Day two of the Triathlon Santa Cruz weekend was extremely
similar to day one, in fact, much too similar for my taste. The slight difference was that Sunday’s race
was double the distance of Saturday, and that John Dahlz was racing. JD is one
of the fastest triathletes in the bay area and didn’t race on Saturday so was
basically in perfect position to tear us “two-dayers” to pieces. Having him on
the start line was fantastic and great for all of us as athletes.
The race started exactly the same as the day before but this
time Dylan and I had JD on our feet out of the water. This time I didn’t sprint
to T1, but I did have about a 10 second gap out on the bike. I was able to
maintain that lead until the 2nd of 4 laps when JD came flying by
me. I tried everything I could to go with him but I had nothing in my legs. I
legitimately thought for a bit that I had a flat tire because he was putting so
much time into me on the next couple laps, but alas, he was just very strong.
On my Garmin I was getting splits and was shocked to see that I was riding
faster than the previous day which was half the distance! Not only that, but
Dylan McNeice and Eric Clarkson were gaining ground on me every lap as well. By
the time we were coming into T2, JD was about 30 seconds up, Dylan had passed
me, and Eric was right behind me (Eric had the fastest bike split of the day by
almost a minute!).
I was prepared to destroy myself on the out and back run to
catch JD, but when I went to rack my bike there wasn’t another bike on the rack
(I was right next to JD) and so I asked Eric “Where’s JD?” and while I finished
throwing my shoes on and started to head out on the run I see JD just coming in
to rack his bike. Apparently he had gone the wrong way into transition and lost
his 30 second gap on all of us.
After that it was back to “maintain form” mode, and this
time the challenge was 10k. I started off running the same pace as the day
before and by 2k in JD had bridged the 10 seconds he was behind me out of T2
and was running right on my heels. I put in a few surges and was able to drop
him about 4.5k into the run. I had to run a 3:09k and a 3:06k to drop him and after I had a gap I
kinda put it into cruise control and was really working hard to stay relaxed
and maintain my new run form as I was getting more and more tired. I ended up
keeping my form, but my pace gone up to 3:22, then 3:30 which allowed JD to
come back within reach. I had looked back with 500m to go and I saw where he
was and knew I would be able to hang on until the finish. I ended up crossing
the line about 3 seconds in front of him which made for the most exciting
Triathlon Santa Cruz finish so far.
I was completely surprised by my splits from this weekend,
especially since I changed my run form drastically, I was sicker then I have
ever been my entire life the week before the races, then had a major training
week leading into the races. On Saturday we weren’t slouching either, we were
racing hard, but on Sunday I had faster pace splits in the swim, bike, and run
for double the distance! Intense weekend with a great group of athletes!
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