Catching up on a lost year of posting...part 2

Hot Chocolate 10k, January 2013 Flattest 10k in Asheville, and they're probably right. But that doesn't make you feel any better when you're climbing up what might be one of the steepest stretches of road I've ever ran for the final .2 miles. I did have a pretty good race, finishing in around 57 minutes, which gave me a pace of around 9:30 miles. It was a decent race, actually stuck to my plan to walk every mile, and i survived...even ran the entire climb without walking. Frosty Foot 30k, January 2013 This was my first race of the I was originally planning this to be a training day because I was training for a marathon. But I decided to drop that goal since I wanted to do the Charleston Half IM and wouldn't be able to transition fast enough to tri training, so the Frosty Foot became my primary run race of the off season. As I just said, running has been a huge weakness so I focused on it in the off season. This is an 18.7 mile trail run. So that means lots of obstacles such as roots, rocks, hills, etc. Oh yes, and people. The trail was quite narrow, which basically forced you to run at the pace of those around you. This race did not go well for me and I'm not sure what happened. About 8 miles in I started really losing focus and interest. I had no motiviation to keep going, and knowing I wasn't even half way there didn't help. My ankles started really hurting due to turning them so many times on the terrain. I was barely running at this point and wound up doing a lot of walking. By mile 11/12 I was pretty much only walking. I was very fortunate in that around mile 14 there was a bail out point and I was able to cut out the remaining 4 miles. My ankles were really hurting at this point and I was limping pretty badly. It was my first ever DNF. It was really hard to swallow, as a big part of me wanted to press on, but I knew there was no point. I'd be walking for another 4 miles, probably do more damage. My number one concern is triathlon racing and I didn't want to do anything to mess up the coming season. So I swallowed my pride and lived to race another day. Paris Mountain International, April 2013 This was a very fun race, albeit, a cold one. It's a an length for an international with a short swim, only 500 yards, a short bike, only 20 miles, and a short run, just 5 miles. However, it's short for a reason. It's considered one of the most difficult short distance races in the area. The bike has a 2 mile climb that rises 1200. The run is even harder, it's relatively flat for 1.5 miles, then it rides 400 feet over the final mile. I was registered for this a couple years ago before it was cancelled due to weather, so I was looking forward to taking another shot. We had quite a cold, rainy spring this year. While the water is typically in the low 70's for this race, by race day it was in the low 50's. So fortunately they cancelled the swim and made the race a duathlon. So, we wound up just lining up by number and starting on the bike. It really felt weird to do a race this way, as I'm used to frantically throwing on my bike gear before getting going. The course was very difficult. I had been thinking it was relatively flat except for the climb, but I was wrong. There were lots of rollers, so you weren't even really able to take it easy before the climb. I felt great on the climb however. I moved slowly and steadily, even passing a few cyclists on the way to the top. Charleston Half Ironman, April 2013 I wrote up a race report in another blog entry for this. But all in all, best race to date. My time was 5:17:00. Beat my previous PR by 27 minutes. Oh yea, and I joined the "pee on one's self during the cycling leg" club. I had a very large gap between this race and my next race due to an injury. I had a hernia that I wasn't able to get operated on until the end of may, so that put me out until the end of june. And the next race I could enter wasn't till later in July. Asheville Triathlon, July 2013 This is a really fun little race. It's a pool swim of 400 meters, an 11.5 mile bike ride and a 5k. Well, supposed to be a 5k, but it was mismeasured and wound up being only 2.75 miles. I improved on all segments of this race, although the run was hard to quantify since it was short. I think i was still pacing a bit faster than last year, which was my previous best 5k to date. I finished 14th overall, not quite my goal of top 10, but I did get 2nd in my age group, and a PR for the race overall. Continued on part 3