Series Awards and Sully Super Sprint

Well the 2012 Tri season has kicked off for many area athletes and between the weather and the time change, lots of evening workouts can now be completed without freezing J This past Friday I had the chance to attend the El Paso Tri Club social/Southwest Challenge Series Award presentation and it was great to catch up with so many of the area’s best. Greg Gouveia, the Club President, did a great job making everyone feel welcome and just like Matt Emrich before, the El Paso Tri Club looks to do some great things this season. 

I was fortunate to win my age group this year and have to say that I was pretty happy to be getting the coveted Southwest Challenge Series winners vest. Other athletes receiving awards included Gretchen McElroy, Bobby Gonzalez, Rob Lovett, Michael Castaneda, and Scott Darling. I won’t be participating in the Series again this year, because of other triathlon goals, but the Series is a great way to meet new people and compete on courses throughout West Texas and New Mexico.

Bobby chowing down!

Gretch caught eating her fifth burger! J/K

Mike getting his award.

Not sure what I'm doing?!

Rob getting his bottle of wine.

After many months of training and not really taking an off-season I decided to head to Alpine with Bobby this past weekend to compete in the Sully Super Sprint and shake off some of the rust. Those that have never done this race would be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the course and the difficulty of the run portion. Race morning had perfect weather and except for the fairly stiff headwind on the return portion of the bike, we couldn’t have asked for a better day.  

One change that I have made this season was to hire a coach to prepare me for the Redman full ironman later this year and to also fine tune my very erratic training practices. Francois Modave has developed a great training plan for me and I was anxious to see what results I might have at this race. We have only been working together for about four months, but I knew I should be able to best my last years’ time. The run portion is very hilly and you can separate yourself from the pack if you have put in significant time doing hill repeats in your workouts. Fortunately for me I had ample practice with hills and was able to finish the run portion in second position among the age groupers only behind Bobby. Transition was smooth and I had hoped to maintain whatever lead I had throughout the entire bike portion. I have been doing plenty of bike miles in training, but partly because of winter weather and partly because I’m a sissy to the cold, most of my miles have been on the indoor trainer. The bike was uneventful and I felt really good for about 90% of the course. I did get leg weary on the final mile or so, but overall felt really strong. 

One thing I should add here is that you can have the greatest coach in the world, but if you don’t complete all the workouts they write for you, it is no one’s fault but your own if you struggle come race day. With that said, the swim portion of the race was a nightmare. I entered the pool with a huge lead over third place, but just couldn’t close-out the race the way I should have. I haven’t been in the pool very consistently and it showed. Third place blew past me with about 30 yards left and I had to settle for third overall and first in my age group.  

The good news is that I bested my time from last year by three minutes. Next race is Duathlon Nationals and even though it requires no swimming, I’ll be hitting the people hard for the next several months. Good luck to everyone racing the MVT this weekend!