save face by finishing. Throughout the bike I thought I would be able to see everyone else ahead of me and hopefully catch a few people. I only managed to pass one person and keep up with someone else who caught up with me. All I knew was that I had not gained much and needed to start hauling on the run.
I came out of T2 with Brian Duffy and knew that he was a solid runner. Through the first few hills I was hanging with him and found the pace about right. At the turnaround there were 5 guys ahead of me. I had in my mind what I knew I was capable of and this was not it. There were two guys that I knew were within reach but Gavin, VanOrt and the other guy were way too far up. It took a while to catch the other two guys but by mile 5 I had passed one of them and up the last hill I surged to pass the next guy. At this point it was just a sprint to the finish and ended up 4th.
Overall I am very happy with a 4th place finish under the circumstances. The bar was set a little higher than that but still came away with a run pr of about a minute. It is my fastest 10k ever and it felt great. The big picture for the last few weeks of training has been Clearwater and getting prepared for the run. I would not have expected that to come with a 10k PR but that leaves me very excited for what is to come.
After the race I got my wheel back and somehow ended up pulling the nipple out of the rim. Lets just say paying for that is not going to be fun. I had also managed to get blood on the broken spoke, shoes, brake lever, shifter, me, and my glasses. There always has to be stories like this, right?
If I am able to make it through the next few weeks of classes I have a trip to Clearwater planned for next month. I am super excited to get on the starting line of my second half ironman.
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