This would be a shot of Michael Lovato as he crosses the line in 9th place at the 2007 Hawaii Ironman World Championsips. Not too bad eh? Well I am proud to say that I had the privileg of being beat by this amazing athlete this last weekend in the lonestar sprint triathlon in Galveston, Tx.
He outsplit me in all 3 disciplines. (Except transitions of course) and ran a 16 and change 5k off the bike. However at the finish line yours truly was only 2:50 (that would be minutes and seconds) back of this pro triathlete.
Yup I had a great race in Galveston. 4th overall. 1st in my age group. Beat two fellow juniors who have handily beat me every time I've raced them for the last 2 years. One of them was my teammate I traveled to Germany with, Travis.
Awesome 500m ocean swim that I came out of in 7:27 about :40 down on Sam and Travis. Fast transition and onto the bike I started to hammer. This course was fast and we had a slight tailwind on the way out. I don't think I saw anything under 27mph the whole way to the turn around. Shortly before the turn around I passed both Travis and Sam who were riding somewhat close together. (I don't mean to say they were drafting because they weren't) I kept the pain factor high for the rest of the 12.5 mile course. There was a headwind on the way back so I wasn't going quite as fast but still averaged 24.3 for the bike.
Off the bike and out of T2 I was running scared. I had about 20ish seconds on Sam and Travis but I knew Travis could run under 18 and I hadn't done that yet. Sam is usually not as fast a runner but I didn't know what his training had been like through the offseason. Well I didn't see them before the turnaround where I was suprised to see they were both now 30-40 seconds back of me and Travis was looking awful. I knew then that if I kept a solid pace and didn't blow up that I had them. Sure enough I crossed the line with the satisfaction of knowing I'd run a solid race and stepped it up when I needed. 5k run split- 17:46. A 25 second pr for me.
For winning my age group I got some pretty nice gear. This fuelt belt-
And this decent timex watch. At least its close to the one I got.
Does this mean I'm pro?
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