Loveland Lake 2 Lake 2006

Saturday June 24 was Lake to Lake. Another TnT race. By Charley’s count RMTC and TnT members were right around 50. Out of 532 finishers we made up 9%. One out of every 11 racers out there. We only managed to get two of us into the top 3. Joe McNabb got 2nd and Jordan Jones, running in stolen shoes, got first overall. ! only missed winning by 43:16. Watch out guys. !’m coming after you. Our own dear, sweet Luke only managed 42nd overall. Less that 10 minutes faster than ! did last year. He should have been on the podium too. ! gave him a big hug before the race. No more credit for him. It’s clear that college is just a huge waste of time. Luke fast. Luke get edumacated. Luke get slow. Learn from this tragedy. Stay away from school kids. Luke was wearing the D3 outfit. ! mentioned that to Denny who called him a “commie”. Denny’s not so politically astute, but his rage was justified.

! didn’t realize there was a 3:30 am on Saturdays. The clock radio came on. The alarms started bleating and the coffee maker was gurgling. For some reason ! crawled out of bed and had breakfast. ! was on the road only 10 minutes later than planned and driving fast. In the dark. No one was out except a couple vampires staggering out of Bonfils. Oh wait, cars with race bikes on them. ! set up transition and got checked in. No time for a warm-up after chatting. As the 2nd wave was starting it dawned on me to get in the water to acclimate at least. Lucky for me it was much warmer than Boulder Res.

Off we went. ! made the turn at the 1st yellow buoy and thought to myself “!’m really not taking this race seriously”. That attitude needed to be fixed. ! started focusing on really stretching out my stroke. ! think it helped some. ! hit the beach about 5 seconds behind Becky and she’s really fast. Don’t read the next sentence. She started in the wave 5 minutes behind me. ! passed a half dozen guys running through the water before the beach. Still ! was 2 minutes faster than last year. Lake 2 Lake is about the distance we run from the beach to T1.

In T1 Deb was waiting for Jamie. They were doing a Masters relay. Since there were only 2 of them they got to add the oldest age twice to the other age to try to hit 120. Deb is 29. Double that and add another 29 for Jamie and you have 121. Deb has been a mom for so long that she has forgotten all but 2 expletives. She hurled both of them at me. Her twins are learning to drive so she really needs to learn some more.

On the bike it was time to catch those fast fish. It seemed slow at first since it was slightly uphill. Must keep pushing. Going 1 mph faster will save more time going up than it will coming down. About 10 miles out two really fast girls (my favorite kind) came by and started hitting on me. ! guess the carbon fiber wheels make me sexy. Soon we passed Yon the Aussie trying to avoid his parole officer. Had to get away. The first descent was right there. ! hit 43 mph. Then another long climb. Some guy was on my wheel now. We had been going back and forth for a while until ! spotted Tessa. She used to be Special Forces. Normally you need to weigh somewhere over 75 lbs to get accepted, but she is such a lethal killing machine they begged her to join up. ! never saw that guy again. The swim took her 34 minutes. She had to stop to plant explosives on the buoys.

More descending and then the really strange climb. It really looked like we were going uphill. ! was doing 24 mph the whole climb. Odd. Then one more screaming downhill. Last year the bike course was scary. This year not so much. Now we were onto the flat to rolling section with 12 miles to go. It was windy. Marshals were out breaking up packs. At that point ! was passing everyone so they didn’t bother me. There was a gaggle about 10 seconds back. ! heard there were some penalties handed out.

About mile 20 was the second aid station. This is one of the two complaints ! have about the race. Bottle hand-ups were at the bottom of a long fast hill. ! needed a bottle so ! slowed from over 30 to about 15 mph. Some people didn’t. At high speeds it’s hard to grab a bottle and, in fact, ! did miss the first attempt. One lane, dozens of bikes going really fast and other dozens braking hard then starting the climb without momentum while trying to secure a bottle. Add to that full bottles lying in the road and you have a bad crash waiting to happen. Even Lance has crashed in a feed zone and he’s got a team to protect him. Feed zones need to be well planned. Barely 1/10 of a mile up the road was the top of the climb and flat road ahead with a nice wide shoulder. The fast guys were hitting the top of the hill at a much better speed to refuel. The other complaint is about the high school. No doors on the stalls really made the outhouses look good. Do high school kids really need the govt. to humiliate them more. They already have acne, silly facial hair and parents who hug and kiss them in front of their friends. What could they possibly be getting away with behind a door?

The bike was lengthened this year. Advertised as 30 miles, my GPS shows 31.3 up from 29 last year when it was supposed to be 25. No problem. ! probably made up a couple places overall by extending my best leg.

T2 went well. Denny didn’t endo again. The longest run !’ve done since busting my foot 7 weeks ago was 5k. Half this run. The first part was on grass and slightly downhill to the road. The gal right in front of me was really impressed with my belch. Once on the road it was totally flat. ! saw some of the leaders coming back in. It was an out and back course with a slight divergence at the end. About 1.5 miles Mary Carey was sitting on the sidewalk motivating TnT and RMTC. It was after her that ! saw Luke limping along at a 6:27 pace. 29 guys ran faster. He showed flashes of brilliance last season. Just imagine what he could have done if only he’d dropped out of high school. 2.5 miles Katrin came by me and we saw Jeff on his way back in. He told me Denny was just 100 yds ahead. Time to hunt. There he was just coming out of the turn-around zone. ! calculated the pace he had to do to beat me and told him. ! couldn’t run that fast. He had to get back most of his 5 minute head start. Lots of hand slapping with the TnTs and RMTCs over the next couple miles. There was Mary again still sitting on the sidewalk. ! walked the last aid station so ! could drink the gatorade and pour some water over my head. Just past the T2 exit we headed to the lake shore for the last section. Last year the run was another mile around the pond to the finish. This year it was in the same spot but we went straight in. It was less demoralizing. The finish was hidden until about 30 yards out. Someone told me when ! was 100 yards out so ! could start my sprint. ! went a bit too hard since ! couldn’t see it to judge my effort. By the time ! was in the chute ! was trashed and couldn’t think well enough to figure out where the line was. Keep pushing until someone asks for your chip. Poor Denny was still breathing hard when ! got there. Weeze and drink. Weeze and drink. Find one of the Popsicle girls and sit down. A few minutes to recover then off to sprint line to cheer people in. They gave us lots of food. The girls were frightened by my plate. Girls eat so little. Ya gotta train for it.

It was a beautiful day. Not too warm. ! beat 337 people and 194 beat me. Overall time was 3:00:30. Makes me wish ! had skipped that last drink. ! got a big blister on my foot and to think ! considered doing the run without socks. Len, Sybil, Michael, John, Katie and Jonathan Nixon were all so afraid to race me that they did IronMan Coeur d’Alene this weekend. 11:03-15:20 for their finish times. That rocks. Lets see which one is fastest with a race report. !’m hoping to get that last head injury to qualify me for an IM.