Las Vegas PumpkinMan

I had planned this Vegas trip back in August, and thought it would be a fun trip to take as many friends and T3TRI elite boys as possible. In the end I had five boys and three friends that made the trip to come race with me. I picked this course because I thought it would be a great way to gauge my triathlon fitness on a course very similar to what I'll face in May at the St George Ironman.

I took off to Thursday, a day before everyone else. I wanted to to go ride part of the course Friday, and not have to drive 5 plus hours on my birthday or the day before a half Ironman distance. It was a good move in the end, because I got to experience first hand how punishing the last six miles of the bike course were; straight mean!
I met all my peeps around 4PM on Friday at packet pick-up. This is where I started and ended my ride earlier. It was perfect timing because I had been in line for only 5 minutes when they showed up. We got our timing chips, race numbers, and got body marked. We also set up our T2 (bike to run transition). The start of this race (swim to bike) is around six miles away and downhill from T2/ finishline.
We went back to the condo to drop off Chris, Ammiee, and Amy's stuff and then went out to the Claim Jumper for carb loading dinner. It hit the spot but was a bit late for a pre race meal. Chris was awesome and picked up the tab being it my birthday and all. What a cool gift for a great friend. I had a little anxiety at dinner thinking of the race and what I need to do to get ready. I quickly got that out of my head and told myself that this is just for fun.
Race morning always seems too early 0430. I downed an insure, half a banana, and half of some organic bar the gave us in our race bag. I also must have tried to use the damn bathroom 5 times before we left to no avail. I'm a big believer in a good bathroom stop before the race start.

We pulled into the Lake Mead boat ramp parking lot. Right away I was looking for a non crowded bathroom. I went and set up my T1 transition. Amy made the comment that everyone up in the long course section of the transition, where I was, were just like me; type red personality and OCD. As we walked back down transition towards the water, where the olympic and sprint transitions were, they had music playing and people were loose and Amy said "these are my kind of people". I said you have me all wrong, I'm not like the people up there, I'm like these kind of peeps!

I finally found a bathroom and had a great experience there. I went back up to the car to get my Elite boys all set up and to wish them well and then headed to the start. I got in the water and swam about 20 meters out and back., The water was fine! Very clear and perfect temp. Right before we were to start some race lady come over with her megaphone and shout out swim directions that were completely opposite of what we all thought we were doing. Everyone was confused. Some guy came over and took over and tried to clear things up. It was very unclear to me and I moved back a bit and figured I'd just follow. Thirty three minutes later I was out of the water and making my way up to my bike, about 1/4 of a mile up the boat ramp! It felt like a long ways away. Off to the bike.

The bike… the bike was tough. Thanks to my ride the day before I knew that a six mile hill was coming up a mile 50. So, I held back a little throughout the bike ride. I felt really good the entire ride except for my lower back. I've been playing with my bike position for the last month and hadn't been on the bike enough to get used to the new position. I now think it's a great position, I just need to work on core, lower back, and flexibility. Off to the run

I had a fast transition and felt great for the first two miles (sub 7 pace). I caught to halfer's at mile three and ran with them until mile 7.5. At which point I got dropped.

My stomach was pissed! I now think that I consumed too many calories on the bike. I committed a cardinal sin, and was trying something I had never used before on race day; EFS. The EFS went down smooth but was hard to gauge how much I had poured into my water bottle and hence hard to tell how much I was consuming. I'm guessing that I took in between 800-1200 calories in the 3:10 ride. I really only needed 750 and as soon as I tried to take calories on the run I figured that one out. I had rough miles between 8-10.5 but got it back for the last two miles. I lost 4 minutes on the two guys I was running with at the 8 mile mark. finish

I was way happy with my race and how my Elite boys did. It was also a great bench mark for my up coming training for St George IM. It was now time to party!!
Thanks to Chris and Amy for all the great photos