Cliff Notes from the Field: A Vineman Race Report

First, the whine-man report. The course was too bumpy, the roads in many places were basically crumbled pavement and there was not one single mile marker on the bike. It was windy on the bike. It got really hot, high temp was 98 degrees. The run course was brutal I tell you BRUTAL!

Ok, now that I have that out of my system here is a brief recap. The swim in the Russian River is pretty cool. The water temps were very mild and there was a thin fog over the top of the water but it didn’t really obscure the sighting. I took off with the second wave and swam very well. I ended up getting a 1:10 and I think 12 seconds, which is an IM swim PR for me by a little over two minutes.

The bike, as I said, was very rough and much more technical than any triathlon I have done. This is a cyclist’s course but more than anything it is a course that seriously needs to be re-paved. It is difficult to make a comparison to the bike course at Coeur d’Alene because this one has so many more turns and is so much rougher and it was so much hotter that it made it equally as difficult as CdA, which makes it a tad bit easier than Kentucky, much easier than Silverman and harder than Redman and Arizona. I ended up doing the bike in 6:05 and some change, which also makes this my IM bike PR.

The run, what can I say, it was 98 degrees when I started the run and the course was freakishly hard. It is a particularly cruel course for a Clydesdale. Let me see if I can provide some visuals. Have you ever done Kentucky or CdA? Well, the run course at Vineman is a lot like the bike courses at those two events. There is a ton of climbing and descending and they are not mellow climbs and descents. In my humble opinion I rate this run course as being harder than the Silverman run course. In fact, this run course is harder than the Bataan Death March Memorial Marathon, indeed, it is harder than the Mississippi Blues Marathon. I didn’t get the final time for my run but if you want you can do the math, my T1 was 3 minutes and my T2 was 4.

My total time was 12:47 and some seconds. I gave it all I had and even though I wasn’t totally fresh I felt like I did pretty well. I ended up being second place Clydesdale overall. I am pretty sure the guy who beat me was a 27-year-old whipper-snapper who passed me at mile 24.5. He was running well and I was pretty toasted. I tried to keep pace somewhat in the hope that he was, well, premature in his more to the finish, but no such luck, he just got smaller and smaller until he was gone.

This was a hard ass race! I’ll post pics at some point but now I am going to hit the sack.