XTERRA Buffalo Creek Race Report

June 21st, 2008
Bailey, Colorado
1st AG, 5th Overall (3rd Amateur)

3 races in 3 weeks?!?! Yeah, that's definitely a first for me, but wasn't really all that bad!

After lots of catching up with work and little to no training after Richmond, I was feeling pretty good about kicking some serious butt in my home state. However, after eating some questionable Chinese food Thursday and being up all night with some serious tummy problems, the thought of doing anything other than laying in bed on Friday was totally out of the question. This meant I wasn't going to pre-ride the course nor was I going to camp at the race site the night before. Oh well, things happen and I need to learn how to deal with situations that don't go exactly as planned :)

After a great night sleep, the alarm went off at 4:30am and I was ready to drive 2hrs and race like a rockstar! After getting setup, warming up and hanging around transition for a bit, I got into my wetsuit and hopped in the water to make sure the arms were feeling good...holy shit was that water cold. I've been used to 80* and higher bath water swims and high 50s/low 60s felt like swimming in ice cubes. I didn't have my hoodie either so my head was freezing! Oh suck it up, it's only 1500m...and that's what I did. I also forgot that the race was at 8000+ft high and going from racing at sea level to that is quite different. Had a few breathing issues at first and almost fell over in transition from being so light headed after the swim, but eventually adjusted and began feeling better. Since I had no idea what to expect on the bike, I rode like a giant wienie. I figured taking it easy and not bombing down something I didn't know what was at the end was better than crashing and getting hurt like lots of other people seemed to be doing. Also, I was getting bottlenecked on all the singletrack which is always frustrating from starting in the last wave, but I wasn't too concerned as I just didn't feel like I had the energy to go hard anyway. Got on the run and felt decent except for the giant slosh in my gut from pounding a huge bottle of water 10min prior. I realized I was completely dehydrated on the last part of the ride so I thought it would be a good idea to get all my fluids in at once...hmmmm, not such a great plan. Anyway, got through the run just fine and finished with a decent time. Not where I would have liked to place, but not disappointed. I got through 3 back to back races and that's all that matters, right? Oh, and I won a set a killer set of tires!