brewer's Comments:

We've been in a heat wave, and I new this race was going to be hot.

We had ridden the mountain bike trail last weekend, which was good, but I took a tumble and was out of it for a few days and only got one day of exercise in this week. I was in California on business the prior week, and now that I look back on my calendar I only got four days of training in over the prior two weeks. That might explain why I felt so bad.

NB drove up from Houston Friday so we left my house at 0600 to get to the race site and set up.

His Cool Hut is the shiznit. This was the best TA setup we've ever had. We were all done about an hour before race start so it was a relaxing beginning.

All the teams in the male masters class had numbers in the 70s so we were scoping out other teams and sizing up the competition. The competition was pretty damn big as it turned out.

Kathy blew the horn at 0915 and we were off on the run - all 100+ teams.

It started off easy on a dirt road and then turned nasty about 3/4 mile in. We were running on the sloped bank of the lake which was covered in large, loose rocks. This part felt like it went on forever, but we eventually hit the single track through the trees.

I was running too fast and didn't think this would turn out too good, but I didn't blow up, and we were back to the life vests in just over 24 minutes. We had to put on the vest and then enter the lake and walk/swim about 40 yards before running back through the TA to get our kayak seats. The water felt great, but I was sucking wind pretty hard.

The kayak section was long and the course was like an upside down triangle. We got in a good rhythm (much better than our last race) and picked off a few teams on the first leg. The second leg was the longest and straight into the wind. We got passed by a 70s team but passed a couple more boats before rounding the last buoy and heading back for land. Our kayak time was around 25:30.

We ran back through the TA and changed into dry socks and got all of our mountain bike gear on.

Shortly after taking off on the bikes, we were in some loose sandy rocky sections which weren't too fun. But before long we hung a left and were on the single-track. This section is a bit of a blur too me. I was hurting and focused on riding and not what was going on around me. I think we passed 4 or 5 teams on the mountain-bike section.

I only had one close call but no broken helmets this time out.

I lost my rear brakes with about 4 miles to go which hurt me. The turns are so loose that you can't use your front brake and turn or you'll wash out. I trail-brake with my rear through these which lets me keep my speed up through the turn. But with no rear brakes I had to get all my slowing down done well before entering the turn which meant more pedal power needed to exit and catch back up to NB. That just wasn't happening near the end.

I wasn't in complete bonk mode but close. I could hear a couple of the teams we had passed earlier behind me but they didn't catch us despite my less-than-heroic efforts. In fact we only got passed once the entire hour on the bike and that was by one seriously fast coed team. Pretty good I guess. We finished in 1 hour and 56 minutes and some change.

We had signed up for the optional navigation section and spent another 1.5 hours out traipsing through the woods in search of check point markers. We started off wasting 30 minutes looking for the first CP, but after reading the description that said top of hill, we found it and hoofed another couple miles to the second one.

I took the easy way by following a trail that paralleled our heading. NB stayed right on course and still has some cactus needles stuck in him as a reminder.

We finally found the second CP and headed out to the third which was on an island that now had a land bridge due to low water. However as we soon found out the land was covered in thick muck which soon pulled one of my shoes off. We quickly found the CP, punched our card and headed back to the finish.

I was totally beat, completely empty, absolutely spent. I walked into the lake and spent a few minutes washing the mud off and trying to cool down.

We got 3rd place in our division and 12th overall which really impresses me. The level of competition was much higher at this race than the previous one at White Rock Lake.

The second place team beat us by 4 minutes. I'm not sure I could have made that up or not even if I was feeling 100%. But you can be sure that I'll have at least 10 training days over the next two weeks before our next race.

I don't want to feel as bad as I did today again anytime soon.