Quick recap of Xterra Portland:
Long drive, the I5 between Seattle & Portland is just construction & heavy traffic…yikes. Left home around 10am on Friday, August 14, arrived at Hagg Lake at 5pm! Had a chat with Rob the race director, and when to do a pre-ride with Toby (Xterra Black Diamond’s race director). The pre-ride was very informative. Turns out the course consisted of very tight singletrack were it’s really hard to pass, follow by road sections and so on, and goes all around the lake for a 25km loop. The first half is dry, fast & flat, the second half is wet, slower & hilier!
Race morning: I arrived at Hagg Lake at about 7:30am, got set up in transition, and got myself ready for the 9am start. Considering the bike course, I knew it was essential to have a good swim, unfortunately, my swim didn’t go too well, as I got stuck behind people, and didn’t swim too straight myself! 1000m Swim: 19:45
Transition went ok (long run to T1), but I got on my bike pretty fast. It’s really too bad that I suck at swimming, because now I was stuck behind a group of 8 or 9 riders that were going too slow for me. It took me a while to pass just a few on the tight singletrack, and I ended up passing 4 or 5 more once we got on the road… it was very frustrating because I knew I was loosing valuable time… aside from that, the course was going ok. Finally, during the second part of the bike I broke free of the clutter and rode at my speed, I caught up with Melrad teammate Jennifer, who obviously swims way better than I do, then caught up with another female pro …got back to T2 in 1:29:10, fully expecting the 2 female pros I had just passed to humiliate me on the run!
T2 went great as usual: 31 seconds! This is really my best discipline!
For this race I chose to wear the Avia Bold II racing flats rather than the Avia Stoltz because the run course was dry & fast and had a signifiquant section of road… The 5.5 mile run went without an incident, and I completed the run in 42:07 and crossed the finish line in 2:33:49… good enough for 4th female amateur and 2nd in my AG.
to sum up: I need to learn to swim…