I entered the race in Boise this year hoping the old adage, "third time is a charm" would ring true. The past two years I had come within ten seconds of the place in front of me, finishing 6th and 4th. My prep for the race was pretty spot on, but a little different than normal. I rested well after Ironman, and then got to work, racing my bike during the Iron Horse, and an doing an Xterra the week before Boise. I kept the volume high with an eye on Lake Placid in July, and didn't do much of a taper for the race. Sometimes I think that it takes some pressure off to know you are a bit tired going into a race. Not an excuse, but also not a full-on goal race taper that can add serious stress.
I must say that I really love Boise. I've only ever been for the race, but every time I go, it's a reminder of how much I like the atmosphere there. A beautiful, clean city of agreeable size, with all the essentials: college, river, mountains, high desert landscape. If I wasn't so happy with Colorado, Boise would make the list for potential places to move. The race is also fast becoming one of my favorites. With the afternoon start, you can sleep in a bit and approach the race with a more relaxed attitude, and the course is super scenic and challenging. This year we had quite a crew from Durango making the trip up, and my parents drove over as my dad was racing his second 70.3 of the year, so I felt well-supported. Add to it that many of my Montana friends were joining the fray, and it was a real reunion in Idaho.
The swim start was the usual bit of chaos, as I got pummeled a little more than normal and even got a nice shiner on my right eye. After a few hundred yards, it settled out and I was swimming comfortably on some feet. At about halfway, I could tell we really weren't swimming terribly fast as a group, and I moved forward to try and push the pace some. I knew we were losing time to the top swimmers like O'Grady, Fleischman, and Rhodsey, and I didn't want to see it turn into a race where the lead "pack" pulls time out of the chasers. I exited in 9th, a few minutes down on the leaders. An average swim.
Coach Elliot told me that I should race with reckless abandon, so I had a smooth T1 and immediately took off on the bike. I didn't want anyone to latch on early, so I rode over tempo to get some distance. As it turns out, my efforts were enough to reel in Chris Lieto around 5 or 6 miles, and needless to say, I was quite thrilled to be riding in his company. I stayed about 20-30m back of Chris for a good number of miles, but he ramped things up a bit in the heavy winds, and I simply couldn't match his power. I had a nice time catching other athletes, picking off some of the lead swimmers around 35 miles. The winds were pretty wild, and with the Zipp disc and 1080 front on the S-Works transition, I knew I was as fast as I could be, but it was dicey as we weaved through the coned sections in a head/crosswind. The last 10 miles were some of the hardest in recent memory, straight into a headwind and the legs were starting to feel heavy.
Into T2 I had closed the gap to the leaders (Crowie and Lieto) to less than a minute, so I started out very conservatively. I knew the run was going to be tough for everyone after a very challenging bike, so I hammered out a couple miles and tried to settle into a rhythm. After 3 miles or so, Lieto had stopped running with abductor cramps, so I kept things rolling in case he came good again. At the halfway point of the run, I was around 2 minutes down, but had a good gap to third, and the legs started to come around. Apparently Craig had started to suffer a little from a stellar bike split (and racing the previous weekend), so I began to pull back quite a bit of time. With around 4 miles left, I had cut the lead in half, and by 10.5 miles, I was close enough to believe I had a real chance. I laid it all on the line, pulling within 8-10 seconds, and had Crowie glancing over his shoulder. He finally put in one more acceleration with a little over a mile to go, and I was totally empty. Still, I pressed it as hard as I could, finishing a mere 10 seconds behind the reigning world champ.
It goes without saying that I was excited with my race. Coming so close to catching the gold standard in our sport was beyond my highest expectations for the day. Still, I was in a similar spot to the previous two years, coming so close to the next position, but falling just short. I'm not sure I could have raced much better than I did, and hats off to Craig who demonstrated yet again how good he is in the clutch. A big thanks to all my great sponsors, family, friends, race organizers, and Sue Hutter for some great photos from the event. Buffalo Springs in a little over a week...
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