8th Place Longhorn Ironman 70.3 Austin

Fresh back from a weekend trip to Austin, Texas, for the Longhorn Ironman 70.3. I had a pretty solid week of training leading up to the race, so I wasn't sure how my legs would feel on race day. Thursday saw a hard ride with 1:45 at Ironman pace, but I planned to take Friday and Saturday relatively easy in preparation. The good news was that during my pacing effort, I caught and passed former Tour de France rider turned T.V. commentator Bob Roll. I'm not saying Bob's in top form anymore, but he was still putting out good power, and any time I get to ride with someone who has been at that level at any time in their life is fun for me. Things didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked on my trip to Austin, starting with my first taste of United's new pricing policy for oversize baggage. I'll avoid going too far into this topic because I could spend considerable time deriding the airline and it's efforts to stay profitable, but I will say that spending $125 to check my bike box is a travesty. Considering that I have to check another bag to keep my bike box light enough to avoid a $225 fee, I end up paying $280 for baggage by the time I fly to my destination and back. It's bad enough that I'm paying for additional weight when I'm a skinny triathlete, but they won't insure against any potential damage even with the fee. Add to it the fact that they decided to send my bag to Oklahoma City under another passenger's name, and I was pretty unhappy with the service. Fortunately I had arranged to stay with fellow pro triathletes Amy and Brandon Marsh who live in Austin, so I was able to rally enough gear to train with their Masters swim team on Saturday morning, and go for a nice spin right afterwards. My legs felt a bit heavy from the training and the travel, and I flatted a tubular on the training ride, but by the time the race started on Sunday I had my own gear and I was ready to race. The venue was east of town at Decker lake, and warm temperatures all summer in Austin had left the water a balmy 78 degrees on race morning and eliminated any possibility of a wetsuit swim. I felt okay in the swim, eventually settling into a good group that came out about 1:30 down from the bigger lead group. My goal was to get up to the leaders as quickly as possible, so I hit full gas from the beginning of the bike until I caught on at about mile 28. I could see that there were at least 2 more guys up the road by about 30 seconds, so I decided to pick up the pace again and see if I could put some time into the big group before the run. I jumped past the group and caught Joe Gambles and Paul Ambrose shortly after, but we were only able to put about 2 minutes into the chasers by the end of the bike. I felt okay through 3 miles, trying to stay conservative and hit 6 minute pace, but I started to fade a little after that. I don't think I had a truly bad run given the course and conditions, but I didn't quite have the legs I was hoping for, and it was probably because I laid it on the line for the bike and paid the price. I could have played it more conservatively and sat with the big group, but with a strong field like that I decided to give it a go. The good news is that my cycling form is better than it's ever been, and I know I will be ready for Ironman this fall with some more hard training in the next 5 weeks. To finish off the weekend, Brandon, Amy, and another pro triathlete, Mark Van Akkeren, and I all went to eat at the funky Chuy's TexMex joint for dinner. It may be the fact that this run was on trails and asphalt as opposed to the sufferfest concrete run at Harvest Moon, but my legs are already feeling much more recovered than the last race. Time to get into the hardest training of my life in prep for Arizona. Next up is the Soma Half Ironman in Tempe on the 26th for a little course recon and another shot at a decent prize purse thanks to Redrock owner Tim Deboom.