IM Boulder 2019 recap


I have been building for the race since mid-January. Averaged 10.5 hours per week which is pretty light. However, this includes 2 short vacations when I could not train all that much, some taper and a 7 day break after St George 70.3, and about 5 days of downtime in late May when I came down with a chest cold . All in all,I felt that it was a decent prep cycle, although the timing of the illness around the Labor day before the race threw a wrench at my plans to have a graduated taper. Cannot control stuff like that, but unfortunately it had some effect on the race. The long and short of it, I had to ease off in Boulder because of the nasal congestion that I could not completely shake off.

In terms of being race ready, I felt that my cycling fitness was probably the strongest ever. The swim fitness was pretty good too, but the run was somewhat weaker than usual - I just could not do more than 30 mpw, and that honestly worried me. But nonetheless the race week came and it was time to go to Boulder and test my limits one more time.

Day 1

I flew into Denver on Thursday of the race week. For the 1st couple of nights I was staying with my childhood buddy Leo who has been living in Colorado since the early 1990s and is always super hospitable. Picked my rental car and drove it to Aurora where Leo lives. Got there at around noon, settled in and went for a quick run. Although it was sort of overcast, I started to feel the sun a couple of miles into it. Was very glad that I had put on a lot of sunscreen! An important lesson learned in St George. The run went pretty well, I did not struggle with the rollers or the altitude, and overall it did not feel that much different from my easy runs in the Valley. The rest of the day was spent napping, checking the Sunday forecast (it was showing a significant cooldown from Saturday with a chance of rain), playing with my buddy's kid, their dog, having a nice dinner and... well I did have a couple of beers. Maybe 3.

Day 2

Got up fairly early, had my usual morning fare - a bagel with peanut butter, a banana and a cup of coffee type of breakfast, and then headed to Boulder to checkin and pick up my bike. The drive took a little bit over an hour. Got to Boulder at around 10am, parked and headed to the IM village. It was setup on a grassy lot next to the parking lot of the high school. The grass was a mess - it could have been cut by the city, and there was also some road construction going on literally right next door to the tents. The village was pretty empty since it was early-ish, so it took me no time to grab my registration packet, a few souvenirs from the store, and then go get the bike. I was pretty relieved that it had seemingly arrived with no damage - well, more on that later. Threw everything in the back of the car and drove back to Denver. On the way there, I got an email from the RD stating that this was going to be the last year of IM Boulder. It was a bummer for sure, but it also gave me a good reason to do my best on Sunday.

Once I got back, I reattached the race number, reinstalled the aero bottle cage, the pedals and the eTap batteries, pumped the tires and headed to a nearby bike path to pre-ride. The bike path ran through an awesome looking open space with lots of greenery, sizable creeks and so on - and it was also twisty as all hell, so staying on the aerobars was a challenge since I had to make sharp turns every few hundred yards. Turned around after about 10 miles and rode back - and suddenly the storm cloud appeared out of nowhere and right around the time I was about 2 miles from my car it started pouring. Had to ride a bit faster while avoiding wiping out on the sharper corners.

Got back to my buddy's house and did the final prep for the race - ie hand tightened every single bolt. As I was working on the front brake, I had noticed something odd - the fork was now turning all the way, while before there was a little stopper pin in the top tube that was restricting the fork to about 30 degrees of movement to the left/right. This was a bit of a surprise, but I did not think much about it.

Assembled the gear and the special needs bags in the afternoon. Was not 100% sure  how the weather was going to turn out, so just in case threw in a rain vest and the arm sleeves into the bike gear bag, and an extra t-shirt and a trash bag with holes for the head and arms into the run special needs bag - in that neck of the woods you just never know if the temps going to drop or if it rains. Threw in some extra GUs and a Clif Bar into the bike special needs bag. Also taped 5 GUs to the top tube just in case I wanted some change of pace for my nutrition - one can only have some much Infinit on any given Sunday 😄

In the evening had another awesome dinner with my buddy and his family - they made shrimp fajitas with some salad. We had a bottle of wine between of us and stayed up fairly late just chatting, reminiscing about our childhoods and enjoying the weather.  Went to bed at around 10:30pm. Slept well.

Day 3

Slept in as long as I could - still got up at around 8am. Had another bagel/banana and a Clif bar with a cup of coffee. Loaded my gear into the car, said bye for now to Leo and his family and headed  to Boulder for the gear drop off and some pre-swimming in the reservoir.



Got there at around 10am and was able to park in the lot right next to the water. Dropped off the bike and the gear bags. Since the forecast was sort of iffy with regards to the rain in the morning of the race, I wrapped the aerobars in a trash bag, and put a plastic bag on the seat. I was very worried about the fork moving around too much.



Then I went for a quick swim. The water in the reservoir was very warm, easily in the upper 60s. Since I missed all of the previous days' supported swims, I could only swim in a small circle near the beach, but honestly it did not matter. Right away I knew that it was going to be a single cap swim in a very comfortable water temperature. I also really liked swimming with just an underlayer under the wetsuit as opposed wearing a full aerosuit - it really did not restrict the range of motion in the shoulders.

Once I dried up a bit, went back to the car and set out to drive one loop of the bike course. It took me a little bit of time to find the beginning of the loop but after that the map was easy to follow. The terrain consisted primarily of stretches of mostly flat roads with some rollers and a few sharp climbs with top kickers that looked quite steep. The back end of the loop had some more rollers but I did not see anything that looked like a concern.

Came back to Boulder around 3pm and headed to Dina's place. She's my cousin's cousin who moved to Boulder when her hubby got a job at CU over there. They invited me to stay over for a couple of nights and I gladly accepted their offer to couch surf 2 miles away from the Boulder High School. We had a nice dinner that night - all while it suddenly hailed outside!


The weather went from warm and sunny to overcast and cold... just like that. In any case, I was in bed by 9:30pm and fell asleep quickly.

Race Day

Woke up at 3am and had 1.5 cinnamon raisin bagels with peanut butter, 2 bananas and a Starbucks espresso double shot. The goal was to get about 750 calories in and I think that I came pretty close.



Headed out of the door at 4 am, drove to the corner of Pearl and 15th and parked in a structure (yay free Sunday parking!). It was VERY cold and wet outside - I was shivering although I had a warm underlayer on and a shirt/hoodie on top of it. Took quick walk to the Boulder high and dropped off my special needs bags on the way before lining up to get on the shuttles.

It was a quick ride to the reservoir, listened to Viktoria by Marduk on the way there - lots of adrenaline in that record! Got off the bus at around 4:50am - and yes, it was even colder there.



We had to walk up this little hill to get to the transition area, so that warmed me up a bit. The bike was in a good condition, a little wet but nothing critical. Took the bags off, attached the batteries and my Garmin, tested the wheels and found that the front wheel was rubbing for some reason. That was odd as this issue was just not there in the morning on Saturday. I had to open up the brake a little - that's one great thing about the TriRig Omegas, you can always fine adjust just one side... that took care of the rubbing issue, but I was still worried about the brake moving during the ride. Just in case, I laid out a trash bag under the front wheel to minimize the movement.

Ate another Clif Bar, put on my wetsuit (swam in a HUUB suit this time) and headed out of the transition area. Lined up for the 1:10 group and started to get mentally prepped for the race. We had Mike Reilley at the start line - he was doing his usual banter/cheering bit  and I had realized that I had really missed it last year in Santa Rosa. He made the time go by very quickly, and I was somehow feeling at peace with the universe. Did not get in the water til 6:46am or so... and then it began.

The Swim

The first 100 yards felt great. And then something happened... I felt a weird discomfort in the upper body, and I suddenly had to stop. I was breathing way too hard. After a minute or 2 I started to feel ok. People were swimming around me, and I decided that I was ok to continue. Had to swim a bit slower than normal until I hit the first left turn. After that I got into the rhythm, which was still a little slower than my usual pace, but I was feeling relaxed and just making sure that I was doing a good job sighting and breathing. After the second turn the chop picked up a little bit and the going got a bit harder. The water was at least 15 degrees warmer than the air but was definitely cooling down minute by minute. The last 300 yards or so were a struggle as the arms started to get a bit sore, so I started kicking harder.  Got out and the watch showed 1:31 as the swim time. Ouch. The Garmin file here.

T1

Was out of the wetsuit very quickly, did not have to stop and have it stripped - that's one thing I really like about HUUB (if it only was not such a pain in the ass to put on). The run on the grass to the bags was pretty short and the volunteers were very helpful and I was in the changing tent in no time. Here I really did mess up. The plan was to take off the underlayer, put on the HR strap, pull up top of the aerosuit, throw on my rain vest, and head out with the shoes on putting on the helmet as I was running to the bike. Sure enough I forgot to put on the HR monitor and only realized it when I had  the vest on... I really did not want to risk not knowing the heart rate on the run, so I had to dress up twice. That sucked. The run to the mount line was basically to the top of the same hill again, this time in bike shoes. 10 minutes left there.

The Bike

The first 90 minutes or so were pretty much punctuated by this one uniform sensation - I was cold, shivering and everything. Having the vest on sure helped, but the arms and the hands were uncomfortably cold. I was very grateful that I had put on some warm-ish socks in T1 - at least the feet were not ready to fall off. Once we started hitting the first hill going up to the Hwy 36, I began to feel more normal and had a pretty good climb where I was able to push out of the saddle and generate good steady power. But then came a fast descent down Nelson Road and I got cold again, to the point that when I was riding up the 65th I had a hard time putting back the nutrition bottle in the cage behind the seat. It fell out and landed on the nipple that broke off and ended up inside the bottle - boom! Half of my 1st loop nutrition spilled out. I had to turn around and go salvage whatever was left in it. Stopped at the next aid station and transferred the remaining  Infinit mix into an empty water bottle. Also grabbed a few GU Roctanes just in case. For some reason one of the was open which I did not notice - and the GU leaked out gluing my vest to my aerosuit in the back. Good times!

The rest of the went pretty much without a hitch, although I did have to stop about 10 miles later on Hygeine Rd when my chip band slipped down my leg and was hanging a bit too loose for my liking. I retightened it - as turned out too much, so that the ankle was sore for a few days after run, more on that later. I made it up Hygiene Rd which was probably the steepest bit of the course and that's when I finally stopped being nearly hypothermic. The backside of the course was great - the sun was out on the Hwy 66, we were passing neat little lakes - life was suddenly good! The rollers on the 75th Ave were fun and I hit pretty good speeds coming down. Most importantly I made up a ton of time.

The 2nd loop flew by pretty fast. I got my 2nd bottle of Infinit from the special needs station along with a cold can of Coke, spent about 45 second sipping it and was off fighting the wind on the Hwy 119.



For some reason the out and back on Monarch was very bumpy the 2nd time around and the turnaround was very tight - I actually had to unclip to make it. The climb up Neva was a lot of fun again and I really enjoyed it although it is a mere bump by the standards of Santa Monica mountains. Here's a picture of me cresting there.



By the time we got to Nelson/65th it was plenty warm, so I stopped there for a sec to take off my vest. Nothing remarkable to report on the rest of the ride, although I started feeling a tad fatigued going through the rollers on the 75th ave. By then it was almost over. I was a little bit surprised that the course ended up being short by about 2 miles - with 2 out and back segments repeated twice  I'd have imagined that the organizers could have gotten it right, especially since this was the 2nd time they used this course. The finish time was 5:42. Garmin file here.

T2

This went pretty smoothly. I left the shoes on top of the pedals so that helped a bit. We had to run through a short stretch of uncovered rocky dirt which sucked, but other than that no complaints. I did change into my running clothes (shorts and a singlet) which took about a minute and I reapplied lots and lots of sunscreen, but I was out in 6:19.

The Run

The first 3 miles or so were on some country roads leading out of the reservoir area. There was one sharp hill in the 1st mile, and then it was a gradual climb until mile four. I wanted to try the idea of running faster but walking the transitions since I was very concerned with the possible dehydration from the recent cold. Have to say that worked pretty well for the initial 10 miles or so. I would grab some water in the beginning of the water station and then some Coke, walk briskly while drinking and then pour some more water on my head and shoulders at the end of the aid station. But after a while my brisk walk became a lot less brisk and I ended up moving slower and slower through the aid stations. The other thing was that the bike path we were was relentlessly rolling, and lastly it was super hard on the lower legs. After about 15 miles I was feeling super beat up. The Nike Vaporflys that I was running in provided a lot less cushioning than the Hoka Cliftons that I was so used to in racing.  Eventually I started feeling the unusually crushing fatigue - probably the effects of elevation were becoming more and pronounced, on top of the nasal congestion that was still lingering. At around mile 19.5 when I finally came to the last turnaround I started playing this game in my head where I'd promise myself to walk some if I can run one more mile... and then I'd get to the mile marker and would postpone walking for one more mile, promising some walking in the future, rince and repeat.

The worst part was that we passed by the Boulder high school twice and the bags and the bikes were clearly visible from the path... but yet we had miles to go. Had a minor panicky moment when I could not find the mile 25 marker (it was for some reason misplaced and instead showed up at around mile 25.6). At that point I was negotiating with myself running in quarter mile stretches and the prospect of having to go an extra mile or so was just unthinkable, as sad as it sounds. But it turned out that the course was probably spot on distance wise - I ended up logging 26.4 miles which is pretty good for a twisty bike path with lots and lots of underpasses where GPS just does not work at all. Finally I got off the bike path, headed to the finish line, heard Mike Reilley call my name. It was all over. A 3:57 run, giving a 11:27 finish time for the 23rd spot in the M45-49. Garmin file here.


Full video:




After The Race

Have to say that I was spent - close to 100%. Like a zombie I lurched towards the food tent which was all of 500 yards away Started to feel very cold, so I threw on my finisher shirt on top of my singlet along with the space blanket I got at the finish line. Finally saw Dina and her husband and their daughter near the food tent... they started asking me about how I was feeling... I was out of it. Was not even sure where I was probably!  Tried to eat some food from the tent and had to put it down - just could not digest any real food, save for some Chips Ahoy cookies. That whole plate in the picture - it was left on the bench in its entirety.



Since I was getting colder and colder, decided to go get my morning clothes and the bike. That was an even longer walk and there was a line to get to bags and bikes since you had to be personally accompanied by a volunteer. The kid who walked me was super sweet and patient, wish I had an appreciation wristband to give him. I changed right there on the grass, and decided to drop off my bike with the TriBike transport right away. That took a little while as they had trouble taking the pedals off and for some reason the front derailleur was stuck in the midshift position. Eventually the things got figured out and the bike was signed for and filed to be on the way to Burbank. After a bit more walking I made it to the car, threw my gear bag in the back and headed to Dina's house. Had a great dinner with them again which was sorely needed. I almost passed out from being low on sugar when I waited too long to eat! And then came a great black wave of sleep, with no dreams or sensations...

In Conclusion

I feel happy with the results. Sure, no PRs here, and the course was not all that hard, especially if you mad the right equipment choices. But I think that somehow I did not leave much on the table, and unlike in St George I raced to my fitness level. Kind of sad that I won't get to give this course another go any time soon, but I am quite content with how things went. And the pictures of the peaks of the Rockies that I took on the flight back are still quite stunning. Til we meet again!








St George 70.3 2019 recap


Signed up for St George 70.3 as a way to test my fitness before IM Boulder in June. I have been training steadily since mid January. Spent a lot of time climbing on the bike on Zwift and in real life. By April I had felt pretty good about the bike and the run, and the swim training was actually showing some real progress too after a year spent working on a Vasa trainer. My easy time for 100 yards free was about 1:38, with a hard effort repeats time being around 1:26-1:27. I made some improvements to the bike, lightening it up a bit and getting a custom storage box that attaches to the area above the bottom bracket.

Arrived at St G on Thursday afternoon. Checked into the hotel (Tru by Hilton, very convenient!), unloaded my gear and went to the town square square to pick my registration packet.  Got there right around the time when Andrew Messick was starting his announcement of the full IM returning to StG in 2020, with the 3 year rotation. I tried to listen to the speech but the tent was too loud, and I really did not want to lose my space in line, so I just turned on their Facebook live feed and listened to it instead. Much better J. The pickup lines were pretty long and I ended up spending about 30 minutes waiting for this and that. 

Got back to the room, laid everything out on the spare bed and assembled the gear, sorting it into 3 piles (morning/bike/run). Everything was in place except for the chain lube, so I breathed the sign of relief. By that time, it was almost 6:30pm local time and it was time to get some food. I went out to the local diner called Black Bear. Had a substantial dinner by my standards – with Cobb salad and a baked potato. The diner was teeming with the tourists (non triathletes by the looks of it) and the locals. The food was quite good, especially the bacon. Yum! Afterwards I drove to the nearest supermarket and got some fuel for the race day morning – ie Gatorade, peanut butter, bananas and a few bread rolls. Got back to the hotel, watched TV for a bit and turned in for the night. 

Slept pretty well, although the noise from the Interstate 15 right outside the window was a bit annoying.Woke up at around 6:30am and headed downstairs for breakfast. The hotel clearly was doing a good amount of business with the triathletes – saw quite a few loading up on carbs or heading out/returning from rides. I had some oatmeal with cranberries and a banana with coffee. After that it was time for some equipment testing. Rode my bike for about 15 mins, no hard efforts, just making sure that the shifting was working the way it was supposed to. No issues, although the return route via River Rd was not great – the bike lane was too narrow to stay in aero. Rode it on the bullhorns mostly. Got back, put on running shoes and headed out for a quick run. The sun was already pretty hot, and there I made my first mistake – not putting on lots and lots of sunscreen right away.  Went downstairs, had a waffle and more coffee, and then headed to a bike shop up the street to get some chain lube. It was so fantastically dry outside that I realized that the chain needed to be dry lubed. Picked up some dry lube and after that was finally all set.

Loaded my gear bags and my bike into the car at around 11:30am and headed towards the town square. The plan was to listen to the athlete meeting, drop off the run gear bag and then head towards the reservoir. By the time I got the stage, the area in front of it was pretty full and I ended up sitting sort of high way between the shaded area and the area exposed to the sun. That was a really dumb move. I got baked there big time, while learning absolutely nothing new from the presenter. And then I had to wait another 30 mins for T2 to open up. More time in the sun without the proper hydration and sunscreen. Arggh.

Once I had dropped off the run gear, I headed to the reservoir. It was a bit longer of a drive than I had expected with the traffic being heavy. I got there eventually and the parking situation was not great… had to make myself a parking spot. Lubed the chain, racked the bike, hung the bag on the numbered rack and then went down to the water to see what condition my condition was in. The water was definitely not warm, but felt about 62-63 degrees, which was exactly what I was expecting. I walked ankle deep in the water of the shallow end of the boat ramp for a few minutes and decided that it is going to be a 2 swim cap thing. Finally got to the car at around 2:30pm and drove back to StG. Stopped by a supermarket on the way back and got 2 slices of pizza and a chicken sandwich for dinner. Was back at the hotel at 3pm. Charged all of my electronics, mixed my Infinit drink, rolled a little bit on the foam roller.... At that point, the plan was to park myself in front of TV, and only step out of the room to drop off the stuff I won't need in the morning by the car at around 6:30pm.

I followed the plan to the T, but unfortunately, when I went down to the car, I had discovered a huge nail sticking out of the rear left tire. Not sure where I picked it up, but there it was. I checked with Google for the tire shops nearby that were still opened and the only one without 2 miles that was still open was a WalMart down street. Drove there quickly, but they had a line of cars out of the door and the manager told me to come back tomorrow. At that point, I simply put on a spare and drove back to the hotel, bummed knowing that I had to take care of the tire right after the race.

Got to the room at 7:30, had my sandwich and did my best to calm the nerves down and prep for sleep. I really started to feel the sunburn on my neck and my back and even my arms. Slept fairly well, not great… got up at 3:45am. Had 2 bread rolls with Justin's peanut butter and honey mix, a banana and a Starbucks Espresso shot can. Rolled on the foam roller, got my bags, checked out and stepped into the cool, dark night. The hotel was about 1.5 miles from the finish line, so got there at 4:15am, parked 3 blocks from the shuttles and headed out. Boarded right away, no wait… the drive to the T1 in the darkness is always a weird experience (somewhere between exciting and terrifying) – listened to Burzum as I always do before races, and his magic was lifting my spirit off this planet one more time.

Got to my bike, re-installed the eTap batteries, pumped the tires to 85/90 front/rear, put in Infinit, filled up the aero bottle with a mix of Gatorade and water, milled around… was looking for a couple of my buddies, but the T1 got hectic quick, and suddenly it was 20 minutes to the start and the portapotty lines were long as always… I did not get to the swim start til about 5 minutes to 7. There I made another mistake. I did not realize how long it’d take to let everyone into the water, so as I lined up with the 35-38 minute swim section, I did not start swimming until 7:35am. One weird thing was that I felt something in the right eye as I was tightening the goggles. Perhaps, I somehow overtightened one side? 

The swim was uneventful but.. once again, just like in Palm Springs earlier this year, I could not find my groove. I was not struggling, but it was not a smooth swim at all. Although the water temps were in the low 60s I felt cold, and was not just in my element. The course was very easy to navigate, as it is a simple triangle swam counterclockwise. At one point, somewhere before the 2nd turn, suddenly the wind picked up and it got choppy. In any case, I was out of the water in 40 minutes. Well, 40:34 for those who care. Garmin file here.

In T1, somehow the wetsuit got stuck on the right leg (the one that did not have the chip on, go figure) and I had to get down on the mat to get it to come off. Once that was done, I grabbed my bag off the rack and got the helmet and the shoes on. Ran up to the bike in shoes since we could not leave them clipped in and we were off into the desert.

I got on the bike and only then had realized that somehow I got either some speck of sand or something like that into my right eye. It was starting to itch bad and would kind of get worse every few miles, and then let up. I managed to sort of initially wink through it, but then a thing happened that could have ended my race right there. We were going up the first incline when some guy in front of me dropped his bottle and in some inexplicable fashion turned around to catch it as it was rolling down. In the process, he almost took me down, but thankfully I was able to  make a stealthy evasive maneuver. After that I rode the next 10 miles trying to warm up and get the hips going again. It was not going well, and I kind of tried to just work through it. Things got better once we turned left on the highway (Hwy 6/State st), but the problem was that by then I was riding against a fast moving traffic on the right, and the left lane/shoulder was full of rumble strips. Basically til mile 19 I could not do much and was just going as fast as possible given the conditions.

Once we turned on Telegraph Road, I felt a bit better. I was not shivering anymore and was pushing good wattage up up the inclines. There was one descent that could have been taken very fast in aero but it was so crowded that I had to brake hard in a few spots. Nonetheless mentally I was feeling pretty strong but the power in the legs was just not coming back. The course was starting to wind through the suburbia for a while until we hit Red Rocks Parkway where we rode on the opposite side of the run course - but that time the pros were starting to climb the infamous Booyah Bend. At the top I managed to drop the chain shifting into the big ring... that was a big bummer, and I kind of lost my motivation there. 

We rode back into town and did an out and back on Snow Canyon parkway which is basically just a series of false flats. It was starting to get a bit warmer and I could feel the sun on my arms and my back. Once we started going up the actual Snow Canyon climb past the ranger station, I started to feel back in my element and powered through the segment. To be honest, it is not that hard of a climb if you pace with power - although it does get fairly steep within the last mile or so. Oh and it also is completely exposed to the sun. Once I crested it, there was a water station - grabbed a bottle of water and poured all over the head/neck/back... and then I dropped the chain for the second time. The irony! That was the point when I mentally threw in the towel and decided to just cruise through the rest of the race. 

The descent into town was a lot of fun - it really is fast and by then the road was pretty open since the climb broke up the packs of riders. A few sections were exposed to the wind so I had to get off the aerobars but generally it was a pretty screaming ride all the way to the turn off on Diagonal street. The last mile or so was along the run course again... and I was pretty surprised to see a few age groupers clearly on the way to the finish line. Assuming the run in the range of 1:30-1:35 and them lining up at the front of the swim - that meant that the faster age grouper times were going to be in the 4:40 range. Ouch. The final bummer was the fact that the bike course was about 0.6 miles short and I stupidly did not get my feet out of the bike shoes fast enough so that I ended somehow with the right foot on top of the right shoe, but the left foot dangling on top of the left shoe... at the dismount somehow the left foot ended back in the shoe, which almost caused me to drop the bike... just the series of unfortunate events. Bike time - 3:02:38, which is pretty sad. Nutrition wise I had about 550 kcals of Infinit mix, 2 GUs with caffeine, about 15oz of Gatorade  and 1 half of a Clif Bar. I think that I could taken about 200 kcals more since I came off the bike feeling a bit low on fuel. Garmin file here.

The T2 was already hot and I somehow ended up having trouble getting the run gear back untied. The the Nikes shoelaces would not tie... at least I got 2 packets of sunscreen smeared on quickly, but another 5 mins wasted. 

The run was the least eventful leg of the race. I would take a cup of water and a serving of Cola for nutrition and try to stay as cool as possible by dumping water on my head and shoulders at every station. The first climb was steep but went by quickly, About a mile into it I saw my co-worker and studly triathlete Jeremy running down towards the finish. From there onward I was not definitely working particularly hard, keeping the heart rate around 160bpm give or take. Somewhere towards the top some dude ended up running along with me, and we basically ran together until mile 12 where he pushed forward and I had no real desire to push any harder. We chatted as we were going up and down Red Hills parkway and the time flew by quite fast. We passed a ton of people, don't think that anyone really passed us at all for the entire stretch... the course is actually quite fast if you did not burn all your matches climbing Snow Canyon or going up the Booyah Bend climb out of town. The only thing that bugged was the soreness in the right eyelid, which was probably aggravated by the sweat and the sunscreen running down... it got bad enough with 0.5 miles to go that I had to stop and pour some cold water on the eye. It did not bother me until I sat down to get some food after the race. Run was done in 1:40:58, average heart rate 159bpm, Garmin file here. All together, the total time was 5:34:28.  

The finish line was a bit disorganized by the WTC standards. I got my medal and my finisher's hat and then sort of hung around the chute, waiting for god knows what, until I had realized that we were supposed to walk back towards the town center square. I was so overheated that I jumped into mini creek where the kids were splashing and just submerged in it for a few minutes. Was joined by a couple of other triathletes.. one of them stated rightly - hey, we're all just big kids! That made me laugh, and I felt so much better... proceeded to the food tent, got a box of what looked like Chipotle food with a banana and a soda. The eye was still bugging me, and at that point I just wanted to get to my car quick because I had some artificial tears in my backpack... I got my morning bag and my T1 bag from the volunteers, thanked them, piled everything up, grabbed the bike and walked to the car. Still was a bit out of it, and took some time to actually find where I had parked 😁. 

Threw everything back into the car, and then drove back to that WalMart place. Half way through the eye started hurting so bad that I had to stop to drip in more tears. The mechanic told me it'd take 2 hours to put on a new tire, and I used the time to get more food at some local BBQ place (which was just awful, as an aside) and catch a cat nap on a patio furniture at the Garden section of the said supercenter (very comfy). The sun was just burning me up, the eye would itch like crazy every 10 minutes or so... not good. At that point I bailed on the plan to stay overnight in Las Vegas and instead called the hotel where had I stayed the night before and booked a room for 1 more night to get myself together. In the hotel, I could not stand to see any screen glare at all, so I listened to podcasts, ate the leftover peanut butter, bread and bananas... fell asleep, woke up at 7am, had the breakfast downstairs and decided to take a chance on driving back to LA... with the hope that the eye won't be an issue anymore. Drove without any problems (not counting the Vegas traffic), although had to stop twice to stretch the legs and the back.

What are my thoughts, now that it's been 2 weeks since the race? I think that it is a tricky course for a number of reasons. I was told by the number of people to bring a compact crankset to avoid overbiking on Snow Canyon. Well I did that and certainly did not overbike by any stretch of imagination, but I also spun out on every downhill losing a bunch of time.  I will switch back to  52/36 upfront and 11/28 in the back for Boulder. To hopefully fix the chain drops, I am going to set my front derailleur as close to the SRAM specs as possible. My OWS continues to be my weakness and it keeps me from riding a less crowded course - will try to get more ocean swims in summer. The run is the only reliable constant. Lastly, definitely no more athlete briefings or ignoring the sunscreen or hydration in the dry climates! Lessons learned hopefully.

Some pretty pictures of the pretty sites I saw on the way there and in StG