The morning of the World Championships Travis and I woke up bright and early at 5:30. Actually it felt more like 7:30 for us as we hadn't fully adjusted to the time change yet, in this case though I think it was a good thing. We walked down to a local coffee shop to grab some coffee and a scone then met up with Shelly and another kid from California that was hanging out with us, Rudy. We had dropped our bikes off the night before so we walked to transition to set our stuff up, then walked back the half mile to the race start. It was cold and rainy. Perfectly miserable weather for racing.
In the Athletes lounge we put on our wetsuits, lubed up with vaseline and attached our "squid lids" to the top of our noggins.
These were specially designed neoprene caps we'd bought the day before to keep some heat in. We payed $50 for them and after our race we sold them for $60. The expo vendors didn't order enough and people were desperate to get their hands on them. We lined up on the beach, all 52 16-19 and 20-24 year olds and when the horn went off ran and dove into the 52 degree water.
I had a decent enough swim. It was hard to really push hard because you couldn't feel much and the swim ended up being over 1000m instead of the 750m it was supposed to be. I did find a guy to draft off of and used him until the last 100m or so when I sprinted around him to beat him out of the water. Not exactly the most gentlemanly thing to do but hey, that's racing. I was 19th out of the water in my age group of 27 competitors and 13th out of T1. The cold coupled with my quick transitioning skills helped me pass a bunch of people that beat me out of the water. Transition itself was an absolute slip-N-slide. My coach was videoing and she has footage of people falling all over the place, with their bikes, without their bikes, arms still in their wetsuit flopping around like a beached seal, you name it. Because every ones feet were numb and the grass was wet and muddy it made it very difficult for sure.
I made it out of transition without incident and was soon on the bike cranking away. Same as I described earlier the bike course is not and easy one. I felt good on the uphills and the downhill were just flat out scary. It was still raining lightly so everything was slick and the road itself was poor quality with lots of bumps and holes that are very difficult to see when your screaming downhill at 35+mph with cold rain blowing into your eyes. I was 1:15 back of Travis when I got on my bike and after two laps I heard my coach yell that he was only 10 seconds up the road. I caught him a couple minutes later and blew by him at close to warp speed. A minute later here he comes chugging past me up the hill and we switched back and forth like this all the way to the top. Then as we turned for the descent into T2 I passed him again, this time for good. I wanted to put some time into him so I took as many risks as I dared going around the wet turns, maintaining a death grip on my bull horns, no aero bars for this descent. I'd already found the really bad holes on the first 2 laps so I had a good idea of what line to take and put 15 seconds on Travis entering T2.
Right as I came off the bike I saw another USA guy ahead of me, Jack St. Marie who I had out sprinted for 2nd place at our qualifier in Tuscaloosa. This concerned me because at that race he ran 16:28 off the bike and I was at least a minute slower then that. I passed him as we ran towards our racks, threw my bike on and carefully and methodically pulled my shoes on. My hands and feet were numb so I had to go by site rather then feel. Travis ran by as I unclipped my helmet and I grabbed my race belt and took off. As I headed out I saw Jack taking his bike off one rack desperately looking around for his own rack. "This is good," I thought. (Later I discovered that Jack had also sliced his foot open on the swim, he had been bleeding the whole race and would require stitches afterwards.)
As I started the run I felt surprisingly good and I quickly passed a British guy in my age group. The whole rest of the run I just ran strong. At a couple of the turn arounds I could see Travis and Jack but they didn't look like they were gaining much. There was another guy from the U.S. about 20-30 seconds ahead of me but I couldn't catch him no matter how hard I tried. I had worn an underarmour shirt underneath my race suit as well as armwarmers underneath the wetsuit and those definitely helped keep my core temperature warm. I ran hard the whole way and crossed the line 8th overall and 3rd American. My 5.1k time was 17:53 with an adjusted time of 17:32 for a 5k. A new PR for me. Off the bike, in 55 degree rainy weather, on a course that wasn't flat, at the World Championships. Travis came in 30 seconds later after getting passed by a Canadian in the last few hundred meters.
RESULTS! - Just click on "sprint distance" and "16-19 M."
Im very happy with my performance. I finally figured out cold weather racing in the 3rd cold race I've had this year, and in the biggest. 19th out of the water, 13 on the bike, 10th off the bike, 9th out of T2, 8th at the line. Once again it was a blast representing my country and racing against International competition. I'm stoked about how well I did. Stoked, but not satisfied.
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