Not bad for not training for speed. This year's Copperman was a blast. Spent the night before camping with friends, luckily we didn't get rained on like the weekend before when I was in Minnesota with my brother Dave. Race day was awesome as well. Great weather, great environment, great friends and family watching the race. The Copperman is becoming more of a social event for me than in the past. I seem to know so many people there, I walk through transition and always find someone I know and wants to chat. Its great!
Probably the best part about this years race was that it was Agustin's A race. I've been coaching Agus for this race for a whole year, and was super excited for him on race day. We had a bit of a setback a few weeks before. He injured his leg, and we had to scale back our expectations and goals, but Agus is a true warrior. After hurting his leg there was no stopping him in training, well at least until the pain got too much, and there was no question that he was going to finish this race. He exceeded my expectations, and swim, bike, runned himself to a great finish. Agustin has been with Northwoods Endurance the longest out of all our awesome athlete's, and he's not just a great triathlete, but a great friend as well. Congratulations Agustin! Hope to see you back next year, we'll be training for it either way ;)
I was happy with my race. Like I said before, I have not been training for speed. Everything this year has been focused on the Ironman, so I certainly have been putting my time in, but I was nervous about not doing a lot of interval and speed work leading up to the Copperman. My Minnesota race gave me a lot of confidence that I could compete, but I was unsure of how my performance at the smaller MN race would translate over to a little larger and more competitive crowd at the Copperman. I think it turned out alright :)
The biggest surprise I had was coming 1st out of the water. I actually led the race for awhile, most of the swim and 4 miles on the bike. I knew that I wasn't holding onto the top spot on the bike for long. My bike has a long way to go if I'm going to lead from start to finish someday. Being 1st out of the water had some perks. People actually notice you for one. You're the first person they see, and it was awesome hearing my name with "1st out of the water" attached to it. Northwoods Endurance really represented at the swim this year. Rick came in a close 3rd out of the water. It was great to see him so close, and maybe even a little bit better knowing that I was ahead of him ;)
The bike went well, I thought. I couldn't quite go as fast as I had hoped, but I didn't go slow either. I managed to hang around the top 10 going into T2. I took comfort in knowing that this may have been one of the few times the Copperman has seen the leader coming out of the water stay towards the front of the race. Usually the true swimmers come out first and fade very quickly on the bike. This year we had true triathletes leading the race.
My race strategy was to go hard on the swim, about 85% on the bike, and see what I had on the run. I think I hit that strategy real well. My goal was to push the bike, and trust my endurance and experience to still go fast on the run. I think I put in my best run split ever. 6:44 min/mi was my average pace! Usually I get passed on the run, this year I actually passed more people than who passed me (3:1). I was able to move up in the standings and finish a very respectable 7th, which is 3 spots ahead of last year (10th). Good race overall. Even better when you have such a great support team like Northwoods Endurance. I'm hoping next year all our Northwoods athletes will be sporting some NE apparel so we can really show off.
Now what? well, my only race left for this season is the Ironman! 4 weeks to go!!!
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