Bluff Creek MWCTC Qualifier

Race prep:
Last Saturday myself and four of my Trihawk teammates (Kyle, Zach, Duncan, and Farrah) traveled across Iowa to race at Bluff Creek.  We got into Boone, IA during the afternoon and began setting up our campsite.  The race was about 2.5 hours away from home so we all decided that we'd camp there the night before.  Although camping usually isn't the most comfortable sleeping situation ever it sure is fun!

Race day:

Because we camped at the race site we were able to sleep in a little bit...if waking up at 6am is considered sleeping in.  My race as a whole went pretty well but I did learn one thing...and that is the old rule of "you cant win the race on the swim but you sure can lose it".  Although I wasn't expecting to win the race I wanted to lower my PR and my bad swim put me in a hole that I was trying to make up all day.  My swim was 4.5 minutes slower than my swim at Nationals.  I hate making excuses for a bad performance but there was a lot of cloud cover which made the buoys hard to see, the course was set up in a weird way so it was a little bit confusing, and I threw up during the swim.  Yes thats right, about half way through the swim while turning my head to take a breath and I puked.  I didn't feel it coming it just kinda happened.  I've never puked during a race before so it kinda freaked me out...I felt bad for the people behind me who had to swim through it...I'm sorry! But after looking at the results of my teammates it looked like everyones swim was about 3-5 minutes slower than Nationals, so that made me feel a little bit better about my own performance.

Swim start with the Trihawks already out in front

My race struggles continued on the bike.  It was a great course with a couple monster hills but the 20mph wind made it very difficult at times.  I got off the 41.3K bike course in 1:12:27...only :35 seconds slower than my PR and on a slightly longer course with a lot of wind and hills I was happy with that.  When I got off the bike I decided that I'd try as hard as I could to get myself out of the whole that I put myself into on the swim.  I felt great until about the last half mile.  I cut off just under 3 minutes off my run at Nationals.  I went 41:42 (6:43 min/mile) which was a new run PR so I was/still am excited about it.  I also set a PR in transition which added up to be 67 seconds faster than any other race that I've done.  Getting that free time is always a plus. My overall time was 2:23:42...missing my PR but only 10 seconds.  My slow swim really hurt me and I wasn't able to make up the deficit.  As a whole I had a blast at Bluff Creek, I'm already looking forward to racing there again, and I'm looking forward to my upcoming races.

Start of the bike portion