After a bit of a nightmare of a swim: dive in, goggles flip off, breast stroke, 10 strokes, goggle fills up, empty goggle, blow arms to pieces trying to catch up, just catch up to the back of the race when I run into one of many swaths of branches, leaves, logs, garbage etc in this dirty river we a swimming. Some of the swaths of junk were almost a foot deep, 15feet long and 5feet wide so you had to crawl to the outside and then continue swimming. I thought I was going to be last out of the water but I was only 10th from last 🙂 I had my work cut out for me to get back in the race so I flew through transition and rode as hard as I could till I found myself settled into the main group which was 30sec behind a front back of 5. We maintained the gap for 4 laps until the chase came apart and the time doubled to 60sec in one lap. They put 30 more sec’s or so in the final laps and I prepped myself for a fast run.
After my great run workouts with John Brown and doing 100m strides and sprints at the end of each workout I was confident that I could put down a solid run. I was out quickly near the front from transition 2 and put down a solid 1km to the first turnaround and found myself seconds back from the strongest runners in a group of 5 of my own. Myself and a Japanese athlete kept the pace on swapping turns and at about 3km we started reeling in guys from the lead group of our pack. The 5 man breakaway stayed out of touch from everyone so I focused on these guys just ahead. One of them was 2007 World Champ Daniel Unger of Germany who hung on to our group and even surged at 5km. I held strong and held pace to the last turnaround at 1.25km to go. I had felt good on this stretch the last three times so I decided to put in a surge and push the pace to take some sprint out of the groups legs knowing I had been practising my sprint. With 200m to go, Mark Fretta of the USA came around in full sprint so I started my kick but holding my final sprint till 80m to go when a Frenchman went and I was able to come over top of both he and Fretta leaving Unger and the Japanese behind and finishing in 12th.
I was super excited to see the results after that showed I had the 7th fastest run of the day and probably the fastest run of my career of 31:10. I was also pleased with my tactics in the sprint and my determination on the run.
I look to replicate the run and improve the swim at tomorrow’s Des Moines, IA World Cup with over 1million dollars in prize money.
