Jen and I loaded up and drove to Ogden Utah...long drive and we decided to split the drive on the way out. Turned out to be a good call because Wednesday night I came down with a tooth ache. Great!@%* Had to call the Dr in the morning before leaving and we decided the only thing to do was treat it lake an abscess and get antibiotics....NOOOOOOOoooo...not before racing..But what choice did I have?
Ogden was beautiful with the Mountains right there on the city edge and aspens changing fall colors, it made for a spectacular back drop. The XTERRA championships coincided with the Mountain to metro festival they do there every year...a way to bring the city and ski areas together. After the race was a free street party complete with band and slide show and video of the XTERRA race action during the day. The above picure is packet pickup in Ogden city park.
Link to Youtube vid. Check out the start; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc6-hkaCULo
The 1500 meter swim netted out near 1 mile and was in Pineview Reservoir over the Mountain range in a valley roughly 9 miles from Snowbasin where the bike and run would finish up...water temp was measured @ 66 degrees - wet suit legal. T1 was about 150 meter run from the lake and first time was taken after the transition. I actually had a pretty good swim for me...my transition was a little slow though. We packed all or gear in a bag for transport to Snowbasin where the finish was. Thanks Brian Drahota for the use of his wet suit.
The bike section left T1 and followed a hiway from the reservoir and about 1 mile in dropped into a wide gravel path. We climbed on this path for roughly 3-4 miles before dropping into single track and continued to climb for roughly 9 miles ish. Once in the single track things became a little choked up waiting for a line to pass...lots of "when you see an opening, I'm passing on the left."
Had some mechanical issues, bars coming loose...ya...weird...who loosened my bolts up in transition? and bounced my rear wheel out of the drop out on the last descent. The thing that sucked about that was the people that passed me that I had just passed and then had to pass again...
Into Transition 2 at Snowbasin, well organized by number so you didn't have to flounder around to find your running gear. It's always tough to get going after the bike, but especially so when you leave transition and start climbing...had to resort to stutter stepping trying to get the groove going. Most of the run was on single track -semi technical running with rock blow outs roughly every 100 - 200 yds. There were a few 2-3 tough little climbing sections that crippled me to a crawl...the final 1/2 mile was all downhill to the finish on a gravel maintenance road where you just had to open it up and let it roll.
After the race, they had a band playing on the veranda of the Snowbasin lodge along with BBQ for the participants. Awards followed.
I've included a couple pics of the Pro awards. Nicolas Lebrun and Melanie McQuaid won...Lebrun taking nearly an hr out of my time. Wow. Sick. Fast.
Womens podium
Mens
So I ended up 101st out of 300ish...have to keep telling myself it was by invite so it was the cream of the crop and includes the Pros. 7th in my age group- so not so bad.
Last picture is of Noah winning the Capitol City MTB out at Branched oak a couple weeks ago. He had a great battle with Jake?
1 comment:
Well done! Top one third is pretty frickin' good considering it was the best in the country. Especially with the mechanical issues on the bike.
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