Monday, August 22, 2011

Quintana Roo and Lake Stevens Half Ironman

HUGE NEWS: Team Evotri has just partnered with Quintana Roo!

The team will be riding slick new QR bikes and I will be taking mine to the big island for the Ironman World Championships. I am getting fitted on it on Thursday so stay tuned for pictures and maybe videos of the fitting and the new rig. I will be racing it this weekend. No better way to break it in than a race.
I am stoked because they make the slickest tri bikes and aren't confined by the ludicrous UCI so the innovations flow. Thanks QR.

It's been a while, lovely blog trolls. I have been a lazy piglet and I apologize. You are doubtless wondering what I have been doing with my time as you probably assume it has been a magnificent and efficient use of it...Wrong again, bloggers. But I have been doing some things.
For example, I recently traveled up to Seattle to help my MSU buddy, Aaron Scheidies race at Lake Stevens 70.3. He is blind and needs a guide to race. He is also incredibly fast, a world champion, espy nominated, world record holder, and general beast.

He called me up three weeks prior to the race. Prior to that, I had been mainlining bacon and chocolate for a month. I was woefully out of shape when he told me he needed a guide for this race. I reluctantly agreed against my better judgement. The next 3 weeks were a whirlwind of getting into shape which included frequent bonks on the bike and many horrible pseudo-drownings masquerading as swim workouts.

I got to a point where I felt ok about going into the race but still didn't know what to expect. We haphazardly made our way into the water. The para triathletes go off with the female pros so we got clean water and a good pack to swim with. It didn't matter for me. I got worked over in the swim and my poor swim fitness shown ever so brightly. Scheidies sand bagged for me, dropped me, and swam all over the place. Finally, we were both out in 29:46. Damn. Bad start for me.

We jumped on the bike and unleashed the green MSU freight train from hell. We brought death and pain to half of the pro men field. They were pushing tiny teacup gears as we were bringing rolling thunder down on the pacific northwest. For me, the fitness on the bike was WAY better than the swim. 2:23 later, we were onto the run.

The run started out super conservative and we chatted until mile 6. Scheidies got a bunch of goodies from a friend to launch into the crowd. We had several firework poppers that we blasted off. Shirts and sweatbands were unleashed upon his fans. People went nuts like it was like the halftime at a Detroit Shock game. BALLIN. We started on the second loop and kept it super comfortably, slightly edging the intensity up for the last 3 miles. We finished in 1:30 for a total time of 4:27. Overall, probably the most comfortable half iron I have done.

We finished 11th amateur and 25th overall.
Now starting on the next stage of Kona training.


1 comment:

Mandie said...

Hi, I came across your site and wasn’t able to get an email address to contact you. Would you please consider adding a link to my website on your page. Please email me back and we'll talk about it.

Thanks!

Mandie Hayes
mandie.hayes10@gmail.com