Waconia Recap

I woke up a few minutes before my alarm on Sunday. Normally I can't sleep for crap, wake up at 4am and roll around until five and then just give up. This time was different though. Without the normal nerves I brushed my teeth and got everything ready, gave Kelly a kiss goodbye and made it to transition with plenty of time to spare.

The warm up was nothing special. I talked with my buddy Ross and said high to the usual suspects. I knew in order to grab 5th I would have to hope Kevin was out of shape. He told me he was but even if Kevin is out of shape it will still take a great race to beat him. I also noticed my freind Dana from work showed up. Dana is big into home movie production and was delivering a video of a play his daughter did to another parent and thought he would stop by to record the action this week with a better camera. Sweet!

The swim warm up was better than normal. I felt smooth and found my stroke right away. This rarely happens so I was hoping for a huge swim. As I got out of the water I looked around for Kelly and my mom but did not see them. I had seen my mother earlier but I had not got a glimpse of Kelly, Avery or my sister in law Jenny who also came out to see the race.

The Elite field seemed smaller than most years. Which is nice because then you don't have many 100 yard dash and crashers in the water. As the gun went off I got a good start and felt strong. I noticed I was staying with the pack swimmers and doing pretty well. Then all of a sudden I noticed that there weren't any bubbles in front of me anymore. When I picked up my head to sight I was at least 20-30 yards off course. Then I over corrected and went 20 yards to the inside of the course. I finally go my bearings straight and got back into it. I didn't panic but I definitely started to push a little harder to make up the lost time.

At about half way I finally felt comfortable and seemed to be swimming in a straighter line. On the back stretch I caught up with who I later found out was Tony Schiller. Just like Minnetonka I followed him out of the water. There was someone who had been on my heels for the last half of the swim. I was surprised to see it was Patrick Parish. Normally he has 20-30 seconds on me in the water. This meant either he was not doing well or I was doing great. I later found out that Patrick took it easy on the swim so he could hammer the bike.

I came out of T1 a little behind Patrick and thought I would stay with him for the bike. Patrick had a different idea and put the hammer down and quickly put distance between us. The bike felt much better than last year yet I didn't have as good of a split. I would chalk that up to how good of shape I was in at this point last year, while this year I'm still improving. About 14 miles in I came up on Sean Cooly and then Kevin Oconner. I've never been ahead of Kevin in a race. I must admit I felt a small sense of accomplishment and a little bit of hope that I could beat him if I could put enough time on him before T2.

I came into T2 with about a 20 second lead on Kevin. That quickly went down to 10 seconds as we left T2 and Kevin erased that within the first quarter mile. I kept up with him till a little after half mile in and then he seemed to just accelerate away. Kevin then proceeded to put a minute and a half on me by the end of the race.

In the back of my head I knew Brooks Gossinger would be coming for me though. At the turn around I seemed to have over a minute cushion. What I didn't know was Brooks was out splitting me by almost 30 seconds every mile. The math added up to a much closer finish than I hoped. I kept checking my rear and noticed Brooks with a little over a mile left. I tried to keep going hard but my legs just didn't seem to respond very much. With about a quarter mile left I had about 20 seconds on him. I knew I had to push hard as Brooks would give it all he had. I forced my legs to go as hard as they could go for the last 400 yards and came in 9 seconds in front of Brooks.

I am puzzled by my slow run splits. I haven't changed my taper routine and I'm running faster than ever in training. I'm hoping I just need to tweek my seat position a tad to save the legs. That or not kick so hard in the water. Whatever it is I would like to get back to my sub 6 min splits from 2009.

As usual I had a blast talking with people after the race. Every year I get to meet more and more people. Racing is becoming as much of a social event as it is a competition. Next up is Graniteman. I am really looking forward to this race. Bill Corcoran is the race director and does a great job.

The great news is Kelly and I have decided to add 3 races to my schedule. I was hoping to do the 1k, 100k, 10k Maple Grove tri. Unfortunately that is $175 and not in my budget. So I'm leaning toward Twin Cities Tri, Maple Grove Olympic and Square lake. Although nothing is set in stone yet and I may look into St. Croix Olympic, Graniteman Big Lake and Treadman.