Brewhouse 08

Determined not to make another Bode-esque appearance at yet another race, I took a nice early spot on the couch at an old friend's house in Duluth, and got an early start this morning. I mooched breakfast from their kitchen and slipped out the door.

This was to be another "B" race. I just finished peak week, and I'm nursing a calf injury I got on Tuesday while running. (how I can shred my gastrocnemius 0.8 miles into a run is beyond my understanding--also beyond my understanding is why I ran another 3 miles on it) I'd only signed up for Brewhouse to meet the maximum amount of scoring races in the Midwest Multisport series, and Brewhouse was my 5th. I could've done either of the Pigmans, but I'm abstaining from Iowa.

Anyways, I was able to get a good spot in transition. This was pretty important, because it is very tight in that transition. The rows are congested, and they are close together. The run lane was also tight.

Swim: On the run into the water, I felt myself almost kicking my timing chip off, so i stopped to slip it under my wetsuit. Once I got going, it felt pretty fast! Coming back into the sun was difficult, and the first turn had me disoriented about which way to go. I eventually figured it out, and had lots of open water. I thought I was the first guy out of the water, but it turns out I let a few guys escape out in front of me....but they were pretty fast.

T1: 1:59 struggled with my helmet straps, almost choking myself. fast otherwise.

Bike: 22.4mph avg. Par. I pushed pretty hard, and even jousted with some of the women's leaders and reeled in a few off the elite wave. There was one very hairy turn where some of the short course runners slipped into the bike lane, right in front of me! WTF? I was narrowly able to pass on one side without being railroaded into pylons.

Perhaps the turd in the punchbowl of this race is the road. It's horrible. Cracked, uneven, patched....whatever could possibly make it rough, it was there, jostling my undercarriage and slowing me down. A co-worker jokingly asked me if I put a suspension fork on my Cervelo, and in hindsight, it might not have been such a bad idea. The road made it extremely difficult to hold speed and it really provided for a mental block. On a smooth road I could have easily broken 23. Seriously--even DKT didn't break 27mph.

Speaking of that guy, I was nearing the finish of the bike when I passed a guy on the bike with a unitard that said Thompson, riding on a Litespeed with Zipps. I thought this was DKT having an off day, but upon passing him later on, I realized it was a different Thompson.

T2: 2:13 Decent dismount. The setup of transition made you run all the way to the end of the racks and back, which was annoying and made it easy for some people to cheat, which my friend J witnessed. I'm going to just go with blisters on my next race and leave my socks in the transition bag.

Run: 7:14/mile. I felt very slow out of T2, and my legs felt totally worthless, and in pain. I began to wonder if I pushed it too hard on the bike. Then I sucked it up when I saw DKT limping along going the other way to win the race. Now he looked like he was in pain.

The run course goes up, up, up, up, up, up, down, down, up, and then steeply down. Then you have to turn around and do that backwards. Aside from this being the most painful run I've done all season, I liked the course. You could see a patrol car flashing from the finish line with about downhill mile to go, which was pretty inspiring.

I think some of the "volunteers" on the run course were misfit youth doing community service. I will say that they were dedicated to what they were doing, and very encouraging.

I'll take 7:14's given the pain I was in. 165HR felt way tougher than the 174 I was sustaining at HOLT. I'll run faster next week.

Placing
5/20 ag
44/??

Overall, the race was well done. The direction was good(the guy who puts the race on is a Duluth rockstar of sorts), the lake was pleasant & clean, the run course was challenging. They also gave away a TON of shit. More than most races I go to. But I won't go back until they fix the road.

Seriously.....my butt still hurts.