Hickory Knob Olympic

Last race of season for me this past Saturday at Hickory Knob State Park. Julie, Will, and I went down on Friday for packet pickup. We camped out with the Douglasses and partook in the traditional pre-race pasta meal. There were about 9 of us (FCA-e) there and we had a great meal and fellowship before bed.

Julie and I helped with body marking before the race which was a lot of fun to talk with a bunch of athletes, especially the newbies.

The weather was perfect and I had an overall great race. The 1500m swim was a little choppy and you had to scale a small moutain to get to transition. My time was 31:33, 77 OA, 4 AG.

I was able to get the wetsuit off a little quicker than before and my T1 time was 1:27.

The bike course was 28 miles of constantly rolling hills. I felt pretty good throughout and finished up at 1:27:39 (19.4mph), 85 OA, 3 AG.

T2 went well. I didn't take time to put on socks...more on that later. Time of 0:43.

This was the best run I've had all year. The 10k course is a beast that is either up or down the whole way. I took advantage of the first mile that was down hill and went about 6:30. The next 2.5 were basically uphill with one big hill at mile 2 or so. About mile 4 I started to feel a nice blister coming up from the no socks and new shoes...not too smart! Remember the first mile that was downhill? Well it's also the last mile, but you guessed it, uphill! I had been keeping around a 7:00-7:15 mile split and was walking down runners the whole course. At the bottom of the last hill I saw a pack of about 10-12 runner ahead and told myself I would catch them. I hammered up the hill and sprinted through the finish, passing the lead guy in the pack literally one step from the finish line. It was totally the best finish ever! Just then I realized that my race number was in the back, which is a two minute penalty. Ultimately I wasn't pentalized...I guess I flew through the chute so fast they didn't have time to notice. My time was 41:57 (6:46 pace), 22 OA, 1 AG.

Total time of 2:43:17, 51 OA, 2 AG.