Now that triathlon season is getting closer, I opened up with a run race at the Fresh15 in Tyler again this year. I haven't been running a whole lot to due to a little knee issue that I let settle down from last year and we have been making progress with that and I've been able to run/bike with no problems. This is one of the premier run races held in East Texas and if the production in 2014 wasn't big enough, 2015 was huge, with a larger prize purse, more Kenyans and elite runners, and added vendors.
We had a great pre-race dinner at KE Bushman's in Bullard with loads of delicious pasta and the guest speaker was world-famous Ultra-runner Scott Jurek to deliver motivational speech.
I went into this race without any expectations since I haven't been running much, but of course I wanted to do well. I'm lined up in back of the elite start.
I went out at a controlled effort, if I started pushing too hard I couldn't defintely feel it. Most of the race I was in "no man's land" meaning I was always by myself. At the 3 mile mark I started putting in surges around the turns to distance myself to whoever (Seth) might be coming up from behind me and not looking back - to give any hint of being be scare of suffering. I started with 20 second hard right foot turnovers, then around 4 or 5 miles, I increased it to 40 hard right foot turnovers, by mile 6 or 7 I was up to 50 hard turnovers at the turns. Going up 8 mile hill on Dueling Oaks road I received some motivation from Mike Buenaventura and Dan Willson, I'm not sure how to explain their enthusiasiam, you would have thought they were inebriated with as much as yelling they were doing, but that was just two guys high on life.
My splits were fairly even, considering the hilliness of the course. I felt plenty strong going up and down the hills, I just had no leg speed to back it up and was two minutes slower this year, which isn't bad since I just started running regularly a couple of weeks ago, spending most of the winter working on my bike strength.
Fit City of Tyler was nice enough to donate $$$ to the fastest runners in Tyler, turns out Seth and I claimed 2nd and 3rd. Not bad for a couple of triathletes. Not featured is a young gun fresh out of college from UT Tyler, Nick Huff.
A few of the guys I've been coaching and helping out did well. I've been working with Leslie Stelpflug with her on her swim to transform her into a triple threat triathlete, she was 12th overall Elite in the women's field, Oluwaseun Oshaleke "Emmanuel" was 12th in the 0-19 age group with a time of 25:10, in his first 5K! He's just 14!!! Only been training a couple of weeks. He says he's going to work hard over the summer and get into the money next year. He's an all around athlete, that is in Hubbard track, football, and soccer. Stephen Dinger, finished the 5k in 27:22 on a hilly course and was 6th place 30-34, in preps for IMTX 70.3. Rylan was 53rd in 0-19 age group in 38:48 and I was very happy with his attitude out there.
Thank you to Megan Riaz, Trent Brookshire, and all the amazing volunteers who made this possible despite the cold weather we had all week. Thank you to Jesus, my Wife & Rylan, Extremus, Cobb Mobb, Cobb Cycling, and my Coach Jeremy from Mind Right Multisport.
I'm not exactly sure what is lined up next for me but the key races this year are the Legend Tri Half Ironman in Kansas and Challenge Half Ironman in Knoxville. Thanks for reading.
