XTERRA East Championship
This year's race was a helluva lot better than last year. I took over 20 minutes off of my time from last year, when I completely blew up on the run. Faster on each of the legs this year. The hard work and great training plan from Allez Training Systems is paying off.
This year's run hurt, a lot. But not as bad as last year. I had a solid swim and bike leg and if I could've had a better first half of the run, I would've taken even more time off. But that's XTERRA, it's hard to have all three events of the race come together. The swim has a lot of rock scrambling, and even with that, I sighted well and stayed on course. I felt good the entire time i was in the water, and came out ready for the ride. The bike was pretty much the same course as the off road duathlon nationals in April, with one extra section tacked on in the beginning on Belle's Island. I went over the bars once, and was happy to give the spectators a good show of it. I landed on my face, but somehow was able to knock my right brake lever out of position. Nothing too bad though. I'm sure I'll feel it tomorrow.
I caught up with my IF teammate Steve on the second half of the course. He was rocking the Deluxe singlespeed on the tight sections, but was spinning out on the power sections. That's the only reason I saw him, I had the luxury of pushing a big gear. He crushed the run while I didn't. I had some stomach issues from the last gel I ate in T2. It threw my stomach into knots and it wasn't until the halfway point that I started feeling better and could stretch mystride out. I pushed it across the 'dry way' where we had to run across the dry river bed and passed a few people. Then I started to feel the onset of hamstring cramps. I knew they were coming, but kept my pace high, nothing to do but keep moving forward. At the top of Belle's, the cramp hit with a fury and I hobbled along till it subsided. I followed a couple of racers off course and once we realized it was the wrong way, doubled back and got back on track. I was pissed and even with the the hammie on the verge of seizing again I pushed the pace again on the bridge back to the north shore and the finish.
After the race, it took a while for my stomach to finally settle down. Luckily it did by the time Steve, Jeff and I went for burgers.
Speaking of Jeff, he laced up running shoes on Saturday and beat his goal in the 10k trail race. Nice Job, now he just needs to put the run and bike together in a duathlon.
That's about it, i'm going to bed.
edit:
here are a few images from the race, thanks Shawn.
This year's run hurt, a lot. But not as bad as last year. I had a solid swim and bike leg and if I could've had a better first half of the run, I would've taken even more time off. But that's XTERRA, it's hard to have all three events of the race come together. The swim has a lot of rock scrambling, and even with that, I sighted well and stayed on course. I felt good the entire time i was in the water, and came out ready for the ride. The bike was pretty much the same course as the off road duathlon nationals in April, with one extra section tacked on in the beginning on Belle's Island. I went over the bars once, and was happy to give the spectators a good show of it. I landed on my face, but somehow was able to knock my right brake lever out of position. Nothing too bad though. I'm sure I'll feel it tomorrow.
I caught up with my IF teammate Steve on the second half of the course. He was rocking the Deluxe singlespeed on the tight sections, but was spinning out on the power sections. That's the only reason I saw him, I had the luxury of pushing a big gear. He crushed the run while I didn't. I had some stomach issues from the last gel I ate in T2. It threw my stomach into knots and it wasn't until the halfway point that I started feeling better and could stretch mystride out. I pushed it across the 'dry way' where we had to run across the dry river bed and passed a few people. Then I started to feel the onset of hamstring cramps. I knew they were coming, but kept my pace high, nothing to do but keep moving forward. At the top of Belle's, the cramp hit with a fury and I hobbled along till it subsided. I followed a couple of racers off course and once we realized it was the wrong way, doubled back and got back on track. I was pissed and even with the the hammie on the verge of seizing again I pushed the pace again on the bridge back to the north shore and the finish.
After the race, it took a while for my stomach to finally settle down. Luckily it did by the time Steve, Jeff and I went for burgers.
Speaking of Jeff, he laced up running shoes on Saturday and beat his goal in the 10k trail race. Nice Job, now he just needs to put the run and bike together in a duathlon.
That's about it, i'm going to bed.
edit:
here are a few images from the race, thanks Shawn.
posted by MRussell at 11:02 PM
4 Comments:
Hey good job Bro!
Way to improve on everything.
20 minutes! Wow. Congrats on a great race. I miss doing that thing even though I'm not much of a swimmer.
Good job there Mark. My only goal is to make it to the finish line at the Rock and Roll half...
you don't need to be much of a swimmer at this race, just crawl across the rocks...
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