I know, I know....I was going to keep this thing updated a bit more often. Sometimes I don't feel like hitting the keyboard and make a post, but I usually think of things I could write about.
It's been busy around here. The wife has done two of the local tri club's races in the series and won her age group in both. Today she covered a sprint distance race of 450 yards swimming, 16 miles biking, and 3 miles running in about 1:20:12, getting first in her age group. About two weeks ago she won the Masters Women's division in the sprint distance at the Red River Triathlon which was changed to a duathlon because the river was too high and too fast to be safely used as part of the course. So she has to do two runs and she wasn't keen on five total miles of running because of her knee. But she made it okay and was also the 7th overall woman to finish the distance. Well done, as the Aussies would say, as well as "Good on ya!" I was proud of her.
Last weekend I was down in Natchez, MS to do the LA/MISS district road race championships. I competed in the Masters 45+ on Saturday afternoon....which was hot enough....and we were combined with the Masters 35+ to cover 47 miles on a 5.1 mile loop course through the Natchez State Park. We had about 40 riders overall that was big on horsepower. I only hoped for a decent result. I knew I couldn't match legs with many of the guys in the lineup so I had to minimized my losses the best I could. There were 16 racers in my 45+ group so I knew I had 16th place locked up! As soon as we started I realized the pace was going to be fast and it stayed that way throughout the first lap, pushing hard on the early uphills (155 feet of elevation gain in the first mile) and flying fast on the curving downhills. I heard that it was like that the first four laps.
I say I heard that because I got shelled early into the second lap on the uphills. Sad to say that I was climbing pretty well for me but not well enough to stay with the stud hosses in the pack. I latched onto two other OTB guys from the NBO (New Orleans) and S3 (Alexandria) teams and we rode together the next five laps, picking up other stranglers, and at one point we had about seven riders together keeping up a good pace. The NBO and S3 guys were riding against me, I began to think, 'cause they were talking to each other and not to me, and I wondered if they were coming up with some plot to drop the north Louisiana guy. We would drop the other riders on the uphills but both of them couldn't seem to shake me until it was just the three of us again. Then the main pack came upon us, about to lap us, and they were going strong. On my 7th lap, they caught us at midpoint of the uphills and I decided to latch onto the back of their group. I thought I could keep up at least one time on those hills and we'd see who, in my little group, could stay. It worked...I latched onto that pack and we powered up the hills. By the time we leveled out I looked behind me and the NBO and S3 guys were gone. I was the lone survivor of the dropped riders (I heard later that the S3 guy DNF'd). I hung onto the back of the pack for 1/2 lap, saw that most of them were 35+ riders and notice my teammate, Brian, was still in the group which made me very happy. He was having a great ride.
But their pace was a bit much for me and I dropped off again, eventually catching a 35+ rider who is very good but wasn't having a good day. We rode together and talked, and as we finished the final lap, I let him have the sprint to the line. He wasn't in my age group so I really wasn't competing with him. I ended up 9th in the 45+ group which was much better than my 15th place last year. I get a few cycling cup points for the team and I finished the race. I was satisfied with my effort for the shape I'm in. I skipped Sunday's races and we headed home after watching the first few laps of the Cat. 1-2-3 race.
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