2011

Not what I had planned.

Above is the final standings for my age group in the Xterra South Central Region.  Note that I am not last, although I had a pretty dismal season.  The highs and lows of this past season are what follows.

The season started out inauspiciously.  I was going to do a new race in Moab in early May.  I decided not to do the race when I realized that I probably wasn't trained enough to be competitive.  As it turned out I was right too.  I heard through the grapevine that the Moab bike course was incredibly long and difficult and the water was extremely cold (like in the upper 40's) for the swim.  Glad I didn't attempt it.  I just didn't want to slog through a race that I wasn't ready for.

The next race in the schedule was Xterra Four Corners.  This is the only Xterra in New Mexico.  The race is held in Farmington which is up in the NW corner of the state about a 3 1/2 drive away.

I've done the race twice before.  The first time I was the last one out of the water after suffering horribly with some horrific calf cramps in the swim.  I finished dead last in the race.  I later traced the cramping problem to Lipitor which I discontinued as soon as I figured it out.  My cardiologist decided that I could do without a statin after all since they didn't affect my blood chemistry all that much and I was living a very healthy lifestyle anyway.

The second time I did the Farmington race I raced quite well for me, improving my time significantly.  I was looking for a good result this year too since I knew the course and I'd been training pretty well.

Then a couple of things happened.  They got new race management for Xterra Four Corners and they changed the course.  I wasn't able to get to Farmington to pre-ride the new course either which didn't make me real happy.

Race weekend didn't go well.  I got to the race a little later than I wanted.  I wasn't able to warm up like I wanted and when the gun went off I just wasn't mentally into it. 

Four hundred meters into the race disaster struck.  The severe, debilitating nausea that has plagued me on most of my cold water swims came back again.  I thought I had licked it by changing up my swim warm-up and altering my pre-race breakfast routine.  My first lap on the swim was horribly slow.  I was really sick in the water and just couldn't face another lap of feeling so nauseated that I felt like I would throw up any minute.  Besides they had instituted a swim cut-off of 50 minutes and with the way I was feeling I didn't think I'd make the cutoff anyway.  So I DNF'd.

I figured I do another race in Texas and one in Arkansas that was fairly short and one in Virginia that I'd done before to get three races in for the season.

It didn't happen.  The Arkansas race got canceled.  By the time I booked airfare for the Virginia race the airline wanted $1100.00 (plus $100.00 to carry the bike) for my wife and I to fly.  I just wasn't ready to spend that kind of money just for airfare.

The only race I got to do this year was Magnolia Hill outside of Houston which is the subject of the previous entry in this blog.

As I look at the standings, it looks like I could have gone to Nationals this year had I done three races and finished no worse than third.  Oh well.  I'm finally healthy again and I have the bug to do more Xterra triathlons.

Next year will be a better year.