Oliver Half Iron - 5th

A quick update on the race this past weekend. First and foremost it was great to be racing with such a large contingent of Human Powered Racing. I hadn't had the opportunity to race with such a big group of the Victoria team since 2008 at Couer D'Alene. It was definitely a blast seeing everyone absolutely flying out there on the course.

As for the race; it was a tough day, but better than last year when I went into this one with a calf injury and had to drop out after the bike. I had a decent swim and was out in just over 27 minutes (seemed a bit long this year). This had me 1:45 down on the two leaders, but still within sight of third place leaving transition. Once onto the bike I felt pretty good. Found a rhythm pretty early and was comfortably in 4th within the first few kilometers. As the bike rolled on I stayed in no mans land and tried to keep my effort level as high as I could, but it is tough when you don't have many references around you. I was getting time splits from a couple guys out there and they showed I was in fact losing time. Little did I know that the bike course record was being shattered up ahead by Scott Curry. With 13 km left I was caught by Kyle Marcotte and we rode into transition together.

Starting the run side by side with someone was a welcome change from the lonely bike. We started out at a pretty good pace and at about 500m Kyle put in a surge. I let him go and slowly reeled him back in. We proceeded to run together and talk a bit for the next 10km and then he slowly opened up a gap with about 6km to go. The gap slowly got larger and held right to the finish line, leaving me in 5th place with a time of 4:11.

Looking back on the race there is not a whole lot I could or would have done differently. The race fell in the middle of a training block for Ironman Lake Placid and I seemed to just lack the jump I needed on the back half of both the bike and run. The question is whether this was due to not enough training or a little too much fatigue in the body leading into the race, I prefer to think it was the later.

7 weeks to Ironman!