A bike ride with my mom

My mom wasn's actually on this bike ride, but she could have been.  Last weekend was my first triathlon of the year and my first ever draft legal triathlon.  And basically it lived up to my expectations.

The race was Saturday so I packed up and headed out Thursday evening after school--as you can see here at the bus stop, there is still snow in Boulder.  (We are supposed to get more this weekend too)

I took this travel opportunity to finally get around to reading Boomerang by Michael Lewis.  My best friend Mike gave me this book for Christmas and I have been so busy reading law that I haven't had the time yet to read it! 

I spent the night at a crappy hotel to wait for our Off The Front Multisport team director and baller extraordinaire Stephen Wright to fly in Friday Morning.  He rented a pimped out minivan and we hit the road for Sarasota (which is about an hour south of Tampa).  Here is a picture of Tampa Bay!

The race itself was at a new sports park--Nathan Benderson Park.   No crocodiles, that I saw, thank god.  The format lived up to its annoying promises. I got pummeled on the first lap of the swim, lost my goggles and noticed Monday I had a black eye.  Everyone goes out really hard and I did too but I guess not hard enough.  I almost drowned like 4 times and had to stop to put my goggles back on.  The second lap I finally got some open water and bridged up to the back end of the first group coming out of the water with them and thinking I was in good shape....

Well yeah then I totally blew it when I ran into the back of some dude who decided to try at his first flying mount right in front of me, and fail.  Being at the back of the first group already, that incident was the race.  Within a lap of the 8 lap bike the first group had already put 25seconds on the 4 of us that missed the group.  It was sad to watch them ride away.  I tried to ride tempo but my groupmates weren't staying with me which was sad too--I felt like I was riding with my mom.  By T2 the second group had caught us and the first group had 2min on us.

Here I am on the run:

Overall, it was just kinda depressing to have lost so much time on the bike when it is usually the part of the race that I put time on people.  Such is life.  I ended up finishing 18th and learning that draft legal racing is all about timing and making the front pack on the bike.  Side note: I also learned more tri-related gossip than probably any other time in my life.  Who is sleeping with who, juicy stuff etc.

Here are my teammates Stephen (reading his iPhone like a 'hero') and Jess reading my blog (I documented because she is the first person besides my mom to read it).  It was super fun spending the weekend with these two and I hope this season to do more races with my teammates from OTFM.

I was able to get a direct flight in and out of Tampa on Frontier--extra good since bikes are free with the classic fare.  BUT, I also got to catch up on some Oscar winning movies.  Argo on the way there, Lincoln and Life of Pi on the way back (on my little dinky TV).  Probably one of the most productive aspects of the trip...

Anyway, it was good to break up the training and burn out my legs a bit.  I suppose I will have to do another draft legal race sometime... until then,

Rudy

My unwitting entrance to draft legal racing.

Thats right folks.  My first race of the year is this weekend!  Saturday at 12 noon in Sarasota FL--draft legal olympic distance.  At the least it should yield an interesting blog post for next week!

Side-note, my law class is crushing me so I am eating this right now.

With the start of the season I have been putting together a race schedule...well piecing a race schedule around the rest of my schedule.  This will be my second year as a pro and again I decided that it would be good to spend at least one more year focusing on the olympic distance in an attempt to get fast--especially at running.  Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to get as fast as the top guys, especially in running.  I mean my swimming has improved a TON this winter and my biking has never really been an issue but how do you get your body to run super fast?  I've always followed the precedent of the kenyans, run a lot, run fast, run fast a lot, and when you arent supposed to run, dont.  Of course I think they have a physiological advantage on me since my legs are as thick as their chests.  Who knows, each year I keep getting slightly faster which is encouraging but I still have a ways to go to compete with those top guys. 

As I mentioned, my first race this weekend in Sarasota Florida as a draft legal race.  I have never done a draft legal race (so that will be interesting) but for those of you unfamiliar, the format of this race is that you are allowed to draft on the bike portion.  Therefore the tactics of the race change dramatically since large groups typically come off the bike together.  Basically you can lose on the swim and the bike but you can only really win the race on the run.  These races almost always come down to who can run the fastest 10k at the end.  Sure I am a bit concerned about that, but honestly this being my first draft legal race I will probably do something totally dumb like drop by shoes or crash my bike.  So I figure I should just focus on finishing without any major screw ups.

This also kicks off the first travel of my jam packed year...I just added it all up and I will be traveling a LOT this year:

14 different cities for triathlons

3 different cities for chemical engineering conferences

2 more different cities for weddings

Thats 19 different cities in one year.  And that only takes me to the first week of November.  I assume I will be going somewhere for the holidays (or else my parents get sad) so that would be some more travel there on the end.  Yikes.  I am going to get cancer from all the gamma rays.

In other news, winter finally hit Boulder.  We have had snow like 2x a week recently.  About time we got some precipitation in this place.  Its real pretty actually.  And weird because I kind of like it.

Thats all for now.  

Rudy