St. Croix Race Report

My trip to St. Croix started out a little rough with a red-eye flight out of Denver to Philadelphia on Frontier airlines. Turns out I had a paper ticket (purchased 5 months ago from Expedia) that I forgot existed, so of course I failed to bring it to the airport with me. So I arrived at check-in...they requested the required paper ticket, and my jaw dropped. No chance of running back home to grab it, as it's a 3-4 hr trip (since I parked in a remote lot), and zero chance of getting on the plane without it. So...I was a little stressed! I spent the next hour on the phone trying to find a way to get to St. Croix without my paper ticket and the short story is, I bought 2 different tickets ($700) to get there (i.e. $1400 flight)...ugh!

So I finally arrived in St. Croix after an 18 hour travel period and my bike and luggage somehow managed to arrive within an hour of my arrival! (a rare thing for many travelers). I put the travel fiasco out of my head and got into St. Croix vacation and race prep mode and it was all good after that. After arrival, I had the chance to meet some of my teammates on the MAO team and they were really great.

Race day arrived 4 days into my trip and I was feeling really ready to race and in good form. I wasn't sure how I would do as the whole MarkAllenOnline training program is brand new to me this year and this would be my first test, but I also knew I had put in some solid training.

Race day morning started out with a moderate breeze and mixed cloud cover and the swim was nice and choppy, making for some slow swim times. The small group starts made the likelihood of getting a good pair of feet to draft off of not too good...and I had a draft for a grand total of maybe 15-30 seconds of the entire swim. Despite that, I had what I thought was a fantastic swim...swimming solo and hard through the ocean chop with a good turnover, but was greeted with a 35 minute swim time at the exit. Since I could tell I swam well, I didn't worry about it and figured everyone's swim time was extra long (and I was right...3-4 minutes long for most).

On to my favorite leg...the bike! The rain started falling just as I got on the bike and it was a welcome relief from the heat of the morning. I'm convinced that this course was designed to be just perfect for me! It was brutally hard with continuous climbs and technical descents and long sections into a steady headwind. I loved every minute of it and the legs felt really good. As always, I pushed hard on the bike, as it's my main weapon in triathlon, but still left just enough to have a respectable run.

The run was my true test of my MAO training plan, as it's always been my weakness, particularly in recent years. The St. Croix run is a particularly challenging one because of the oppressive heat and continual hills...remember those rain clouds I mentioned at the start of the bike? Well, those were long gone and I had scorching hot sunshine for the last 20 miles of the bike and just about all of the run. My saving grace was the aid stations with ice every 0.6 miles. If they were every mile, I don't think I would have survived! My main competition for the race was my own teammate, Cassie, who has won the world championships at this distance 2 years in a row. She is a phenomenal runner, and a pretty spectacular swimmer and good cyclist...a tough combination! I was really pleased to see I still had a 9-10 minute lead on her at mile 7 of the run due to my solid bike split! Of course I was doing the math in my head and thought I had this one in the bag, even if I slowed to 8:30 miles in the latter part of the race (which is what happened). Well...turns out Cassie was on fire clicking off one 7:00 mile after another over the hills in the high heat and humidity. As I entered the last little out and back before the finish line, with less than a half mile to go...I asked a lady on the sidelines if she saw any women behind me. At first she shook her head no and then corrected herself and said "yes!" I turned around and looked and there was Cassie hammering up the hill about 250 m behind me. At that point, I jumped into an all out sprint effort...rounded the corner toward the finish in a state of massive lactic acidosis with no more than 2/10's of a mile to go, and watched Cassie fly by me at a 5:30/mi pace like I was literally standing still. As I was in a near collapsing state, I walked the next 100m to get the function of my legs back and hobbled in at a slow jog across the line to finish a minute behind Cassie at 5:13. Cassie ended up running faster than all but the top 3 pro women, who were world class athletes!

I got to know Cassie more after the race and learn about her running past. She has quite an impressive running background. We decided that if we were to train together (although she lives in NY and I'm in CO), we could really help eachother...me for my running and her for her biking. I had this distant hope that there would be 2 Kona slots for my AG, as we were the 2nd largest AG for the women, but unfortunately, the only spare slot went to the 30-34 year-olds. I was really kicking myself that night after the race for not pushing harder through the last 4 miles, as I know I could have skipped walking those latter aid stations and slowing down on some of the hills, but I had no idea of the rapidly closing talent behind me. Guess I need to find me a good spotter to inform me of the dangers behind me to help dictate my level of suffering in the closing miles! I already got one lined up for Buffalo Springs : ).

Next up...World's Toughest Half (2 weeks away!).

But first...a little fun time in the Carribean : ).