I met a “competitive age grouper” at masters swim by the name of Bently. His workout schedule made me think that I needed to get in 30 miles after work too. I went to Heritage Park and planned on doing laps until the sun went down.

My flat tire at the Jackson County race forced me to walk in my cleats. Unfortunately, my cleats didn’t hold up as well as I thought. I knew they took some damage. But they worked fine until uphill on Pflumm. My cleats failed. My foot flew off the pedal, the pedal swung around and nailed me in the back of my leg, I almost ran into the bridge. I avoided the bridge just in time to get passed from behind by a large truck. I was scared. I might have peed my shorts just a little. I was very close to a severe accident. I could have tumbled over the bridge or I could have been tagged by a truck. I did one more lap being extra careful and decided to call it a day. I headed straight to Bike Source and picked up new cleats. Which they also installed. I feel much better now.

Morning was just like most race days. Jillian slept in as long as she could, I loaded the gear. The Garmin GPS took us in the right direction. Unfortunately our late start combined with construction on 435/35 got me worried. I called Jason for a short cut, and it worked.

The event moved up the schedule because the field was smaller than normal. So we had even less time that we thought we did. We go parked got our gear and got body marked and our chips.

Jillian was doing the duathlon which started at the same time. So we had to go separate ways right away.

The swim was the best and worst one so far. It was my fastest, but it was also the most crowded. I was “in the mix” of swimmers for what felt like most of the race. The first lap I was towards the back of my heat. The second lap I was caught and passed by the short course waves. It was my fast long course swim so far. There was a beach run in between the laps, but even with the beach run accounted for it was faster than any other race I’ve done.

The bike stage I was alone the entire time. The new tires gave me a little bit of extra confidence. I tried to keep my energy up since I crashed so bad at Midwest Mayhem. I had Chomps and HammerGel and Gu. The Chomps were before the swim, the gels were on the second and last lap of the bike course. I was a little worried that I was going to fast on the bike, and I was right.

During the run I crashed hard. I had some more Chomps and I drank about 16 ounces of Gatorade at transition. I was passed by at least one familiar face, Bill N, and about 10 others. I actually passed one person too.

The best thing of this race was all the newbies. Steve, Jason, Ski, Aaron and Holly all finished their first triathlon! I couldn’t have asked for a better event. We really got lucky. I’m so proud of everyone.

Official Results