Saturday, June 16, 2007

Me and Old Red: Gallup Triathlon Race Report

Today was the inaugural race of the Gallup Triathlon held, obviously, in Beautiful Gallup New Mexico at an average elevation of 6,800 feet; can you say oxygen deprivation? There was a surprisingly large crowd, 143 participants, for this race considering it is the first year and it is in a relatively remote area and, well, there aren’t whole heck of a lot of triathletes in our sparsely populated neck of the woods.

I had received recon from fellow Outlaw Karen “Warpath” Williams that the bike course was going to be rough roads with heavy traffic and shoulders with gravel and glass…ugh! This being the case I decided to leave the pretty boy Lucero and ZIPP 808’s at home and take good old Red, my trusty Trek E-9, and his training wheels, a set of Bontrager Race Lites with Kevlar clinchers filled with Stan’s, out to the race instead.

The GEEKGRL, Mini-Me and I woke at 4:45 am, ate breakfast, packed our gear and headed over to the race course. We were the first to arrive but transition was marked by number so there was little racking advantage though we each did get the sweat spot at the end of our respective racks right in the runway through transition. The race was due to start at 7:00 am sharp but didn’t begin until about 7:40 because EMS failed to tell the RD that their shift change was at 7:00 am so we all had to wait around for the new shift to come on duty and then drag their butts over to the race course. Still, I must say the men and women of the Gallup PD and EMS did a FANTASTIC job making sure all athletes were safe.

The event kicked of with a very brief 375 yard swim in a beautiful new state of the art aquatic center. We were seeded by our estimated swim time. I guessed mine would be about 6:50 so I was sporting the number 27 and, of course, was the 27th person to take off. The RD told us that there was to be no passing mid-lane, only at the walls because we were sharing lanes going up and back in each lane. Well, I hit the water and took off swimming quite strong. After about 125 yards the guy who started behind me started slapping my feet so at the wall I let him pass and then followed on. The pass took too much out of him because I was on his feet within 10 yards so I passed him back at the next wall. I then ran into more feet and when I looked up like I was sighting in open water I saw a pile-up of three ladies with the lead swimmer slowing dramatically. The problem was she would not let anyone pass at the wall. I was practically doggie paddling now and three walls went by and nobody would let us pass. I thought, “screw it, if they want to DQ me…fine!” I sighted once more and saw nobody at all was coming down the lane headed in the opposite direction toward us and I pushed hard off the wall, put my head down and hammered past all three swimmers in about 15 yards…finally I was able to start swimming again! Despite that 75 yard slow down I was still able to clear the pool in 6:35.

I hit T1 and popped on my cycling gear and headed out in 1:02, a little slow, to take my chances on the bike course with Old Red. Now get this…the RD and her husband didn’t only SWEEP transition…yes, with brooms, they also stayed out past midnight SWEEPING the bike course! Mind you, not all of it but still they were out there for hours sweeping the freakin bike course! The bike course was kind of hilly with a couple decent climbs and a couple fast down hill runs and I was sticking to my usual strategy of trying to spin up the hills and hammer the flats and downs. Surprisingly I found myself catching a few people while I was headed uphill…small people! Ah, what the hell…I passed them too. I drank my full bottle of Nuun and took one Accell Gel and arrived back into T2 in a time of 39 minutes and change…not exactly fast but given the altitude and the climbing…it was enough to earn me the 5th fastest bike split of the day. Way to go Old Red!

I trundled through T2 in about 1:00, another slightly slow transition but I was feeling good, and headed out on the run. Mercifully this run began with a down hill unlike the evil DeuceMan, which began with 4.5 miles of uphill running. Now I also received recon from fellow Outlaw Hartly “Silver Bullet” Wess that the run course had a real steep hill on it…Ok, I’m ready. After running for about .7 of a mile I spied a short but steep little hill ahead and thought, “Well, it’s kind of steep but it’s very short, no problemo.” Then I notices that the couple of people ahead of me took an abrupt left turn right before the hill and I thought, “Hartly must have been mistaken about the hill.” When I took the left turn I was confronted with this looong hill…ugh. It slowed me to a 12:43 per mile pace by the time I reached the top. Thankfully the remainder of the run was downhill or flat!

I turned in a run time of 25 minutes and change for a total time of 1:13+. It turns out my effort was good enough to get me 1st place Clyde, there was no split between the youngster Cydes and the old-boys like Bigun and I. Well, I was pretty pleased with topping the whipper-snappers but was even more happy to discover that I was #8 overall male…Whooo-hooo, broke into that top 10% for the brethren!

IT was a great day, a great race and great company. The GEEKGRL also won the Athena Division and Mini-Me pulled off a second place finish in the youngsters category, 15 – 18. The Outlaws pulled down a lot of hardware. I think we had 10 in attendance and 8 of us walked to the podium.

Next up…the Tri-Raider sprint at Buffalo Springs Lake…I’m commin’ to getcha!

20 comments:

  1. You and the Geek Girl rock! Great job and terrific report.

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  2. Congrats! Solid race for everyone!

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  3. Excellent work! Nice to have the whole family collecting the bling, too.

    "Hooray Outlaws!"

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  4. Great race report, sounds like you all enjoyed youselves.
    Happy Fathers Day!

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  5. Nice.. Hope you get some time to relax and enjoy your family today.

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  6. You guys are a Tri Rockin' Family!! Way to go!

    Happy Father's Day!

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  7. all ya'all did great (I finally got to write that in a sentence...)!

    I've never done a pool swim tri - sounds, well, like not a lot of fun. On the 30'th we are heading up to do the Crystal River tri - a rematch of my first ever triathlon - only a 1/2 mile swim - I'll bet it will feel like it's over before it even gets started.

    Have a happy father's day!

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  8. I mean 1/4 mile swim - duh...

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  9. You and Old Red are already a Team To Be Seen!

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  10. for some reason, if you center your charts, they don't seem to be able to expand - I dont know if that's always the case, but when I do the garmin gymnastics to get them "postable", if I center them, they never blow up - same thing with pictures, and probably any image that is centered....

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  11. You guys are just pothunters! Well done to the SB+GG+MB family :)

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  12. hey great job... luckly I wasnt there or I would have given you a run for 1st.. hehe.. ya right..

    rockon`

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  13. Thanks for the Garmin pic posting tip Bigun, that is exactly hat it was.

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  14. Nice race. Especially in that elevation. I have never experienced high altitude yet and I have heard it gets tough to breathe. Glad the old bike delivered. You guys are impressive. Good Luck.

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  15. Nice meeting you in person. You and Misty are pretty incredible. And your family all came home with hardware...woooohoooo!

    I especially appreciated the encouragement as I was coming out of T2. I don't know if you were shouting encouragement to everyone and/or if you recognized me from before the race, but either way, I really appreciated it.

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  16. Hey Brian-
    You are signed up for the 70.3 buddy...??

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  17. I just noticed your max speed was 45 MPH. Hope you weren't in 25 MPH zone:) Holy crap that's movin. Nice work.

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  18. As always, a great job. The family definetly has the speedster TRI bloodline.

    Sounds like the RD held a great race.. Sweeping the bike course, that is dedications for ya.

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  19. Nice race! I see that Yosemite Sam is also rockin "Ole Red" so I think you shall own p3nerize the Tri-raider race coming up as well!

    Solid solid preformance, dude! :)

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