So I was asking someone about American Zofingen…
They told me they didn’t know anything about any conjugal visits, but the trick was to either kick somebody’s ass in the SC or become Murphy’s Law’s bitch. I decided to go for the short course.
Pre-race. I hear that Dave Roche is out with a mishap. Bummer. This may open the door for a bottom feeder like me.
At the start. There is a guy at the start, who was infamously the subject of a very heated ST thread a few years back. Since I was neither involved with that race (Harriman) or knew the guy, I resisted the urge to crack a joke about this being the right event for him at AZ, since it would be very easy to keep track of how many laps you did. Under normal circumstances this guy would have won the SC.
Run 1. Pretty uneventful. This is longest 5 miles you will ever run (I have now done 11 circuits of it for my career). I come through in a 36:17, I think in 6th place, just behind a three other guys. Tried to keep HR at about 165. I am in decent shape and have recently run a couple of 10Ks faster than my five mile run time at AZ, so yes Canadian’s it is a hard run course.
ML, 34:50, I am a little behind.
Bike. This starts poorly. Bike making funny noise. Halfway up the first climb I see rear wheel rubbing dropout. Uh oh. Fortunately the skewer just got loose or something, so it was a pretty quick fix. Not fun trying to get clipped back in on that hill. This probably only cost me 30 seconds. After this everything goes quite smoothly. The climbing here is always harder than it looks. Pass lots of people, some TT guy passes me late. Impressive, but who knows if he finished. It is going to be close to break 1:30. 1:29:41, but it took a lot out of me.
ML 1:30:49, I totally owned him on the bike. This is like like when Lance used to drop Jan on the climbs. I am the dreamcrusher.
T2. To my disbelief there are no carbombs. WTF. This completely screws up my nutrition. I am a little delirious from the heat and need whiskey to calm my nerves. It looks like I am the first biker back from SC, but there are at least two guys I do not remember passing who should be ahead of me. As far as I know I am in third.
Run 2. Okay, must run. The legs are not doing well here. I “ran” the whole first uphill section. There was some power walking after that. I manage to trade spots with an F1 guy to keep it moving, just trying to hold onto third and a sub 2:50 finish. I only need to run 42:00 to make that and maybe have a chance to take out KingML. I run by a huge F’in snake, like 4 or 5 feet long.
Finish. The announce the first SC finisher is headed in, but I don’t see him. Then they tell me I win. I ran 46:00, to come home in 2:53:30. I am waiting for my victory carbomb, but it never comes. Someone at least gives me a coke when I asked for it.
ML 37:38, so he powned me on the run. But it’s all about the bike, so I am still the man.
Aftermath. The second place finisher is a womans, who made up 9:00 on me in the 2nd run. Apparently the race leader decided one loop was not enough and rode back up to the Mohonk House and some other guy flatted and I never notice passing him. This was my 5th race in 6 weeks, so I am taking a month off of racing.
So, I let ML off the hook again. Next race is Whiteface Hillclimb on June 18. I clocked a 49:XX there last year. If ML knows what’s good for him he ought to skip that race, he knows what I did to him on the bike yesterday and that was with me saving myself to run.