Timberman
August 19th, 2008There is no you, there is only me. Things are not pretty on the inside.” -NIN Freakishly I did 5 halfs this season. Even more freakishly I felt best for #5. I didn’t realize it until I counted them all up. Jesus, five. This is a lot for me. I think I am different now, different then I thought I was. Athletes change and it is important to keep an open mind. If you had asked me if 5 halfs would have worked for me I would say no. Yet #5 was the best. Timberman is a kick ass event, and I am so stoked to do it. Its hard, its not fast, but its just plan awesome. I felt great saturday. No coffee and I was still bouncing. I went to the sprint because watching a tri is great motivation for doing one. I saw my friends from qt2systems.com crush the sprint. Afterwards tim snow and I were talking when he grabbed my belly fat. I think that’s the qt2systems handshake. That crew is defined in part by their serious nutrional planning and with ironman wins its hard to say its not working, which is why they are my nutrional peeps. Being surly bostonians they are not known for mincing words and since they didn’t say anything I assumed I passed. I had 2 goals top 10 among the pros, and be within 8 percent of the winning time so I could stop stressing my pro card requalification (I have all of 2009). The problem with the winning time goal was that it only takes one bad ass to ruin your day. Mr Potts who beat nearly everyone by 8 percent is such a bad ass. He is the world champ at this distance and his olympic rings tattoo is pretty cool. My coach Jim Ortel was working me over mentally on how to deal with some of the top guys. One really hard thing about being a mop (middle of the pack) pro is that there are days where you race awesome, for nothing. Instead of seeing this as demoralizing he reminds me that its pretty cool to toe the line between guys like potts, lavoto, lessing, et al. The swim had some bad luck. As some of you may recall I posted some pics on xtri of a volunteer kyacker who got mixed into the swim at the start of imlp. Well I kind of made a little fun of him in the caption. Karma came back at me when I ran into a kyack paddle that was floating unmanned causing me to loose my most excellent group. I noticed some of the markers that got loose and swam pretty straight for the most part. I was in a group of three until the final turn. I was second and decided to surge at the corner. I passed the leader and then did a little zig-zag and we shock the third place guy. I like when racing can be a bit cruel, I like being the hand of cruelity. No free rides buddy. The bike is very hilly and the climbs start right away. I hammered and was climbing well. I hit the 30 miles of flats and tried to keep up the effort. It wasn’t easy but I felt really good. Oddly looking back at the spits of everyone I lost the most time on the bike. I fear this means another winter of bike focus. I got on the run and was worried I might have bad legs since my ride was pretty good. Nope. Legs turned over good. I settled into a pace and passed someone early on. No one else blew up and I got passed by a fast flying guy and didn’t even try to go with him. After that it was just about running strong and within my self. The NIN nails quote is to remind me that I need to keep my mind on me and worry about what I am doing, sometimes it fun to “race” head to head but that might be the last half of the run. I came across to hear I was 9th male pro. Then the results got posted and I was 11th. Oh so close! Oh well. Rob Straz had me 20th! Someone needs a lesson in counting. Thankfully he had a Token Entry shirt on, which was the first band I ever truly connected with. I saw him at the start of the bike and for 3 hours was singing until I saw him on the run when I shouted “I spend my days in a vacum trying to scream, people say I am crazy come see what they mean. What’s to keep me from loosing my grip, and why do I keep feeling the kiss of the whip.” Great song for racing. I hope he was impressed with my powers of recall. I think with morgantown and ri not going well I needed a pick up and this was just the ticket. I feel really confident for ironman lou and wanna smash it. That’s what Jim Ortel is best at, I swear the guy has a blue print inside my head. He knows what I am thinking before I do and what I need even when its not convenstion-like doing a half 14 days before a full. Moster thanks to the CREW we rolled deep and had awesome races. Good work everyone.
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