The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The good - aced the Sully Sprint Triathlon. Improved my time my 15 minutes from last year on exact same course for a 1:18. Won Clydesdale division comfortably and can genuinely say I pushed myself just right and was clicking. Everything was great. One word of advice - we stayed at the Maverick Inn which advertises itself as funky chic and charges $110 a night for a queen bed and room that would be $40 if it wasn't "funky chic." The room was ok, the people were nice and it's just across the street from Sul Ross. The problem was the flipping traffic and the damned Cousin Vinnie trains coming thru. I'm a very sound sleeper usually - got none at the Maverick Inn, just sayin'.

The Bad? The Mesiila Valley Triathlon raced yesterday. I'm a long way from getting cocky but I was getting a little more comfortable. Good crowd with about 200 people and pretty well organized. Lots of friends there. Cody showed up to race and pick up his award for the Southwest Challenge Series. The first person I ran into was John Gardea. John is my main competition in these contests in the big boy division. John passed me at the last in the President's Day and I bested him at the Sully Super Sprint. I use John as motivation to train and race harder but it's getting difficult because he's just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet.

The run was solid pacing off Cody. We traded places a few times but he was always there just behind me. I know this because you can hear him yelling to encourage lots of people. Another helluva nice guy. For guys that train as hard and invest so much time in personal improvement, triathletes are surprisingly a rather non-egotistical bunch. On to the bike where THE BAD comes in. Cody beat me out of transition (gotta work on that, the list is long), and then Scott Darling passed me too - that pissed me off and I went after him. So I'm hauling ass, down a hill, see Scott make a corner to the left ahead of me - doesn't look that bad. I hit that corner about 20 miles per hour and almost had it but caught the soft dirt and BAM! Down I went skidding across the pavement. My left hand had a hole in it the size of a quarter, scrapes lots of places, my only water bottle flew 20 feet away, twisted up my handlebars and my chain got all wedged into places it shouldn't have. I got up and a kid that was standing there helped me put my pieces back together. Took me at least 3-4 minutes to get the chain back on, etc.

I was hot, angry at myself, hurting and watching people zoom by me. I felt like the guy that's passing everybody on the freeway and then gets pulled over and has to watch helplessly as all those people he passed earlier go smirkingly by as the cop writes the ticket. I got back on and did my best. I was busting hard and felt like I passed 50 people on the rest of the bike but it was probably more like 20. Limped into transition but managed :42 seconds which is good for me. And then THE UGLY.

The swim was 500 meters in an outdoor 50 meter pool. I jumped in, took 2 strokes and had to stop because I couldn't breath. Goggles kept filling up with water. [insert your excuse here]. It was bad. All those people I passed on the bike seemingly passed my slow ass in the pool. I normally can swim 500 in 10 minutes with a medium to fast effort. Took me over 14 flipping minutes. I was embarrassed because Gretchen was there, my wife, my kids and my parents. It was not good.

Learning lessons - slow down for corners, I'm not in as good shape as I thought I was, don't get cocky, work on swimming, work on transitions, and try to smile more. Oh well, I'll get them next time.