Once again the bridesmaid.
For the fourth time at Xterra Nationals, I came in 2nd. I’ve been beaten by 3 guys over the years, I’ve managed to win twice, and I’ve been lucky enough so far to avoid 3rd. This time Wayne Avery beat me, for the 2nd year in a row. Wayne’s just tough, but I raced well and gave him a good fight.
I have to start by thanking Mel and the team for everything this year. I have a really consuming job, with 10 hr days, 8 hrs of meetings, and hundreds of emails as the norm. Being on the team, getting all the support from the sponsors: ProBar, Nathan, Profile, Avia, Gu, Sundog, etc. really helped me when I lacked the motivation for getting up at 4 to work out, or just needed the drive to train that much harder.
For some reason, this year’s race in Utah got me wound up. I showed up Friday, just so I wouldn’t have too much time to get wired, but I still was so agitated that I only slept a few hours that night, and woke up feeling hung over. I headed to the race site with java and Advil (for my head). It took a while to set up, and once done I started feeling tired.
But the gun went off, and I went tearing out there. I missed the leaders, and spent the whole swim alone, but thanks in part to the new Profile wetsuit, I swam well and came out of the water under 22 min, and 13th overall - but only one amaetur who beat me on the swim finished the race ahead of me. I noticed at one point that my right eye seemed irritated during the swim – that would come into play later.
I slipped out of my Profile suit and hopped on the bike. I drilled it to the dam, and up the 1st climb. I noticed that my vision seemed funny, and thought my glasses were dirty. Mel came by about half way up, and I rode her wheel as long as I could with the camera motor bike with us. But Mel was gunning it, and by the first road crossing she had a 100 yds on me.
I rode the section with the bridges mostly alone. Stoff caught me right before the descent, but he was so fast I didn’t even try to ride with him. I had only pre-ridden the lower half of the course on Friday, thinking I would remember it from last year. I learned repeatedly, like when I hit the set of stairs down to the bridge, that this was not a good plan. Fortunately, I never crashed. I finally got to the big fire road climb, and Tom Lyons came by. I rode with him for a little while, but he too out-gunned me. I forgot how long that climb was, and I was in serious pain by the end. I rode the last single track section with some guy on my wheel the whole time asking me “how much further?”. Til the end dude, til the end.
Finally, I hit T2 - about 1:50 for the bike. I heard Witt and Jamie talking about me as I put on my Avia Stolz, and then I headed up that hill again. My legs felt ok, but wow that was another hard bit. At this point I noticed that there was definitely a problem with my vision. Everything was kinda blurry in the right eye. After about 15 min, as I was running in the single track, I saw Wayne coming after me. Well, I gave it a good fight. We encouraged each other and he went on at speed I couldn’t match. I kept fighting though, as I didn’t want to get passed again. I crossed the line sooner than I thought, and just missed going under 3 hrs by seconds. I had a surprise when I saw Casey Fanin come in after me. I ended up 30th amatuer, which is good for an old dude like me.
Then I went to the med tent to ask about my eye. They thought I could have a blood clot and was at risk of a stroke, and basically insisted that they take me to the ER in Ogden immediately. After 3 hrs in the ER, the eye started getting better, and the docs there said it probably got inflamed during the swim. I had to take a cab back to Snowbasin ($$), and missed the awards and seeing most everyone after the race, but at least I had a good race, knew I was OK, and could race in Maui. I also learned that I can race with one closed 