Whoo! So a lot has happened. Or at least it feels like it. I raced Lake Stevens two and a half weeks ago and it wasnt what I wanted. I was TOTALLY dissapointed with myself. On the upside I feel like it was a good motivator to get going. Since then I've decided to drop a few pounds and really start focusing on my bike skills. The race itself happened like this. The swim was around 32 minutes. Two minutes slower than what I wanted. I REALLY felt like I was swimming btwn 28-29 min. With that said I feel the course was a bit long...
Came out of the water to see my time and was immediately dissapointed. Came out of transition another min and a half later so I was already 3.5 minutes behind schedule. Started the bike course feeling pretty good. Passing people on a regular basis. RARELY getting passed. The bike course really was a challenge and was a blast all at the same time. Everything went great untill about mile 48ish. It just hit me all the sudden and I just lost it. Had no energy in the legs. Basically sat up and cruised as fast as I could cruise back to town.
Started my run after a 2:39ish bike. 9min slower than what I wanted and felt pretty good. I wanted a sub 1:30 half mary. First mile was 6:40ish something and it began to fade just a bit from there. Held a 7:00/m ish pace till about 7 and started fading on the run there. Last two miles were a bit quicker but in the end my half mary was 1:35 on a reasonably tough course...
Total finish time was 4:53. A PR by five minutes but still TOTALLY dissapointing. I have yet to pinpoint what happened there... Maybe lack of training? (I doubt it) .. I did use a product I love called SPORTLEGS for the first time since Arizona there so maybe it was the fact that I hadnt been training w/ them and all the sudden used them... I also noticed post race that my tire was slightly rubbing my frame.. That also could have attributed to the VERY QUICK lack of energy out of nowhere. maybe something moved and it started rubbing. All excuses... But in the end I just didnt have it that day. More motivation to get out there and get good quality workouts in. Ill post the actual race report as soon as its done.
In other news I flew up to Lake Placid this weekend to register for 2009. How ridiculous is that? I actually had to fly to lake Placid to register for next years race?!?! I flew up Thursday morning and stayed with a friends sister. She showed my how to take the train to Central Park and what not then we grabbed dinner before seeing the midnight showing of Dark Knight which was PHENOMINAL by the way! The night before I left I only got 3-4hrs of sleep so i was fading fast. We grabbed a taxi home at 3:15am and i was asleep around 4. Got up the next day around noon. Ran the 10K look in Central Park and headed back to Queens to meet up w/ my friend Andrew. We loaded the car and headed to lake Placid. 5Hrs later we rolled into Lake Placid @ 1am! At this point we parked the car RIGHT next to the lake (mirror lake) and headed across the street to grab a quick brew before we sat up the tent. Left there around 2am, set up our tent right next to the water in the middle of Lake Placid and tried to sleep. Within 15min we weree getting TORRENTIAL rains. I woke Andrew and we slept in his car. Slept maybe 4hrs. Woke up around 7 and swam the 2.4 mile loop in about an hr ten w/o a wetsuit which was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be! Messed around all day and maybe slept 4 hrs that night in "our" tent. Woke up Sunday to volunteer/watch the race. Andrew was on kayak duty so he headed out to do that and I waded along the beach to watch the start from the best point of view. Ill post the pics and video soon :) After the start I headed to my Volunteer assignment which was T1. Around 7:30 the rain started. Not just rain. MASS RAIN. for 13 HOURS STRAIGHT. T1 was chaos. Total chaos! Stuff everywhere... Mud... rain... Finally around 10 I was done w/ my shift so I headed to find andrew and we hid under whatever we could find to stay dry. Finally around the first loop of the run for most people it started to subside/slowdown JUST a bit. When it did Andrew and I looked up to see Desiree Ficker come running by so we cheered/harrased her for a while and stayed out in the rain and our short shorts w/o tshirts to cheer people on. Long story short the rain got worse.. we got super wet.. we cheered... until 11pm. I LOVE cheering those last few people in. My good friend Tyler and his dad Jeff up in NY felt sorry for Andrew and I and actually offerend us a spot on the floor in their hotel! HOW could we pass that up?!?! So we finally got to sleep indoors and oh was it amazing.
I barely woke up intime to head down to registration. By the time I got down there it was 7:05am (registration doesnt open till 9am) and the line was probably a half mile. A HALF MILE! crazy. Around 8am the seperated the lines into volunteers and non volunteers. THANK goodness I was a voluteer. I registered and found andrew so we could head back to NY. (I later found out it sold OUT ON SITE!)
Andrew and his sister dropped me off at La Guerdia and I got back to DFW around 10:30. It was AMAZING to be back in Texas. Im happy my traveling is limited in the next few months...
All in all its been a hectic last few weeks but the next few should be nice as I begin to up the volume and start breaking myself down only to rebuild. I have goals in Kona. I will have fun.. and I will try to attain my goals. Hour swim. 5:30 bike. 3:30 mary.
yes. I said it.
Thanks for all the help from everyone in getting me to NY and home.. along with Tyler and Jeff for giving me and Andrew a place to sleep Sunday! Congrats to everyone that made it through that race. Totally BRUTAL. Just crazy. I honestly dont know if I could have made it through that...
_Jacob_
