Off to the Races

Since I last posted in May I have been doing a whole lot of racing, working, and unfortunately driving.  Racing season kicked off with a new one for me, the Chippewa triathlon in Cass Lake.  Emily and I were a canoe duo, and the Buessler family was nice enough to give us a place to stay before and after the race.  To get ready for the race I went up and paddled with the Minneapolis Canoe club a couple of times, and boy what a difference it made.  I feel like my stroke is way worse now than I ever thought it was, but at least I'm on the path to doing things right, getting the paddle in a powerful position and applying force with the correct muscles.  It was hard to tell at Chippewa if it paid off, since Emily and I are a bit unbalanced in terms of paddling strength and weight in the boat, so we had to make some mid race adjustments that included me hopping into the stern with really no idea how to steer a boat.  The portages were also costly since my height meant most of the weight of the boat ended up on Emily's shoulders when we tried to do the racing portage.  So by the time we hopped out of the water the race leaders were a good hour down the road.  The bike was a bit more suited to my abilities with paved bike trail, gravel roads, and bumpy, windy forest paths on offer.  I think I ended up with the second or third fastest bike leg on the day, not too shabby.  I had heard from reading about tri's that the bike to run transition can be a bit tricky, and boy was it ever.  I was running on fumes by the end of the bike leg, and then to hit the trails on foot the muscles didn't seem especially willing to get moving.  After a few miles this settled out and I could finally get into a good, if still not comfortable, groove and began passing people even.  A small detour to check out some neat trails not on the course had me backtracking and proceeding to pass most of the people I had caught earlier again.  I did pass them all a second time before the finish.  I finished the race in 5:32:12, my longest ever race in terms of time and distance (71 km).  It was a great adventure, and I was pretty spent afterwards.  Luckily the next weekend was Grandma's marathon, which I did not race, so I got a chance to recover, finally meet up with Matt and give him his prize and medal from trail mix, and get in a good bike ride on a very rainy day with Bjorn.  There will be plenty more racing news in the next few posts.