This happened about a month ago, but better late than never… I headed up to Kirksville Friday evening, visited with some friends and spent the night and Walt’s & Dawn’s house. It was good to see some friends, though unfortunately you can’t see them all with such little time to work with… The next morning I was shocked to find 2+ inches of snow on the ground with huge snow flakes continuing to fall. Despite the snow, around 100 of us lined up for the 9 am start. The winner from the previous year wasn’t there and neither were Matt Lucas or Todd Beaverson. John Richardson who I had narrowly edged out the year before was there but nobody else that I recognized that might take the 1st overall position.

The course was slightly modified and was a little shorter this year so the times would be faster. One person who was of unknown quantity but possibly a contender was Sean Masa, I recognized the name but I wasn’t sure from what race and how fast he was.

The gun sounded and we were off. The initial pace was comfortable and I considered pushing it a little, but I also knew in about a mile the current pace wouldn’t feel so good anymore. Sean was leading and I was content to follow for the time being. After about half a mile, Sean began to pick up the pace and nobody else with us could follow. I briefly tried to match the pace and pulled into second place by myself, but I could tell I wouldn’t be able to maintain the pace so I backed off slightly.

A mile into the race, Thomas Etter pulled even with me. Thomas is a really good biker and competes in adventure races with James Kaufman. Since he had pulled me back I decided to let him take the lead so I could hopefully maintain a slight advantage on him when it came to the finish. I settled into a comfortable pace behind Thomas and would have stayed there until a half mile to go or so, but around two miles he said something about being new at 5k’s and I ought to be setting the pace, so I took over the pace setting and back into second place.

About a block later we came to a street that the race normally went right on and I started to turn right. A police officer and a volunteer were standing there and neither of them said anything initially until I had fully completed the turn at which point they hollered after me and said I was supposed to go straight! So I turned around and had to hustle to make up the five or so yards I had fallen behind Thomas. At this point we were down to about three quarters of a mile and I began to pick up the pace. Thomas stayed close until the very end when I pulled away finishing four seconds ahead of him. My final time was 17:40; however the course was short so I wasn’t as happy about my time as I would have been on a proper 5k course.

All in all another fun St. Patrick’s Day 5k. It was nice having Thomas push me and also for the company, running in second place by yourself is lonely. Though if he keeps racing 5k’s I might be finishing second to him!

Since we’ve had some nicer weather for a few weeks now I’ve been getting out more on the bike. The miles on the bike this year are slowly creeping up and will probably overtake my running miles in the next few days or so. After today’s long ride my bike miles are only 7 miles short of my run miles for the year. It’s an inevitable catch, but I plan on running a lot more this year than in the past so hopefully I’ll keep those run mile totals up there.

In what little spare time that I have, I’ve tried to work some on my training log. Some of the recent work I’ve done has been to display the most recent workout I’ve logged on the left side of the front page in red. It also displays a “running” total and I’m working on having all my workouts available online both for me to easily reference and in case anyone else would like to see what my training is like. A preliminary design is up at: http://www.triathleteguru.com/training_log.php.

Hmm, that title might upset some people, but I must say driving through Kansas City twice this past weekend upset me more. Each time I went through Kansas City, the stupid signs on the Interstate made no sense. I’ve driven in just about every state in the nation and the roads in Kansas City and for that matter, all of Missouri are some of the worst. So maybe it isn’t really Kansas City that stinks as much as it is MODOT…

I should have known things weren’t going to go good when on the morning of my first mtn. bike race ever, I was getting ready to ride off road for the first time in over 10 years. Since it wasn’t my best event, I really don’t want to spend too much time writing about it. I had wanted to get to the race site the evening before with enough time to ride the course, however by the time I figured out where the race started, it was getting too dark.

I spent the night sleeping in the back of my truck, or at least trying to. However, I woke up cold around 3am and didn’t sleep any more after that. I finally got up at 6am and once I got everything ready to race, I decided to try out the bike course. In the first 2 or 3 miles I rode, I fell about 5 times. It was single track trail with large rocks embeded in the trail. I probably had too much air in my tires, they were at 65psi, and they should have been around 50 or 45. I also think my seat my be a little too low. Bottom line, on the 5th fall I jammed my thumb and slightly re-injured my fragmented trapezium. That along with my bleeding and bruised shins were enough to make me decide this wasn’t looking like the best idea ever. Since I’m a decent runner, I knew I could be in the top 10% or so after the first run. So that also meant there would be a lot of better mtn. bikers behind me. I had a hard enough time riding the course when it was just me, I didn’t need to be out there in the middle of a race…

So I rode back to the race site, loaded my bike in the truck, and headed to the race start. I figured I would at least do the first two mile run and get a little something out of the whole trip.

Even the run didn’t go as well as I thought it would. The first 1/2 mile or so was on the road, I went out hard and was 4th when we got onto the trail. I probably went too hard and once we started going up and down some steep hills my legs felt like rubber. We came up to a creek crossing and after jumping across I tripped or my legs just gave out or something… anyways, I ended up doing a belly flop which pretty much summarized the whole experience.

Looking back, I wish I had done the ride. I should have run, taken a 10 or 15 minute break to let all the good riders get ahead of me, and then headed out just for the experience. Instead I took a shower and headed home…

It’s here, my first multisport event of the year! This Saturday I’ll be doing a mountain bike duathlon in Lawrence, KS. Last year my first multisport event didn’t turn out so well. If I get hit by a car while doing a mountain bike duathlon, I’m quitting the sport! There is one slight problem though, I don’t have any wheels for my mtn. bike. They’re on the way and should be delivered tomorrow. Unfortunately, it looks like my first real ride on the mtn. bike is going to be a race…