My friend Jess and I left around 8:30 Friday morning to head down to Austin for the Capitol of Texas Triathlon. We arrived a little before 1, found a place with free parking and unhooked our bikes from the back of our little Toyota Echo. The lines at the expo were enormous! Typically I don't arrive until later in the evening and I'll be one of the last ones to check in. Today though we showed up right about the time all the 2500 other competitors did and the result was a 20-30min wait in line. It wasn't too bad as we ended up in line with my coach Shelly, and another family on our team that were all competing the next day.
After collecting our packets, and checking our bikes in Jess and I headed to my grandparents house about 20min from the race site for some R&R. My grandparents were actually up at MY house over the weekend so we had the whole place to ourselves. Dinner with the team that night, and an early bedtime meant I was pumped to race the next day.
I love Captex because the sprint doesn't start until 9 am which allows for some serious sleeping in. At the race site it was already getting hot and humid and I decided not to wear my wetsuit even though the water was wetsuit legal at 75 degrees. My other reason other then to avoid overheating was that my teammate Travis, and youth elite Hunter, were both not wearing a wetsuit. Their both faster swimmers than I am and I wanted to be able to compare myself with no other variables.
I felt strong on the swim but wasn't happy with my time back from Hunter and Travis. I once again got to watch the lead pack slip off just out of my reach as I tried in vain to latch onto the back. Out on the bike it was super crowded and I believe this actually played to my advantage as I have pretty good bike handling skills. I felt awesome on the bike and was absolutely hammering, weaving in and out of people, diving inside on the corners, riding the middle line as cyclists coming the other way whizzed at me. I tried my best to always pass on the left but it wasn't always possible. Coming off the bike I was suprised to see that Travis' bike wasn't racked yet and this gave me hope as well as some cause for worry as I wasn't sure whether he had crashed or what had happened.
Out on the run I felt horrible but just found a pace I could hold and tried to hang on. At a turn-around 3/4's of a mile in I could see that I had a solid lead, at least in my wave and that Travis was back in 3rd a good 2-3 minutes down. Towards the end of the LONG run my legs started to really feel good but I was so hot and overheating I still felt like crap. I kept looking at my watch and saw my run time creep up over 19 minutes at which point I knew for sure that the course was not quite accurate.
For awhile it looked like I might have won the race but in the end a 30-34 guy any another wave got me by a good bit. I took 2nd out of almost 800 competitors and was pleased with my overall effort. Travis had 2 major mishaps on the bike including coming into T2 after only 1 lap then after going out to do a 2nd lap his seatpost slid down and he was left to peddle the remaining 5-6 miles out of the saddle. In doing so he injured his knee somewhat but it looks like he'll be alright.
This report been a little long so I'll post again later with some of what we did the rest of the weekend and how my firs crit went on my new road bike. (Which is SWEET by the way!!)
Full results and splits are here- www.run-far.com
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