Monday, July 22, 2013

Mid Summer Race Report

Ironman Kansas 70.3 is forever my unicorn. That's a "Gone in 60 Seconds" reference if you haven't seen it. Fabled creature…impossible to capture despite numerous attempts. Although last year's race was somewhat a departure from this with a 2nd AG 7th AM, there always seems to be a number of things that go wrong. I'm starting to think it could be me. This year, coming off of a better than expected 28.57 swim, a guy spilled his bike right in front of me on our way out of transition and I had no where to go but over his bike and to the ground. This was not the end of my race but it did epitomize what has become my unicorn. After a solid 2.19 bike I finished with a ho-hum 91min run. I did get the opportunity pre-race at the Tri Club lunch to meet the two eventual pro winners: 5 time world champ Craig Alexander and Emma-Kate Lidbury. The best thing about this race has been my brother's resilience to continue to come watch my attempts.
The rest of my June and July race schedule were my usual stops at El Dorado and Mudwater Triathlons, both of which I won. At El Dorado I had the pleasant surprise of receiving a new Coleman travel grill for my victory (below). At Mudwater we had a rain delay and then a shortened bike course to make sure we got it in. This made things more interesting as my chief competition for the day, Jeff Francis, is a much stronger swimmer than myself so I would not have as much room to reel him in. It took me the entire 15M bike to ride down his 4 minute swim lead and then finished off the race with a 36.37 10k to secure the win.