Tri...Desert Style: Hawthorn Farm Sprint Race Report

Let me start off my saying that the week leading up to the race I was having expectation management issues and my coach Scott was very helpful. Here are some excerpts from his email I found to be very helpful and calming.

"What they (pros) all have in common is that they set themselves free from expectation. You hear it all the time in Ironman from the pro's. "I can only race my race." "I go as hard as I can go on that day."

We all must celebrate all the steps to success and not the final outcome or a specific event. If you don't celebrate and remember all these successes then you have a long and hard fall if you don't reach your goal. If your life is hinging on the outcome of an event then you are setting yourself up for major disappointments and your life is likely out of balance (or lacks perspective).

Use the nervous energy and excitement of it all to push you in races and to keep you focused on your race plan. But be smart, in some races you are the favorite. Act like one. Quiet confidence. Picture other champions in their sports.

Also, never set yourself up for failure amongst your peers. For the most part, the true champions in any sport (the Jordans, Woods, Gretzky's, Reids, Allen's etc...) are all quietly confident (in other words are gracious and humble in their victories). It is the want-to-be champions that are the jack-asses and sooner or later it will bite themselves in the ass."

So, yeah and I visited Gordo Bryn's website (www.gordoworld.com) and found several blog entries that are deal with some of these issues. Good stuff.

http://www.gordoworld.com/gblog/2007/04/approaching-information-intellectual.html
http://www.gordoworld.com/gblog/2007/04/nutritional-healing-genetic-potential.html
http://www.gordoworld.com/gblog/2007/04/personal-excellence-pain.html

On to the race....

I was feeling pretty good both mentally and physically going into this race, however, my legs were a bit heavy as I spun over to the start from the finish (separated by 2 miles). It was also in the 40's and not sunny yet. But seriously, you can't do anything about the cold...just as you can't do anything about your competitors... The starts times were late, by over a half hour, i was early as it was, so I sat around a bit longer than I would have liked.

The swim: 500 yard pool swim. I put down 6:15 and I was a bit slower than that today, about 6:30, but chip time has me at 6:37. Transition time was good at 0:49. I guess I swam hard enough since I was warm exiting the pool and I wasn't cold on the bike (except the toes). 6th fastest swim time.

The bike: 13.2 miles with 600' ascent. I quickly passed the couple guys that were out of the water ahead of me in the first mile. After that I "settled" into a pretty hard pace...average HR was north of 175 (i think it is off since i was getting readings of 219bpm at times). I looked back a few times and saw no one, so I kept the hammer down knowing I can go as hard as I can and still run near 6's for 5k. Fastest bike split 0:33:04 (23.95mph).

The run: 5k. I got off the bike and out of T2 in 25 seconds...definite PR there. My legs were jello. Might be a hard 5k after all. As the first mile approached, I had my legs back. And somewhere in the second lap I had a moment of Zen where I asked myself, in a moment of calm, "Can I run this for a 10k? I think I can." I had slowed to 6:15 at that point and finished the final mile in 5:55. I saw the 3rd and 4th place guys during the out and back sections, but they weren't close enough to worry. 2nd fastest run @ 0:19:06 (6:09 pace).

My sister and friends were there to see me win, which was cool. I ended up winning by over 3 minutes. Bill, also coached by Scott took second, so it was a good day for BlueMoose Coaching. I missed a sub one hour performance by 3 hundredths of a second...sucks! No pottery this time, I was actually looking forward to some pottery, even though I wasn't crazy about it for the Freezer. The pottery did get me out of a ticket when I was leaving Corvallis! I won a $25 GC to Foot Traffic and a multisport bag plus everyone got a pint glass too!