Take on the Heat

I took part in the 3rd of 4 races of Play Tri's North Texas Tri Series this weekend. Take on Heat which benefited The Colony Fire Fighters it started as a 350 meter pool swim. I was #61, but people were nice enough to let me move up and I started in front of my buddy and home stay Bender. The plan was to let him pass me then I draft the rest of the way. It took him about 2 laps to catch me but when he did I had to really work to stay on his feet and I was almost getting a bit sick to my stomach by the end of the swim, my swim wasn't impressive but it was 18th fastest. The bike was 2 loops and more technical with lots of turn at the beginning of each loop. I've never rode well technically before, but today I did thanks to Austin Saylor who I had to work hard to stay legally behind him. We went back and forth, but he did most of the work because I never could pull up close enough to him to go around him until the very end where I just smashed it as hard as I could and passed going into transition. I finished the bike with a 25.3 mph bike split. Finally, on the run my legs felt good like at Bridgeland and I could see Ahmed way up ahead so that was giving me motivation to keep pushing. My garmin is messed up again and I think possibly for good this time so I would "manually" count out loud how many seconds he was up on me, it was like 45, 29, and eventually I caught him near the 2 mile mark, but Ron Tribendis was still up ahead and I finally caught him, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to by the end of the run or not. In these pool swims you never know who is where really on the course. It felt like I was running faster but I still finished with the top run time of 17.34, about 5:39 average mile. Overall it was a good race with NO mechanical issues (besides the Garmin).

As you can see there were only two guys in the race. Me and Austin.

Some of guys were lucky enough to be with some of the beautiful ladies of the Frisco Triathlon Club.

Thank God for a good race and for remaining alive with DFW traffic! and Thanks to Bender for letting me stay with him again and Lance for gluing on a tubular tire on for me this week. Up next I am doing my 4th race this month in the Houston area again, the Clearlake international distance triathlon. It should be more good times with some of my homies Stephen and Brad.