Kemah Race Report

First off I want to congratulate the Onurmark Productions for an outstanding race. I’m not sure I can say I’ve been to a better run race. The Staff kept everyone very informed in the weeks leading up to the race and the race plan was very well thought out and executed. The race definitely had a big time feel to it. Now onto the race report!

Erin and I arrived in Kemah Saturday and started preparations for the next day’s race. I thought preparation went well. I got a little surprise at the Pro meeting. As I found out that with the new wetsuit rules USAT established we wouldn’t be allowed to use our wetsuits like the age-groupers. This was a bummer as I don’t own a swim skin and my race uniform is definitely not ideal for swimming (i.e. big parachute pocket on the back).

This was my first race against the big boys and there were a lot of them. Names like 2-time Ironman World Champ Tim Deboom, 70.3 world champ Terenzo Bozzone, Ironman champ and worlds runner-up Chris Lieto, Andrew Yoder, Brian Fleischman, and many more talented triathletes toed the line. I wasn’t too happy with the end result for the day but learned many valuable things along the way to put in my toolbox. All in all for my first race I’ll take it. Here is the blow by blow.

I woke up at 3:45 am, with a night of surprisingly good sleep. Erin and I got ready and ate our traditional oatmeal and peanut butter breakfast. We then made the short walk from our hotel to the transition. I started running through my pre-race ritual of checking equipment and warming-up. Then Erin and I headed over to the Paddle boat for a nice mile ride out. We ended up sitting on the boat for a little over an hour, any warm up I had definitely was gone. They got the boat into place and then all the pro men lined up for a dive start. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I watched all the men around me piss themselves prior to the start (apparently 90 minutes without a bathroom while your drinking water like crazy is a little much).

They signaled the start and we were in the water battling. First 100 meters went well I was in the mix of the pack and feeling good. There was quite a bit of chop in the water, decent sized waves, and a strong side current that made it difficult to swim straight and sight. I over corrected on my sighting and fell of the hip of the guy next to me. Next thing I know I’m heading to the right and the pack is to the left. I had a split second to make a decision on whether to chase the pack or continue right to the Buoys. I decided to continue right (mistake #1). I got out of the water in a little over 24 minutes on a swim that was about 150-200 meters longer than the planned 1500 meters.

I ran into the first transition to see only two bikes left, with one of them being mine. I knew I had my work cut out for me, so I grabbed my bike and was off with a smooth transition. During the last part of the swim 2 Pro women had past me, I caught then within the first 2 miles off the bike and then started the lonely ride of trying to work my way back up to the main pack. Shortly into the bike I looked down at my computer for a Heart Rate check to realize I forgot to wear my HR strap (mistake #2). This really messed with my bike plan as I wanted to redline most the way on the bike but not over. To top it off I my computer wasn’t reading speed either. So I focused on keeping my cadence fairly high and pushing what I thought was an appropriate pace. By mile 3 I hit a nasty seam in the road and lost my water bottle (mistake #3). I got to ride the other twenty-one miles without fluids. I was watching my watch as I saw other pros on the course and with the exception of the first few it seemed like I was maintaining pace but not gaining. The last few miles of the bike I had the wind to my back and really pushed this section averaging about 31 mph. I rolled into T2 with a 58:40 bike averaging 25.4 mph.

After a smooth transition I was off on the run. The first couple miles I just tried to keep my head down and pace up. I came through the first 5K with a 17:45 including a short wrong turn (mistake #4). Right at the 5K mark I caught Pro Dan MacKenzie. I made sure to put in a good surge when I passed to minimize any chance of him latching onto me for the last 5k. At about the 4 mile mark I caught Matt Russell out of the corner of my eye, he looked to be running pretty good. I set myself up mentally for a battle the last couple miles. About the time Matt was closing on me I made another wrong turn (I missed the turnaround, mistake #5) and he yelled at me to bring me back on course. I turned around and tried to close the 10 seconds he just put into me. The last 1.5 mile was over and back on a bridge connecting an island to Kemah. The long uphill fried my legs and a good chase for Matt never materialized. I coasted in the last half mile making sure Dan didn’t close back in on me.

My end result was 12th out of 13 Pros that finished, in a time of 2:01:24. I definitely know I have a better race in me than that and as you can see I have a few mistakes I need to fix for next race, but that’s all part of the process. Andrew Yoder had an outstanding race taking the overall win with Terenzo Bozzone, Chris Lieto rounding out the top three. Only twelve more days until New Orleans 70.3 race and I’ve got a lot of work to do yet. My goal for this race is to improve off of Kemah. The field will be just as tough and much deeper with 40 Pros slotted to race this event and a nice race purse of $50,000. I’m looking forward to seeing how I stack up in the longer distance event. Until then, I'm wishing everyone luck in their own adventures.