Friday, August 26, 2011

Mountain Man

There's a new rule at my house; if when I get up in the morning and step on the scale it reads 150 or less, I can eat whatever I want that day. That's a pretty sweet diet plan. I may market that. Eat whatever you want, assuming you're swimming, riding, or running every day, and sometimes two in one day. Otherwise, lay off the carbs and the sugars.

When you're laying off the carbs, that's when you realize how good they taste. Especially cake. I will freebase that stuff when I'm jonesing some icing, which is a very inconvenient way to ingest it, but you don't think straight when you're carb-deprived.

Last Saturday I arose at 3:30AM and got out of the house at 4:00AM. I headed out into a heavy thunderstorm with rain so hard I couldn't see to drive. Why would I do that? It was the day of the Branson Mountain Man Triathlon. I never thought I'd wear a pair of bike shorts in Branson, MO, but now I have and that's all there is to it.

I met up with my friend Micah who is an excellent racer, but given that this was a short pool swim, I knew I had a lot better chance of competing. If you're not familiar with the pool swim, don't worry, I wasn't either until this tri. We jumped in, swam down and back the first lane, ducked under the rope, down and back the second lane, and so on. It was an interval start and so we all lined up according to our expected pace. I duly took my place toward the back. How'd the swim go? 400 yards, 9:02. Ugh.

The bike was 15 miles, 15 hilly miles. Here's a pic of me riding up one of the hills:
Pretty steep. I got done in 58:18.

Run. 5K. 24:46. There were some pretty steep inclines on the run as well. I probably don't have to tell you that Branson is really only known for the hills. There's not much else to do there.

The reason I wanted to do this tri is because the bike route covered a portion of the route we'll use next month at the 70.3. It's a four lane highway, the Ozark Mountain Highroad, that they close down for the half Ironman.

Anywho, total time at the Mountain Man Tri for me was 1:32:49. I finished 29th out of 62. Didn't place in my age group. However, the one bright spot for me is that my run was the  11th fastest time.  I'll take that.


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