Alabama and Collegiate Nationals

Gotta knock this one out before the homework really gets piled on and this becomes irrelevant.

I have to say..... I had a blast staying with the UCLA Tri team and am truly thankful for time I got to spend with them. It just makes me wish we had a legitimate tri team at Loma. It makes these trips much more bearable when you have friends going through it with you. Not only was hanging out with the UCLA tri team sweet, but all of the schools from the West Coast Collegiate Triathlon Conference. I love all those guys. It honestly didn't feel like separate teams from the WCCTC competing with the rest of the Collegiate teams, but the WCCTC vs. the rest of the schools (or maybe just Boulder). It was pretty awesome. I don't think any other conferences have that sort of camaraderie. 

Alabama was ... Alabama. Hot, humid, and rednecks. Our first night, a couple of the UCLA guys and I went for a little exploratory run around the hotel area. I somehow forgot my running shorts so I decided my retro 80's speedo would have to suffice. After circling the Lowe's parking an upwards of 6 times and running to the highway and back I told the guys I was going to call it a night & head to the hotel. They decided to head in as well. Right as we exited the Lowe's parking lot, I noticed something hit me in the back, followed by a sticky substance creepin on my arm. Everyone was bewildered at what had just happened, but apparently some rednecks in a big ol truck, threw their leftover hooters at us while driving off. I'm guessing it was aimed at me because of my flamboyant speedo and retro headband. Luckily for myself, the others took the brunt of this drive-by fooding because they were on the outside while running.. It was awesome after we realized what had happened. "welcome to alabama". Josh Reyes and Nick Handel were smothered in thousand island dressing. It was hilarious. We decided to go to a nearby waffle house shortly after and were recognized as "those guys running around" by the WH employees. Apparently we threw a huge wrench in the Alabama system. I was just waiting for some big guy to come up to me and say something like "We don't take too kindly to yer kind around here, boy..." I immediately regretted the decision to bring only highly fluorescent V necks on this trip. 

Speaks for itself

The Race:

Brady, 30 seconds till the gun.. Me in the right corner ;-)

Alright.. I knew it was a bad decision to race 6 days after racing Oceanside 70.3. I knew deep down inside that: A. There's no way I could be competitive with these guys at this level, being as sore and tired as I was. B. There's no way I could be competitive with these guys at this level anyways. The guys in the Top 5 have been doing this for a long time and put in way more work than I do at shorter distance stuff. That being said, I'm neither happy with my result or upset by it. 

Having raced AG Nats only 8 months ago, I had some idea how this course would be going. So when I saw that dock, I wasn't going to fall victim to getting a crappy swim spot 5 seconds before the start again.  When we jumped in and everyone swam out to do another little warmup, I quickly grabbed a protruding chain on the dock to get a solid start spot. As the officials told everyone they had to be touching the dock and the gun would be going off in 30 seconds, I had the biggest smile on my face. I had my feet planted on the dock while holding the chain as almost everyone else was floating in water touching the dock. I'm pretty sure the CBS camera man had his camera right on me. The gun went off and I swear, no one.. no one touched me for the first 200 meters. It was the best start to a race I'd ever had. For the lack of swim training that I've been doing, I'd say I had a pretty dang good swim. I exited the water just in front of a few strong WCCTC swimmers including Henry Szeto and Tim Black. The fairly long run up to transition was really fun. 

I'm in the red goggles clutching the chain on the right still.. 

Bike:

I don't want to throw down a massive rant about the bike section of this race just because I don't want to be "that guy", but I'm not happy about it. Essentially, with the course being two loops and the lanes were only 1 car lane wide, there was some nice drafting going on. Whatever.. this happens, I have to learn to deal with it. I was hammering out a pretty good pace by myself for 45 minutes before a pack of 15+ dudes came up to join me in the last 4-5 miles. Lame sauce. I know half of these guys were sitting up drinking coffee and eating doughnuts for the majority of this ride. It's not fair, but that's life. The bike course had no legitimacy whatsoever. There was a good sized pack a minute in front of me the whole time as well. I did see a lot of penalties being issued by the officials, which is good, but why did it even come to that? Come on USAT, get your shit together. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out what's going to happen with 700 fast 20something year olds all crammed together on a fast bike course. 

Run:

I may have not PR'ed in any sport on Saturday, but shoot.. I PR'ed both of those transitions. I have a notorious T1 time. I flew through both of those transitions like I had Tiger's Blood in my veins. The run was pretty funny to watch, not funny to partake in. The first 2 miles are mostly uphill and it was really funny to see guys take off at too hard of a pace, only to get gnarly side stitches a mile or so into it and pull off to the side. (I was pretty close to being on of those guys). I'm glad Henry and I left transition at the same time. It really helped to pace with him in the beginning when we each were going through ups and downs. Right around the second mile I noticed my run legs start to open up and I felt good so I took a chance and pushed out of this group of guys I had been running with. I hit the only downhill hard and put some time on everyone. When I hit the flats I really pushed hard and opened up a nice gap on the group. I was feeling really good and probably could've been running faster but held back a bit. I hit mile 4 in a low 22:10-something, so relatively fast. But then, out of no where, I hit the wall. My legs suddenly had no energy left and I couldn't go any harder. My pace slowed dramatically and I heard footsteps advancing in my direction rapidly. Within 30+ seconds Henry and Noah Beyeler caught me and ran past me with ease. I tried to hang on to Henry's feet but I had nothing inside me. Oceanside finally caught up to me, and to be honest I was surprised I made it that far, that fast. I'm really bummed because there was a pack of 10 guys, less than a minute in front of me, all running fairly slow. Noah held the same pace I had been holding earlier and caught all but one of them. So I jogged in to finish 21st overall at a 37:40something 10k, which isn't terribly bad.. but I know I'm capable of running much, much faster. 

Still proud of my effort at least, knowing I battled, took some chances and ran a clean race. Just bummed seeing the results and knowing the guys in the Top 10 weren't too much faster and the next 10 guys in front of me were only a minute faster. Pretty stoked for Henry and Brady O'ryan though.. they both had great races and Brady took 3rd overall. Also stoked for my buddy Bill Jones at UCSD (also a B+L athlete), who was second out of the water and held thru that run to finish in the top 15.