This recap really starts months ago, when I separated my shoulder, missed the Xterra regional championship and decided to focus on a local Mtb championship. That being said, I raced Mtb on Wednesday to stay in the points, knowing it wouldn’t serve me well for Xterra Whitewater 2 days later.
Ok. Now with that out of the way it’s back to Whitewater. Weather race morning was great, a little warm and humid but dry. This would be my first Xterra race here, having missed before for injuries and other conflicts. Upon arrival, I picked up my packet, setup my transition and got in my warmup on the way to the swim start. Then jumped in the water for a quick swim before the start. Now this swim was slightly different as I will explain, the gun sounded and we were off, 800m in the river, some upstream and some down. Then we got out onto the dock, slipped on shoes and ran uphill and over two bridges totaling 1/4 mile before flipping off the shoes and swimming another 200m in the actual whitewater center. I did ok on the swim but could already feel the fatigue from earlier in the week and thought to myself this was going to be a long day. I made it out of T1 approx 10th and was looking forward to a good bike. I passed a few people and was told 7th was my position. Then my chain dropped, I stopped to fix it and lost all of those positions. I pushed as hard as I could for the rest of the bike but feeling tired, I didn’t gain any positions.
I came into T2 to see my family cheering me. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling well and communicated that fact to them. So out onto the run I was now 10th. My knee from a previous injury had started bothering me on the bike but once I started running on it the pain increased. I still pushed all I could with being careful. Passing one person on the run and putting time on another that I could no longer see behind me. We exited the woods with approx 1 mile to go and there were two people behind me. I pushed again but 1 of them I couldn’t hold off as he ran past me…the other I held off right until the last turn only a few feet from the finish. He cut the corner and got ahead of me…I tried to sprint back past him but he made himself very wide on the bridge before the finish.
So the official result was 2nd AG and 11th Overall…until a spectator told me and the Race Director that the person ahead of me had cut the course. But unfortunately the RD didn’t act on it.
It was a great event and even better venue. I look forward to transitioning into some more road triathlons in the second half of the season as the Mtb series will be over soon and I will be singularly focused.
Heavytreads 