The Warm Up

Fellow OULers Harvey Schnitzer, Jussi Thomas, myself, and Emily Sattler

Top 3 Guys (ironically in order) starting from left to right.

Longhorn 70.3 is officially 6 days away. Although I have 2 tests this week and a full appointment schedule, all I can think of is the race. This past weekend was TriAndy’s Tri, which is a super sprint tri down in Sugarland, TX. It was the same course as the race in July, except w/a lake swim instead of a pool swim. My goal was to break the 13 year course record, which I was only 20 seconds off of in the July 101 degree heat, so I was pretty sure I could do it. Turns out this race attracted several competitive triathletes. I was surprised to find myself among a pack of swimmers in the swim, coming out of the water in something like 5^th or 6^th place. Like always, once on the bike I quickly took the lead, but was unable to shake Bradley P. and another racer whom I did not know. The 3 of us continued to rotate throughout the bike course, and we all came into transition at exactly the same time. It felt like I was in an ITU style race, and I knew at this point that this was going to be a close finish. As we headed out onto the run I was in second, with 3^rd right behind me. When the 3^rd place runner, whom I later found out was Patrick Daughterty, took over first place I fell in stride behind him. I think, looking back, it would have been smarter to stay on his heel until the very last 100 meters and then tried to out sprint him, but a little past mile two I became impatient and tried to gap him. I put maybe 5 seconds on him but he slowly drew me back in and as we turned onto the final straightaway we were neck and neck. In the end he nudged me out by 2 seconds. Even though I accomplished my goal of breaking the old course record, which I broke by over a minute, this was probably one of the most disappointing 2^nd place finishes I’ve ever encountered. To be so close and yet so far, has just left me wanting more. I’m going to be taking this anger/energy with me to race in Austin next weekend where I hope to have better luck and more patience when it comes to strategy.  As a team, I’d say that OUL took home the overall. It was awesome to see some fellow OULers out at the race setting new PRs and winning their AG. Way to go guys. Now it’s time to put the compression socks on, hydrate, recover, and prepare for Longhorn.