Pacific Grove 2012

After I got home from WTS Stockholm, I went to the doctor and found out that I had irritation and inflammation in my chest and lungs that I never let get better. I was prescribed “Don’t do anything” for 10-14 days. I ended up doing nothing aerobic for 11 days and finally felt a complete change in my body. When I started training again I had no breathing issues, I didn’t cough at night, and my heart rate was back to normal. I could take giant deep breaths and felt like a new person. I started training again on Tuesday September 4^th and knew that Pacific Grove was on the 8^th. I made the choice to compete the morning of the race. I knew that I could use this race as a training event and not compromise my future training. It was an awesome event, but racing when out of shape is definitely rough!

The Race:
There were only about 10 Pros in this race so it was pretty low key compared to previous years. The swim was long this year, and Dustin Mclarty and I were able to put about 45sec on our nearest competitors. I knew coming into the event that I hadn’t run for literally 2 weeks, so I was gonna have to swim and ride fairly hard. 

Dustin and I did just that. I lead the swim out and was first on the bike. Since it was a draft legal race I knew it was in my best interest to have someone to ride with, so I waited for Dustin and when he was on my wheel we were off. The first three laps of the bike felt amazing, I was taking really long pulls and almost dropping Dustin. But by the fourth lap the heavy winds and my extremely out of shape body shut down on me. My heart rate kept getting lower and lower and my legs felt more and more like lead. On the second half of the last lap I was barely able to hold Dustin’s wheel! I told Dustin “This is your race dude, I’m gonna have to walk”.

When we got to T2 we had about 2:30 on a chase pack of two, 5 min on another group of 2, and much more time on a few others. I was stoked that I wasn’t having any breathing issues, but I was not stoked that my legs felt like jello sticks. 

Dustin went flying by me right out of transition, and that was the theme for the rest of the race. I ended up jogging a 40:09 10k (which is literally 8min slower than last year) and finishing 5^th overall. My time was 13 minutes slower than last year, but I had a big ol smile on my face because I was able to race again without any breathing issues!