Very late on Tuesday night Col, Bryan, Kyle and I went and ran the Firecracker 5000 run - it starts at 11:55pm (actual start was closure to 12:05am) which made for a weird prep. Both Kyle and I were starving when we got home but we did not want to eat a large dinner and that sort of thing. Even though it was a warm day it was kind of cold waiting around for the start of the race - a couple minutes before lining up we jogged around a bit to warm up so we did not start out cold. The day of race turn out was higher than the event expected so the start was delayed a bit - there was talk that they ran out of bib #s. We all lined up - Kyle went a little bit further up front then the rest of us but not much. Once the race started I tried to stay with Col and Bryan as long as I could - which was about a mile at a 7:20 pace or so. then I slowed down a bit but I was able to keep Bryan in sight most of the rest of the way. The course was kind of weird part of it was being repaved so it was all uneven - which was interesting in the dark.. There was also some long hills to climb up. After I was passing the 2 mile mark I could hear that people were finishing. When I started coming back into the stadium I heard Kyle cheering for me and I tried to pick up the pace through the last little bit. I felt great and even a cramp that I had earlier in the day in my calf faded away and I never felt it on the run so I was mostly just happy I pushed myself the entire way and had no issues. The whole point of doing this event was to help build my confidence in a race situation and it definitely did that.
My gun time was 24:26, chip time was 24:16 (a 7:50 pace). The best part was that I came in 9th in my age group out of 101!
On the next morning (the 4th of July) we got up and headed over to Bobby's house on Lake Samm to do a training brick/tri for some. We met rather early hour of 9:30a considering that we got to bed at 2am... We got started on the swim - the water was already a bit choppy with lots of extra waves from boats. It was some really good/hard training for ruff water. I was way slower than the rest of the group but I'm used to that. I just did not have much energy and never really found my groove. It was worse on the way back - I felt like I was swimming in place. I got out of the water at somewhere around the 50 min mark - everyone else was already on the dock. Next we switched over to the bike and headed out around the lake. At first the guys were just taking easy (I assume just enjoying the weather or something) but Col made a comment which light a fire under them because immediately the took off and I for one never saw them again. I stayed far enough behind Col not to be drafting and held that most of the way around the lake. I was happy because I finally stayed down in my aero bars the entire way on the east side of the lake. Though I started getting tired again on a few small hills on the west side and fell a bit further behind Col. I came in to switch to the run and I was just not feeling it but I gave it a try - I put my running shoes on and ran out for oh about 2 min and my calf started to feel a bit tight so I stopped, turned round and ran back and was done. Oh well I ran hard at the race and don't need to push it. I was kind of bummed about it for a little bit but at the same time I did really well the night before at the race and I made it around the lake in 1:16 (possibly my fastest so far).
The rest of the holiday was spent hanging out and relaxing and today is a recover/rest day - most of all I am looking forward to going to bed early and getting some good earned sleep.
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