On Saturday, June 23, I raced my third Xterra event of 2007 held at Tahoe City. This is my first year racing Xterras and have enjoyed them tremendously. I am hoping to qualify for the US National Championships in September. My previous two races were at Granit Bay and Castaic.
I drove up the day before to pre-ride the bike course. It was a very nice afternoon when I arrived and it’s been a while since I had visited Tahoe. The only other time I had been in Tahoe City was in 2000. This was my segment of the Tahoe Relays, so did not see much as I was running through. The scenery was beautiful. I pulled out my course map and started the course, ~ 2 mile climb.
I was careful not to push the pre-ride, as I have been concerned with the effects of the altitude on my performance. Just granny-geared up the climb and kept my HR down.
Since this was just a scouting of the course, I took pictures…
I think this is Antone Meadows…
I met up with another rider, Luke, during the pre-ride and chit-chatted around the course. Funny, we ended up racing an almost identical race, time-wise, with splits from the swim/bike/run just seconds off each other. He ended up finishing ~30 seconds ahead of me.
Race morning, I got set up my T1/T2 which is about 1/3 of a mile from the swim exit. The morning was brisk but was warming up quickly. Got coffee and a bagel at a shop midway between the swim and bike transition. The water temp was ~55-57 degrees. Nice, as this is about the temp of my swims in the ocean.
The swim was a two lap (600m) course with about 50m beach run in between laps. During my warm up run and swim, I could feel the effects of the altitude, my HR seemed to be jumping and breath seemed shallow. Of course, it could have been nerves also. So, at the swim start, I told myself to be conservative on the first lap, tuck in and find a nice draft. I was able to do this quite quickly and my first lap felt great. Picked up the pace on the second lap and had caught a few more swimmers. Found another swimmer to draft behind the last 200 meters and settled back to get my HR down for the run to the bikes. Came out of the water feeling good and so far, seemed to be doing fine with the altitude. Place out of the water was good (probably about 15th), but the Short Course participants only did one loop, so really could not tell for sure.
This was part of the run to the bikes, you can see the flags of the start off in the distance…
The bike course was fun and LOOONG, compared to the other two venues I’ve race. Not as technically difficult. Posted at 22 miles, I basically clocked myself on the bike at about two hours. It was great, though. This was my first race on my new PF carbon bike. It performed flawlessly and felt great. The course had lots of sections that had washboard bumps and fist-size granite rock. This bike was smooth, tracked solidly on turns, and of course climbed like a goat.
Made it safely back down to T2, took a goo and some water and headed out for the run. Unfortunately, I was not able to check out the run course before the race, but had an idea of what to expect. However, my expectation of a fairly difficult climb to start the run was an under-estimate to say the least. Basically, the run was about 2.5 mile uphill (approx. 1000ft), .5 rolling/flat, 2.5 mile downhill quad buster, and .5 flat to the finish. This did turn out to be one race run with a huge negative split for me.
My impression of the run profile…
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As it being a trail run, there was lots of rocks and ruts. I walked about 1/3 of the uphill, not losing much to anyone in front of me (got passed by three and was even was able to pass a couple myself). I kept repeating “don’t spike your HR” “save it for the downhill”. This proved to be a good strategy for me, as I picked off another couple of runners going down and caught up to two guys that passed me going up (one was Luke from my pre-ride). They were not in my age-group, so I just settled in behind and made sure I did not get picked off by anyone else.
Finished strong in about 3:18, 6th in my age-group and hopefully enough points to get to Nationals.
Awards…
Lunch…
The day after, I had ambitions to ride the Flume trail, which you can almost see on the mountain immediately to the right of the tent…
But my legs would not have that, so took a leisurely ride along the bike path next to the Truckee River…
In about two hours, the river will be filled with recreational rafters floating down from Tahoe City to Squaw Valley…
Wolf!!!
I can see now why all pictures of Sasquatch or UFOs are blurry. They are taken while riding the bike.
Actually, he looked like a husky when I got closer. Poor guy, must have been out here a long time the way he looked (not skinny, but definately ratty). I tried to offer him some food (only had a Clif bar), but he sniffed, wagged his tail saying thanks but no thanks, and trotted of into the woods.
Thanks for reading.
Chris