I've moved!

Going Pro has moved! You can find my new page at http://onektogocoaching.squarespace.com!

Thanks for all the reading!

Chris

Last Lap of the Koppenbergcross

Every Spring, the skinny tire guys climb the Koppenberg, one of the fearful Helingen of the Tour of Flanders. Every fall, the slightly fatter tire guys also climb the Koppenberg, and then turn right at the top of the hill and ride their 'cross bikes back down through the fields. It's a grueling, classic event, and you can watch the last lap of it here.

Enjoy!

World Cup #1—Aigle, SUI

Here's a beautiful film about World Cup #1. Calls to mind A Sunday In Hell with the quiet mechanic shots.

Aigle 2010 - 1ère manche de CDM cyclo-cross from Web Petitesreines on Vimeo.

Enjoy...

Cross Crusade #3

Because I wasn't feeling rather well this past weekend, I ended up not making the trip to Austin for that city's excellent fall 70.3. Friday and Saturday were spent largely inactive in bed, but by Sunday I felt well enough to head out to Cross Crusade #3 at Sherwood Equestrian Center. I backed out of my usual race, the A Men, because I didn't want to make myself sick again by running my engine wide open for an hour. It's a good thing, too—Can you identify the shapely legs at right, winning the A Division?

I raced Bs, and started well to the rear of the field. I made up a bunch of spots and managed 11th place in the end, which for a pukey stomach and sore body is a pretty good result. Then I hung around to watch the fireworks of the big boys racing.

After troublesome starts, Ryan Trebon and Chris Sheppard made some space for themselves at the front of the field. They traded shots for the better part of an hour, with Trebon finally sneaking away in the last lap. The crowd was its usual Cross Crusade froth, replete with a "dollar prieme" crowd that gathered on the slopes of the course's long climb. They placed dollar bills in an overturned cup, and racers had to bend double to grab the cash and keep climbing.

One rider in particular managed to snack himself a twenty-spot. Insult to injury (to the rest of us, that is)?

Pac Crest Promo Video

Always nice to be called a champion...

The About-Face

Interbike is returning to Vegas, after announcing it will leave it's traditional location for Anaheim. This turnaround strikes me as odd...isn't moving a gigantic, week-long event hard to do less than a year out? Wouldn't moving it back cause even more hassles? Interbike is a division of Nielsen Expositions (kinda the way that seemingly innocuous beverage companies, like Snapple, are owned by Pepsi Co or Coca-Cola or Disney), and they're saying that they got a "very real response that surveys and discussions alone couldn't accomplish." What is going on here?

The Sweat

My last two races of 2010 will be Austin 70.3 and Ironman Cozumel. I'm a big guy (trying to get down to 172 lbs before Cozumel), and we usually don't do so well in the heat. Here's a great post from The Science of Sport about what happens to people when they exercise in warm temperatures. Once you're there you can follow another link that discusses why size does matter in the heat. Here's a clip:

"When size does matter...

The first thing (and this is a dramatically summarized version) is that the winner has to be small in size. All things being equal (which we concede they never are!), the smaller athlete will win a race in the heat. Many studies have shown this, and the equations that we use to model performances in the heat suggest the same. Basically, it boils down to a balance between height production and heat loss. Heat production is dependent on body size and running speed, while heat loss is a function of body surface area, and the environment. Obviously, the environment is the same for everyone, but body size is not. The smaller the athlete, the less heat they produce, but their heat loss is not reduced by as much and the end result is that the smaller athlete will store less heat running at a certain speed than the bigger athlete. Ultimately, this means that a smaller athlete can afford to run slightly faster before their body temperature rises. Big advantage! This is of course a oversimplification, but it does illustrate the point that when the mercury starts climbing, the advantage lies with a smaller runner."

So when I show up to race in Cozumel, I'll be facing a few obstacles, since the temperatures here in Portlandia have dropped into the 50s and 60s during the day. The answer? Train indoors, in the heat. This weekend, which saw the return of Portland's winter weather (steady rain, 50s), found me training indoors at the excellent Athletes Lounge Training Facility. I did both my long workouts (2 hour run on Saturday and 6.5 hour brick on Sunday) indoors. I didn't use a fan for the run, and I turned the heat up to around 80 for the bike/brick (I did use a light fan for the bike portion of the brick). I'm trying to figure out my sweat rate, and here's the data:

Saturday, 2 hour long run with tempo intervals (3x25' @ 6:30-6:45/mile)
Weight Before: 179.4
Weight Afterward: 174.2 (2.9 % drop in body weight, a moderate performance liability)
Fluid Consumed: 63 oz
Weight lost plus fluid consumed=9 lbs.
Fluid lost per hour (total weight lost/# of hours exercised)=72 oz per hour.

That seems a very high amount of fluid lost per hour, and somewhat alarming, too. If I'm already disadvantaged in the heat because of my size, I'm worried I'll be disadvantaged further by my ridiculous sweat rate. I performed another sweat rate test yesterday on the bike and came up with this information:

Sunday, 6 hour ride with tempo intervals followed by 30 minute run with pace intervals
Weight before: 181.4 (how did I gain 2 lbs in one day?)
Weight after: 173 (4.5 % drop in body weight, a significant performance liability)
Fluid consumed: 200 oz (12.5 lbs)
Weight lost plus fluid consumed: 21 lbs.
Fluid lost per hour: 52 oz per hour.

It's informative to see that I lose less fluid while cycling than while running. This seems to make sense, given the relative differences in effort between cycling and running. Various sources articulate that one should aim to replace between 1/3 and 1/2 of your fluid loss per hour. So for running I should aim for at least 23.76 and 36 oz of fluid. The maximum absorbtion per hour is 33 oz (rough/average size of stomachs out there), so I'm going to aim for that number, especially in the heat. That means that, on the run, I'll still be losing 2.5 lbs per hour (1.4% of my body weight), so if I want to be successful in Cozumel, I'll have to be significantly hydrated before I start the run, since I'll be 3-4.5% dehydrated in the last hour of the marathon, which is a performance problem.

So on the bike, if I lost 52 oz/hour and put in 33 oz/hour, I'll lose 20 oz per hour (1.25 lbs). If the bike takes 4.5 hours that means 90 oz low (5.625 lbs, or 3.1%). 3.1% dehydrated is too dehydrated to start a hot marathon, so I'm gonna have to figure something out, like getting more used to training in the heat.

The amount of sweat lost this weekend was pretty gross, I gotta say. A white foamy slick formed on the belt of the treadmill on Saturday.

New Story on CXMagazine

I've got a new story on CXMagazine this morning, about aerodynamics in cyclocross. Check it out here: http://www.cxmagazine.com/tim-johnson-cyclocross-aerodynamics-wind-tunnel#more-14595.

Comin' Back

Well, this is almost a month overdue, Cyclocross season has begun, and I've only got two triathlons left in 2010. How did the year disappear? Anyway, here is the finish picture from Canada Ironman 2010, where I finished in 8th place, probably my best result of my career. Here's the report as I gave it to Cliff:

Swim: I was determined to beat my worries about the swim, so I started right in the middle of the pack. I saw Matt L lining up on the outside, to my right, and then another group of guys lining up on my left. When the gun went off I actually got a pretty good start, getting out fast and in front of most people. Matt L moved over from the right and soon we were swimming side-by-side and I was in the middle of a good-sized group, I think. I saw a small group heading off the front, and I think that was Kieran and Tom Evans (and someone else). I tried to stick with the Matt L group, but I kept losing feet and getting passed. I seem to really struggle with holding feet when their pace is a little faster than I'm able to go. I eventually got dropped from that group and swam alone behind them until the first houseboat. I got caught by a group behind and worked my way into that group and stayed with them for the rest of the time. Christian Brader and Petr Vebrousek were in that group. It was pretty comfortable, but slower than I wanted to swim (54:37). I really wanted to be in that 51 and change crowd.

T1: Good transition. I seemed to have quick ones all day.

Bike: Rode out of town and resolved to stay with Petr V when he came up to me. So did a bunch of others because soon I was in a group with Olly Piggin, Trevor Wurtele, Stephen Kilshaw, Anthony Toth, Chris Brands, and a few others. We stayed even on the gas down to Osoyoos, not expending too much energy. I took it easy on the climb up to Richter but got dropped a little. On the descent I caught back on and seven of us rolled along into Keremeos. We were in a group but not organized very well. Coming out of the out-and-back I noticed that we were in a group but every one in front of us was riding singly. I tried to get the others in the group to see that we could roll up a whole bunch of guys if we organized (but still worked legally). No one really wanted to come along. Eventually Petr and Anthony Toth and I got free and started putting time into the others. The climb up to Yellow Lake seemed so much easier and shorter than last year. The descent was scary at times (wet roads), but we also picked up Scott Neyeldi along the way, so we were a group of four rolling into town: 4:46:52.

T2: Really good second transition. Entered tent fourth out of group, exited first.

Run: My legs opened up just a few meters outside of transition. Petr V passed me, but I knew that was coming. We went into the out-and-back and Anthony Toth and Scott Neyeldi passed me. Toth's pace seemed doable, so I went with him. Was running quite comfortably, actually. I kept telling myself to take it easy. Toth and I chatted a bit, and the 6:30s-6:40s were rolling pretty easily. Around mile 7 he started to move away, but I thought he sounded labored, so I let him go.

Passed Kieran at mile 9 as he was handing his chip in to officials. 11th place.

Passed Matt L at mile 11. He was walking.

Took it easy going into the hills at the southern end of the course. Hit the turnaround 2 minutes behind Neyeldi and 1 minute behind Toth. Trevor Wurtele and Ernst Moser were 6:20 behind me. I calculated it would be difficult for those two to catch me if just kept running 7 minute miles. I was taking in fluid every mile (fluid is a mixture of Biotest and Nuun, about 280 calories per bottle), a gel every 30 minutes, and water at each aid station. I stayed fluid and easy throughout the marathon, although things started to get hard around mile 16.

I came back to Toth and Scott Curry at Mile 24, and realized that it would be like Pac Crest if was going to get rid of them. Right where the road starts to tilt back down into town I surged and dropped Toth pretty quickly. Curry seemed more tenacious. I was really hurting at this point, but when I turned onto Lakeshore drive Amy told me no one was close. At the turnaround Curry was 32 seconds back and he finished about 45 seconds in arrears.

Then I went to the medical tent for two bags of IV fluid. 8:48:11.

Crested Butte

As of today, Amy and I have, in the past seven days:

Swam about 10 kilometers.
Ran about 100 kilometers (Amy ran about 80 of them).
Biked about 200 kilometers.
Climbed around 20,000 feet.
Drank a lot of coffee.
Ate a bunch of potato chips.
Made sandwiches on the hood of Amy's jeep.
Cooked quesadillas on stones in our free campsite.
Seen more wildflowers than either of us have seen all year.
Gotten up early.
Stayed up late (we were scared about bears last night).
Stayed in three separate campsites.
Eaten a lot of peanut butter and cereal and chocolate milk.
Iced our legs in mountain streams and lakes.
Washed ourselves seldom, but then did so in public places.

Success!

Thoughts from the runner: "Other than being touched that Chris includes me in his blog, a forum for his professional athletic exploits, the most remarkable part of this outrageous event occurred at around mile 46. Chris came riding up the trail like a knight--his middle name, indeed. I was so frustrated about running off course, losing places among the women along with the prospect of a sub-10-hour race, that I was petulantly kicking stones. Chris wouldn't let me sag. He sang cute little songs and augmented my spirits from crabby to elated."

Now we're off to Crested Butte. Amy is going to sit in cold water and take naps. I'm going to fall off my bicycle.

Leadville Silver Rush 50 Mile 34.5

Forgot to take a picture again. Amy is still running at 35 miles, having been running now for seven hours. She's just faster than the 5 mph we talked about as a goal, and she's doing great. She's hanging in 6th place, although placing really doesn't matter here. She's at the point where she's just doing what she can do, and it's impressive to watch. She ate three cookies at the last aid station and promised me she'd eat a gel between that station and the one at 40 miles. When she hits that one, she'll only have seven miles left.

Final results to come...

Leadville Silver Rush Turnaround Aid Station

I forgot to take a picture of Amy at 25 miles, but she's still smiling, waving her arms in the air, and making friends. She's put down a good amount of water, but might be a bit food low. The hardest part is behind her, though, and she's doing absolutely brilliantly for her first ultra. She got to 25 miles in 4:40, so she's still going a little faster than planned. She said "I feel like I should be done," but I think she'll get another wind a little down the road.

Stay tuned!

Leadville Silver Rush 50 Aid Station #1

Here's Amy at 13.5 miles of the Leadville 50. She was looking and feeling good, and came into the aid station in 4th place. She left in 6th, but took 5th back right away and was about to take 4th back. I would say she's not taking in enough calories, but she wanted to take an entire bag of potato chips with her, so that's a good sign that she'll start putting some food down. Crewing a 50 mile race is interesting—there's a lot of waiting but a ton of satisfaction, and hanging out at the aid stations is fun. Everyone wants to talk, and this kind of event is so laid-back and cool, so it's easy to make friends.

In other news, Chris Boudreaux and Phillipe Kozub are in 8th and 9th places, respectively, coming out of the water at Vineman 70.3.

Stay Tuned!

Leadville Silver Rush 50

Yesterday I raced in the Beaver Creek Xterra Mountain Cup and finished about 10 minutes faster than last year—better at riding that mountain bike, but not quite at the level of the other guys. I came in 12th although I suspect I've been hit with a 2:00 penalty that will drop me to DFL in the pro group. It's fine—let's think strength workout for Canada.

More importantly, Amy is presently out for a 50 mile fun run here at 10,152' in sunny Leadville, Colorado. Always the best attitude of the bunch, she was all smiles this morning right from when we woke up at 4:30. See her in all her long run glory at left.

I'm at a coffee shop in Leadville, watching the tour and waiting to head up to the first aid station! More to come.

Form

I was going to start this post about the pancakes I made this morning, which weren't anything special except for the fact that I topped them with a fried egg. I've often thought about re-naming this blog "Better With An Egg," because then I'd have an unending source of material about which to write. What isn't better with an egg on top of it? Amy often challenges others to come up with things that wouldn't go well with Peanut Butter, and I feel the same way about eggs. Sitting here this morning, feeling the cooler air of today coming in through the window, listening to the classical singer doing scales a few doors down, I cannot imagine any food that wouldn't be improved by the presence of a fried egg.

Now I'm trying to figure out ways of wresting that statement about the versatility of eggs into a statement about racing form, which strikes me as, perhaps, a metaphor too far. The only thing I can come up with comes from this post at Red Kite Prayer, which states that a rider in form can ride just about any bicycle—whether it fits or not, whether or not it is the bike of his chosen discipline, no matter what the weather is doing. It strikes me as funny that the words we choose to talk about our ability to race (or even go out for an hour's run) all derive from structural words: fit, shape, form. The goal of anyone who makes daily exercise a lovely ritual (or a dangerous obsession, or an impressive burning drive) is the same goal as the sculptor's: to bring out a desired vision from something formless. Don't get me wrong, even though I'm using sight words such as "vision" to talk about this; I'm not talking about physical appearance, although the physical usually does change as people come into fitness, shape, form. Form is a feeling that you can do anything: cover an attack, run quickly up a hill, catch those two guys who beat you off the line to the first buoy. It's the sense that distances are closer, that the rim really isn't ten feet above, that you could, in Napolean Dynamite's Uncle's words, "Throw this football over those mountains."

I've never felt this feeling before, until this week, when, despite the increased volume of my Canada preparation, I had the sense that I could drop anyone who ran with me, that the swim speed was never desperate. Watching the Tour every morning helps (anyone else getting weird hiccups on their Versus feeds?), because the Tour is one giant dream dreamt by the 180 men who begin the race every year. Their combined imaginations fuel the whole colorful, glitzy affair, because all of them, even the ones who are their just to work, see themselves every day chasing that 1 km banner alone, the entire field minutes behind, dreaming the beautiful dream of form.

The Bronze War

Here's a short story about how Picture A (at left) led to pictures B and C (below).

Damian and I headed out to hot and sunny Sunriver, OR, this past weekend for the Pacific Crest Long Course Triathlon (read: 1/2 iron). We'd tangled the weekend before at Xterra Solstice, and Damian was hungry to take it to me on the road. He's extremely talented and driven and has a bright future in the sport, and I'm sure he wanted to get his first big win of 2010.

Here we are at breakfast on race morning, drinking coffee and eating Puffins. We were staying in a ski/golf condo (Sunriver is a vacation community—a little like Disneyworld in its intentional directional confusion) and the race didn't start until 9 am, which felt like a blessing (later, when the temperatures rose into the 80s, it would feel more like bad planning). Amy helped us get ready, and soon we were at T1, getting ready and warmed up. I went for my usual 10 minute warmup jog and then got into the water. Everyone kept saying the water was cold, but after St. George (53 degrees), Boise (57 degrees) and Xterra Solstice (55 degrees) the water felt nice, actually. After the best start of my career last weekend I had probably the worst start, since my only clue that we were starting was the fact that every one around me started swimming. It was a small field, so no real worries, and I found myself with a good pair of feet that I held all the way around the swim. It was either slow or a little long, since we all came out of the water around 27:30. I could tell Damian was swimming on my feet the whole time—I just had this feeling. He came around me at the end when I started to get a bit tired and beat me out of the water by 9 seconds.

Out on the bike D and I put our heads down and hammered for the first twenty miles or so, just the way Cliff told me to. Amy was giving us splits out on the road and cheering us on, and it became obvious that the race was turning into a two-horse affair: we had 3 minutes at 10 miles, 6 minutes at 20, and 7 minutes as the course turned skyward to climb Mt. Batchelor. A brief note about the bike course: this is easily the most scenic and beautiful course on which I have ever competed. The road surface is amazing and you ride through glorious alpine forests, snow still hugging the trunks of trees. At around mile 27 the rolling hills turn up and you climb to the entrance of Mt. Batchelor (the entrance is at 6500 feet, the actual peak is about 3000 feet higher). The climb is about 11 miles long and was a great bit of preparation for IM Canada, where you tackle two 10-12 mile climbs over the bike course. Damian took the lead for a while, I took it back, and then he led us up the climb. I was happy to let him do that, since I knew he would be putting out more effort than I would be—you always, always want to be following up long climbs, especially if you feel you're the stronger cyclist. I knew that Damian was a stronger runner than I, and I needed to get him tired before the run. I also knew that if I tried to break away he would just sit on me and let me get tired out. With the rest of the field comfortably behind, I was happy to let him direct the pace.

At 38 miles you crest the bike course, most of Central Oregon spread out below like a crumpled ocean. I looked at my computer at this point and thought 1:40 to 38 miles? This is going to be a long bike split. Well, the course is all downhill from there, and we covered the last 20 miles of the course (it's 58 mile point-to-point) in 35 minutes, posting bike splits of 2:15:27 (me) and 2:15:35 (Damian). If you do the math, you'll see that I made up 8 seconds of the 9 second differential from the swim: we headed out onto the run 1 second apart. We'd been separated by nothing more than 10 seconds for almost two and three-quarter hours at this point. You can look at my powerfile for the bike course here.

For the first 4 miles of the run, we ran pretty much even, holding six-minute pace or just above it. I ate my first gel (of the run—I ate six on the bike) at 10 minutes and was able to ignore the aid stations by using my hand-held water bottle (I love that thing even though it's dorky. Whatever. Bryan Rhodes uses two of them). At around 4 miles Damian started to pull away and I started thinking about second place. After that, though, recrimination would set in, and I actually said to myself at one point He's 27! That means he was freshman when you were a senior! C'mon! I don't know why odd things like that come up when you're racing, but they just do.

At around mile nine or ten I started coming back to Damian a bit, and soon we were running shoulder to shoulder. I threw a few surges at him to see how he was feeling, and he covered them easily. I settled back and just ran on his shoulder. I was hurting, but I knew that he was a short course guy, this was only his fourth or fifth half-iron (I think I'm on 15 or 16), and that he was hurting, too. We ran together until mile 12. This is it, I thought. I was comforted by the fact that he hadn't attacked me at all, which is good. If you're the agressor on the run, you can probably make your opponent think you're stronger than he is. I put in a strong, hard surge and immediately felt a huge wave of nausea. I didn't hear his footsteps coming with me, though, and turning to look would have been suicide (you look scared). I just kept running hard. One minute into the mile I looked at my watch and thought only five more minutes of this. I was convinced he was only ten meters back, out of earshot but within striking distance. I kept counting minutes like lap cards in Cyclocross: four minutes left, three minutes, two...When my watch said four minutes into the mile I took a brief look back.

I couldn't see Damian. He was gone.

I didn't dare let up, though. If he had taken a few minutes to gather himself and come back I would certainly see him again. This is a guy who can run sub five-minute miles in training. I've never gotten close to a five-minute mile. But when I hit the 13 mile mark, I knew I'd won. I ended up putting about 70 seconds into Damian in the last mile, which surprised me. I think he was pretty much at the end of his rope, and I still, amazingly, had something left. Here's a video, courtesy of Amy, of my approach to the finish (it's a little loud—maybe turn down your browser).



The finish felt...well, odd. I was happy I won, but I was more happy the whole thing was over. As Andy Potts says: "It's never fun. Afterwards it's a little fun, but it's not...fun."

Soon after the finish Damian and I were both in the medical tent. I just needed to cool down a bit, but he was headed into the early stages of heat exhaustion, I think. You might be able to see the worried expression on his face.























Picture B






















Picture C

Nice to get my first win of 2010 under my belt, and my first 1/2 iron win of my career.

Xterra Solstice

Xterra Solstice rolled through (more like "above") LaGrande, Oregon this past Saturday. I had a very strong day, although I really do need to learn how to descend on a mountain bike. Damian Hill, PC Athlete Darren Smith (this guy has Character in spades—he does Xterra, Ironman, and track cycling with a left leg he cannot feel or really move) headed out there for a glorious 36 hours of companionship, camping, and—oh yeah—competition; it's easy to forget you're competing when you do Xterra.

The Venue: The race takes place in Morgan Lake, a small cold lake at 4100.' The water temperature was 55 degrees, making me 3—3 for races below 60 degrees water. I actually like it, since you don't overheat. Anyway, the venue. Most people camp right along the lake, sleeping a few hundred meters from transition. Darren, Damian, and I got out there and went out for a short ride (shortened by a snafu with my cleats—when will I learn to properly maintain my equipment?). I promptly crashed my brand new Scott Spark 20, but nothing was dinged except my dignity. "It was a pretty good one," Damian said. "You got all the way over the handlebars." We went to bed with the sun, and soon I was up at 5 am, ready to race, except things didn't start until 9 am. Down to town for coffee, and then back up the hill to wait around. When you camp 200 meters from transition, it's pretty easy to get your stuff together.

The Swim: I got my best start of the year, probably only because I was watching the guy with the airhorn when it made a feeble warbling noise and some white stuff came out of it. I nabbed about 5 meters as the other athletes said "Was that the gun—oh shit!" I swam well, for me, keeping the lead until the first buoy, when I got caught by super-strong swimmer Greg from Masters. I probably went out a bit hard, since I felt myself weakening about 500 meters through the swim. I tried to keep pushing, though, and came out of the water 3rd in 12:39. Damian was about 25 seconds back, but he beat me out of transition as I struggled to put on socks. That proved somewhat costly as I got caught behind two slow guys on the way out onto the trail. From there the ride was a lot of white-knuckling, as I'm not up to the level of my ride. I quickly became very thankful for the remote lockout system (the Spark lets you choose three levels of travel: 0, 80, 0r 110 mm), since I didn't have to reach below to change the travel. I had to walk one incredibly steep downhill with Captain Dondo's words ringing in my ears (Me: "What kind of bike do I buy to become a better bike handler?" Him: "How about going up a testicle size?"). Still, I managed to get back to transition in 1:27:00 for the 25 k, which was respectable. I came off the bike in 4th place.

The Run: For the second week in a row, the run turned out to be a weapon for me. I quickly caught the incredibly friendly Eric Deroche (friend of Damian's from Bellingham, which sounds more and more like Nirvana) and used the first long downhill to cut into the second place guy's lead (he was about 3 minutes up on me starting the run). Xterra Solstice uses farm/dirt roads for about 1.5—2 miles, I'd say, and then cuts into a treacherous, muddy cow pasture. I reeled in Dave Cloninger (he's from Bend and has an awesome beard) at the bottom of the cow pasture and then tried to drop him on the climb back up towards the finish line. I would heartily recommend this race, but the 4th and 5th miles are cruel. You switchback out of the pasture and then climb the very steep hill you flew down 30 minutes earlier. At the top of the hill I felt like puking. I knew Damian was behind me, and he is the best runner of our little group. But I also thought that if I got into the last little stand of trees out of sight (...out of mind...) he wouldn't catch me. My right hamstring seized up again about 200 meters from the finish, but it turns out I'd put about 40 seconds into Damian on the run, which surprised both of us. I took second by about 75 seconds. He was, admittedly, muscling a rigid singlespeed 29er around the bike course, so his legs were pretty heavy. I somehow felt great all day, my legs responding nicely to the switch from cycling to running. The guy who won, Jason Jablonski, beat me by about 12 minutes, putting all of that into me on the bike (I was out of the water 2 minutes ahead, and he ran 40 seconds faster). Time to learn how this mountain biking thing works.

Next weekend—Pacific Crest 1/2 Iron. Damian and I go for our third showdown.

Race Report—Boise 70.3

I'm still recovering from Boise 70.3. It was a difficult, hot day, but also one of those days that reaffirms an athlete's belief in his sport. No, I didn't win, despite my upraised arms in the photo, but I did hold on to finish 10th in the professional field. I was left feeling proud about my effort and my result for the first time since Canada IM 2009. Here's how the race went:

Swim: I learned a lesson in this swim, although it's not really the lesson I'd liked to have learned. It was a lesson about integrity, following rules, and how to interpret the rules to your advantage. Seconds after Tom Ziebert admonished us to "Keep the buoys on your right," the gun went off and the pack swerved to the inside of the buoys, keeping them on our left. After swimming in what I felt was an illegal position for a few hundred meters I left the pack and went to the left of the buoys. I lost the pack and Ben Hoffman's feet—I went on to lose 2 minutes to the pack. Afterward, talking to my coach and my teammates, they all averred that I should have stayed with the pack no matter what. I'm not happy about it, and I'm not happy about saying "That's sport," but turning happenstance to your advantage is part of sport, and Michael Jordan made himself better by sometimes going right to the edge of what was "legal." The responsibility is on me, not my competitors, to work within the gray areas of the rules. To their credit, they did go around all the turn buoys. I came out of the water 2 minutes to the big pack, where I really needed to be.

The Bike: Ooh this was hard. The bike course changed at Boise this year, removing a climb, but the course was still rolling (1500 feet of climbing) and a brutal headwind made things difficult. I worked fairly well, posting the 13th best ride, but with 10 miles to go I was caught by Karl Bodine. He's a former professional cyclist, I thought, I'll let him lead me home. The problem was is that Karl seemed to shut things down as soon as he caught me. After rolling along at 20 MPH for 5 miles or so, I decided to leave him. I think I lost another 2 minutes there.

The Run: This is the first time I've ever been able to say that I didn't do anything wrong on the run. I posted the 8th fastest run split (rare air for me) and only gave up 3 1/2 minutes to Craig Alexander. It was a hard day for everyone, with only a couple of runners going under 1:20. I came off the bike feeling good, and my turnover was quick and my strides strong. I ran the first mile in 6:10, the rest of my splits going as follows:

Mile 2: 6:17
Mile 3: 6:35 (this mile hurt—stomach issues and a side cramp)
Mile 4: 6:37 (strangely, I thought I was picking things up here)
Mile 5: 6:34
Mile 6: 6:12 (I had to catch and pass Chris McDonald here, and I knew I had to pass him convincingly, or he'd come back on me—he hung very, very tough, though; more on that later)
Mile 7: 6:20
Mile 8: 6:20
Mile 9: 6:17
Mile 10: 6:35 (I started to hurt again after a very good stretch of four miles)
Mile 11: 7:01? Hard to tell, my watch was a bit messed up.
Mile 12: 6:15
Mile 13: ~7:00.

I think I negative split the run, which is a great accomplishment for me. The run was very hard, and I knew a lot of people would fold up their tents, but all I had to do was to stay strong, keep my turnover high, and suffer. That was put to the test when I tried to put Chris McDonald away; he's a champion, and hung strong at St. George to finish 3rd. When I passed him I thought Good, he'll be gone. When I hit the turnaround he was only 34 seconds behind and still running hard. The next guy was two minutes behind, and I wasn't worried. But Chris McDonald is a competitor, even for 10th place. He made me work for it.

It was a really hard day, but it reminded me of how good hard work can feel, especially if that hard work turns into a good result, and it re-energized me about triathlon and my place in it.

Fantasy Tri Minute, 6/11

The World Cup is on and Boise 70.3 is only a day away. I'm sitting in my hotel room in Boise doing my FantasyTri picks, and here's what I'm doing:

Men

Tim Berkel: Tim's an old friend, economical at $5500, and he's got a lot of good results. He'll get you points.
Conrad Stolz: I'm guessing he'll win his "favorite race on the Xterra circuit."
Simon Whitfield: Simon is still pretty cheap given the fact that he's a triathlon superstar and legend (he does have two Olympic medals). He's a cruel competitor, and he wants to repeat in Des Moines in the worst way.
Terrenzo Bozzone: Strongest athlete of the year thus far, hands down.
Kyle Pawlaczyk: I needed some pack fill. But he should get points.

Women

Mirinda Carfrae: Hard to pick against her, really.
Leanda Cave: Had trouble in the TriGranPrix UK in terms of tires—Should come back stronger than before.
Renata Bucher: She's been winning points for me in the Xterra races for a few weeks now, and she's relatively inexpensive.
Sam McGlone: She's fast, and she's a teammate and friend. She's going to eat the Eagleman field alive.
Flo Chretien: More pack fill, but the field at Eagleman is very weak and she'll get me some points (if she finishes).

OK, off to the pro meeting!