Message posted by: Rich H.

I had planed this race to be more of a “Lets just see what ya got in the tank” event after doing my first half iron the week before, so I had no great expectations.

The swim started out fine but about half way into it I was thinking why the hell are you putting yourself through this 2 weeks in a row. Put that thought out of my mind and started getting into a nice rhythm, drafted a guy for the last 1/3 of the swim, ended up with 14:35 for the swim and rather long run into T1.

Bit of a delay finding my bike but had an ok T1 1:34. Got a good chuckle when a spectator was asking if their athlete was stopping to cook soup in transition.

The bike ride was on roads I have been ridding regularly for 20 years so I knew every bump and hill along the way. Felt great on the ride and was passing riders throughout the ride. Did the 15 miles in 39:50 (6th fastest overall out of 288).

No issues in T2 out in 0:46.

Started the run with a 46 second lead on the eventual AG winner, 1:52 over 2nd and 1:36 over 3rd. Had a bit of a hard time getting my legs up to speed on the run and was still having heal pain after doing the HIM one week prior. I was very quickly passed by 1 place. At the pace he was going I had no chance of hanging with him, so I just wished him good luck and watched him go up the road. I don’t remember being passed by 2nd place. After about the half way point my legs started to fell good and I picked up the pace a bit. Coming out of the last turn with about a half mile to go I knew someone was behind me then with about a quarter mile to go 3rd place passed me. I stayed with him for a bit but just didn’t have enough left in the legs to make it to the finish with him and ended up 11 second behind solidly in 4th and 2:40 out of 1st with a 1:21:30.

I’m still very happy with my results with only a short recovery period between events, but I’ll be beating my self up for a bit thinking about letting a win slip by.

With only two and a half weeks to my next Olympic I gotta work on getting up to speed faster on the run.

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