Instead of walking at graduation,  I decided to do something really memorable and race Xterra ACE Big Canyon in West Virginia! This was my second Xterra for the season (West Championship in Vegas was the first) and my dad was able to make it out to cheer me on with our dog Zoe.

I did this race for the first time 4 years ago when I first started riding and doing triathlons. I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to do the race again this year. The course is epic, swimming a mile and a half down a river, then running eight miles up the side of a mountain and mountain biking at the end. The Ace staff and volunteers are always awesome. Plus, my teammate Marcus was going to be there.

This race is notorious for it’s muddy conditions and this year would be no different.  A huge amount of rain fell on the area a week prior so I knew what to expect on the trails. However, I didn’t expect the swim to get cancelled because of the amount of rain. I was pretty disappointed I didn’t get to race in my new wetsuit from Profile Design.

We left early Saturday morning so I could pre-ride the course and have time to set up our tent before it got dark. It was nice that our campsite was only 100 ft away from the transition area!

Going into the race I was pretty nervous about my running fitness. After Vegas I took some time off from running to recover and prepare for Collegiate Road Nationals and had only started back up running again the week before the race. My longest run leading up to Vegas was around 40 minutes, so I knew running 8.3 miles with 1000 ft of elevation gain would be a huge challenge for me. I definitely started to fade the last couple of miles but was able to hold off the other girls.

Going into the bike I was first women and 10^th overall. My dad was able to give me time splits at various parts of the course. While I was getting my stuff together the night before, he was planning the route he and Zoe would take, running from aid station to aid station.  Good thing he’s a runner!

During the bike, I was able to hold off the other girls and started picking off some of the boys in front of me to finish 7^th overall. Marcus killed it, even making a wrong turn for a huge time delay and still managed to race back to fourth overall!

After the race we enjoyed free burritos provided by ACE and my post race favorite, massages!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 7:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.