Timberman Sprint Results

I'm BACK! It was a productive week of painting, organizing, cleaning, and a bit of demolition. Ya'll ought to buy stock in Home Depot because we're single-handedly going to drive up their profits. Had a few good runs and two great swims. UPS screwed up with my new address and I didn't get my new running shoes on Tuesday like Road Runner Sports promised...and I can't run in my old Asics because my achilles tendons are screaming...so today I'll get them from UPS before they ship 'em back! ARGH. I'm very excited to run in them...I ended up choosing the Adidas Adistar Control...reports to follow.

On Saturday the 22nd, I raced in the Timberman Sprint and had a BLAST. The weather was 65F and overcast and there was a light drizzle during the run only - a perfect respite from the horrible hot and humid stuff we'd had. I had an AMAZING swim - 322/812 without a wetsuit so I was very pleased with that...the bike went ok although I was repeatedly reminded that Amelia is not a climber. Still, there were great flats and some excellent downhills so I passed a bunch a folks in my aerobars who had passed me on the hills...and they stayed behind me too. I was so worried this would be a crazy competitive race but being so big it turned out that there were a lot of newbies and I was happily in the middle of the pack the whole time. AND, I ran 10:20 min. miles which is SUPER fast for me. I was still very much in the back of the pack overall on the run (among the slowest 100 racers) but running isn't my forte so I was PSYCHED to do so well overall. It used to be there were 5-10 people behind me and this time there were 100!! I'll definitely race there again - it was top rate.



I had to work on Sunday so I couldn't stick around and see all the big names race in the Half Ironman but one HUGE bit of inspiration was that the Hoyt's were there and raced in the sprint. They were a few swim waves ahead of me - Dick pulled Rick in the raft - and then I didn't see them again until the run but they finished not more than 20 minutes behind me. UNreal. It makes me so thankful that I'm so fortunate in this life...and so humble to see them striving for such excellence. Just incredible.

OK, I don't have time for the full report right now - hopefully tomorrow - but here are my times if you're interested (enter bib# 5551).