Heather and I made the road trip from Arlington VA to Birmingham AL. A long drive, but a beautiful one. I also didn't realized VA is so big !
Anyway back to the busy end. I planned on doing this week back in November and got really excited about it after winning Powerman Florida. However, all the snow in February killed my goal of getting in good Bike preparation. 60k is the longest I've raced on the bike. Honestly it wasn't really that bad, it helped that we did 20k loops. Which is similar to what Dirk and I do for our hard tempo. Both the run and bike were Hilly as hell. Check out the profile.
The Pro field was stacked and a Pro only race, which provides more space on the route especially on an out and back loop. We lined up at high noon, and bolted up the hill. My plan was to relax the first 5k and roll after the turn around. But somehow I found myself committed to the pace in the first mile. I hit Mile 1 in 5:03 just off the pace of two leaders. I should have just held back, as the majority of the mile was uphill. So I worked on staying relaxed and was ahead of Jorrie V (world champ) as this stage. At mile 2 he was right with me. Then it was a pack of 3 closely following by 2 more. At this stage David Yoker was flying ahead of us. The bike was rolling for the 60k (we did 3 out and back loops). I wasn't really happy with my bike time, but when I look at my winter training I can't complain. I did catch some guys on the bike and had Matt Russell and David Thompson fly by me . Heading into the second run I was 5th, but my legs never came back to me, as they normally do. I ended up getting run down by Derick Treadwell. (a sub 4min miler). Glad to see the top 4th US guys get to go to Worlds.
Good Job to Team Magic and everyone who raced.
