1st Place Harvest Moon Half Ironman

This past weekend I made the trip to Denver for the Harvest Moon Half Ironman, traveling with a crew of local Durango triathletes. We left early on Saturday to ensure plenty of time to do some training on the course before we called it an early night. I entered the weekend unsure of my form after a hard mountain bike crash last Saturday, but when we warmed up on the course I could tell that my legs were ready. In the words of Carlos Sastre, I had "good sensations." I haven't raced a half since I did Lake Stevens in July, so I was ready to test my fitness and remind my body what it was like to go hard for that distance. The air and water temperatures were cold (although nowhere near as cold as this year at the Battle at Midway triathlon), but I was feeling good after a short warm-up. The race didn't have a stacked field, but I knew it was going to be hard to beat Team Timex amateur Tim Hola out of the water. My plan was to swim my race, and then go to work on the bike and run. I found some good feet after about 500 meters (thanks to James Bales), and sat on for the remainder. As we exited the water, I heard a spectator yell that we were only 45 seconds down, so I focused on having a quality transition and keeping Tim in sight. The Harvest Moon course was a mixture of some good rolling hills and relatively flat sections, and by the midpoint of the second decent roller around mile 3, I had caught Tim and began to distance myself from the field. I honestly didn't start feeling like my legs were working hard until about mile 15, as the evaporative process left me pretty cold. The open plains outside Denver are notoriously windy, and even though they were nowhere near as bad as they could have been, there were some headwind sections where I had to hunker down and really focus on my position to gain more time. I used this race for a chance to experiment with my nutrition a little bit, but the temperatures made it difficult to want to eat and drink as much as I would in a normal race. Still, I was able to put down a bottle of Hammer's Perpetuem throughout the ride, and supplement it with my normal gel intake, and I felt ready for the run when I rolled into T2. I didn't really know where I stood in terms of a lead, but any lead is a good one. I hit the first part of course and regained sensation in my feet around mile 3, so I picked up the pace to ensure that I would stay away. The run course was probably about 8o% concrete, with slight rollers and lots of curves around small inlets at the resevoir. By the turnaround on a long straight section, I couldn't see anyone behind me, so I felt confident that I would be able to hang on for the victory. In the closing miles, my legs were feeling the effects of running hard on the concrete, but I pushed it for the practice and was rewarded with a PR for the half ironman distance and a new course record, crossing in 3:57:55. Given that the race was still at considerable altitude, the bike course was challenging, and the temperatures were less than optimum, I'm confident that my form is good heading into the hardest training I will have before Ironman Arizona. Next race is the Longhorn Ironman 70.3 in Austin, Texas, on the 5th of October, so I will be looking to battle with the likes of Simon Lessing, Joe Gambles, Leon Griffin, Bjorn Andersson, and Brandon Marsh for the top spots.