Fat man qualifies for Nationals: A Deschutes Dash Race Report

Its been a while since my last post because I've been on vacation and Wife and I had a GREAT time. The last weekend of our vacation we were in Bend, OR for the Deschutes Dash, which is Oregan's Best of the US race and the Pacific Northwest National Sprint Distance Qualifier.

The race began with a 1300 yard down stream river swim. The water was about the coldest i've even been in but the swim was a blast because you were able to ride a fairly strong current. I thought I had a better swim than i did but it turns out I left the water 13th out of 32 in a time of 17:41. I can only figure that i didn't do as good a job staying in the middle of the river where the current was strongest, still, it was a good swim for me.

T1 was heavenly. I don't know about the rest of you but living in New Mexico I spend all my time transitioning through asphalt parking lots. This time it was a park with deep gree grass. It fetl great on the feet. I stripped the wetsuit off and put the helment on at the same time and got through T1 in 1:36, the 4th fastest T1 in my age group. This is something i've been working on and it is starting to pay off.

The bike was 14 miles and the first mile or two contained four roundabouts or traffic circles whatever you prefer. My bike handling skills aren't as good as they could be so that slowed me down some and the ride out to the turn around had 836 feet of elevation gain so since my butt isn't as narrow as it could be the up hill grade slowed me down too but the ride back to T2 was a blast. During the bike leg there was a guy in the 45 - 49 age group that was leapfrogging with me throughout. It was one of those fun races within a race. I think he beat me back to transition by a fraction because I caught him on the run but he passed me again later and I ended up watching him all the way to the finish line. My bike split was 42:35, which was a 19.7 mph average. Not too bad given the course but I probably could have produced a better effort.

T2 was 58 seconds, 5th fastest in my age group and then i was out onto the run which was two laps around a section of jogging trail that ran alongside the river. The race didn't start until 9 am and my wave went off at 9:55 so by the time I hit the run it was really heating up. I had a hard time keeping cool and my HEED was warm and not particularly refreshing. Despite all that i felt like I had a pretty good run. I did the 5K in 24:18, which is a 7:50 pace, not as fast as i was running pre-injury but I'm not going to complain. I was just looking at the results and realized that the guy who took first in my age group won the race on the swim. I've never seen that before, it is usually won or the run.

Anyway, my total time was 1:27:11, which was good enough to earn me 8th place in a field of 32. It was also good enough to put me in the top 25% which means I qualified for Nationals, not bad for a clyde. Unfortunatly I can't go to Nationals because I'm pretty sure they are on August 12th and I have the New Mexico State Team Championships that weekend and my team, the New Mexico Outlaws, plans on winning.

As an aside, the pics in this post come from two different races, neither of which is the Deschutes Dash but the bike and run pics are from the Mountain Man, which I did the weekend prior to the Dash.