 brewer's
Comments:
This was race #2 in the series, and we raced this
course last year so we knew what to expect.
I found us a
great deal on a hotel room at the Marriot Courtyard in
Richardson for $55, so we both headed up there Friday
afternoon. We went out on the search for our usual pre-race meal of some sort of Asian food and stumbled
upon a great Thai and Japanese place in Plano called
Zenna. The parking lot was packed, which was a good sign,
and we were seated immediately and ate a ton of awesome
food for not much money. If you are ever near Plano then
you need to stop by.
http://www.zennarestaurant.com/menu.html We
waddled back to the hotel and crashed pretty early.
We packed up in the morning and made it to White Rock
Lake about 7:30 and scoped out a site in the transition
area (TA). Wes and Bob
showed up shortly afterward with their pop-up shade, so
we had a great set up. We hopped on our bikes and rode
our boat seats down to the kayak area and got ready for
the race. There were over 100 teams at this race, so the
TA was pretty crowded.
The race started off with a 1.5 mile run to the
kayaks. We lined up near the front and took off at a
pretty quick pace. I clocked us at 11:01 entering the
kayak area which is about a 7:20 min/mile pace which is
pretty quick for running on grass, gravel and through
ditches.
We grabbed our seat, life jackets, paddles and a
kayak and hit the water and promptly started to suck.
Last year these kayaks seemed to have a mind of their
own and would start heading the wrong direction for no
reason that we could find. At race #1 we went straight
as an arrow, and I thought we had it figured out.
Apparently not. This boat kept turning left on us no
matter what adjustments we made. While we had stayed
close to our category lead team in the run, they pulled
away from us on the kayak. In fact they were the first boat out of the water, and we were somewhere around 10th.
We never saw them again.
We were both glad to get the paddle out of the way
and started the 1.5 mile run back to the TA and our
bikes. My arms were feeling like Jell-O after the paddle,
and we didn’t run as fast on the way back as they way
out. NB is the faster runner, but I don’t think he was
really feeling it on the way back either.
We hit the TA and made a quick transition to the
bikes. The majority of the course was on pavement so we
had aired up our tires to 40 psi for lower rolling
resistance. NB had spent most of his energy pulling us
along in the kayak, so it was my turn to pull him on the
bike. He tucked in behind me and off we went. I was
trying to hold an 18 mph pace which isn’t too bad on fat-tire bikes. We never really found any drafting partners,
so I kept pulling. NB took a couple of turns at the
front, but he was hanging on near redline, so I had no
problem pulling since I was feeling strong. We hit the
short dirt section and got that out of the way and
started back towards the TA. Near the end we got passed
by these two young muscle-bound dudes who are
demolishing the competition in the Clydesdale category.
I call them Hans and Frans. They aren’t too good on the
hills with that extra weight, but they can sure mash the
gears on the flats. They passed us with one mile to go
doing 20+ mph. I jumped on their wheel but lost their
draft a few minutes later coming through a trail barrier
and some joggers. I tried to catch back up but just
didn’t have the gas. I slacked off and drafted NB for a
sec and then started pulling again. As we dismounted and
entered the TA after the last hill climb I was right on
them but they beat us out of the TA. The last special
challenge was a low crawl under a cargo net and then a
sprint to the finish, so they beat us by a few seconds.
For some reason I’m not very happy with this race, but
I can’t pinpoint any area that we really just stunk it
up on. Yeah the kayak sucked, but we still passed people
and only got passed by one team. I guess I just don’t
like coming in 2nd place and getting beat by Hans and Frans at the last minute.
This course was the same as last year except for a
short detour under a bridge and through a creek and the
final challenge which was a 2x4 walk. I estimate those
might have added an extra 4 mins compared to this
course. Our time last year was 1:57:32, and I had us down
at 1:38-and-change this year. So compensating for the
extra events of last year we cut our time by 15 minutes
which is something to be happy about, but I’m not. Time
to train harder. The next course is at Muleshoe, which
has some nice hills with loose sand and gravel that will
suck the life out of you on the bike. This course should
play a little more into our strengths.
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