Minneapolis Olympic

Deciding whether to go hard or not in a race is difficult to do. This was one of those days. I had 8 days until my 70.3 in Racine, which is my big race for the year. Ultimately I think I pulled out a solid performance on this day.

This time I had my cousin come with me, which was awesome because he had never experienced a race before. So why not come to a race with 1800+ athletes. He knows german too, so when I took off at the start, he yelled some funny stuff. Good thing nobody understood it.

So I start last in my wave, which was a time trial start. I had a swim PR of 24:10 for that distance. Which I was very happy with. The lake was nice and warm, lake Nokomis was a pretty good spot for the race.

Getting on the bike was no problem for me, I would say I had a really good T1. The bike was pretty technical, it was alot of turns and the road conditions were poor at best. I wouldn't be surprised if 50 people got flats on this course. So many orange lines and circles for potholes and cracks. This course was in the heart of minneapolis, so I guess it was to be expected. There was an Enduro section of newly tarred pavement. Just like Trinona had a Kom challenge. There were a few people that I swear to holy god did not know how to pass correctly. If they would have been doing that at an Ironman event, would be penalized so hard for drafting. I wanted to yell at them behind me and say, for christ sake, would you pass me or drop off already??!  Man, so I would try and show them, look this is how you pass. 15 seconds, pass me or back the hell off. This got annoying, obviously. After a solid 40k I was into T2.

The run started and I was looking good for mile 1. Man would I have love to keep that pace the whole 10k. Nope. Just got slower mile by mile, it was a flat and fast run around Nokomis, double loop. I had some kids throw water on me when I went by an aid station. That was funny.  I let it rip the last half mile and finished with a good 2:26:14.  Not a PR but nothing to complain about. At the finish I jumped up and touched the finish, which looked like I was dunking on this other dude that was finishing. 

Next race is IM 70.3 Racine.  See ya then!