Coming off of my best racing of the season at 5150 Washington DC I was pumped up and feeling ready for Boulder Peak. I started race the Peak when I was an amateur and have raced it around 5 times now. The climb up Old Stage and the fans lining the run course always have me excited to race.
The swim felt good and I got out of the water with some solid guys like Chris Foster and Tim Reed. The first sign of trouble was when I oddly cramped a bit while getting into my shoes on the bike. Once I got riding I felt decent but every time I raised the power to where I felt I should be, I could only briefly hold it.
I did break 1:00 for the bike course (59:58 how’s that for pacing?) which has long been a goal of mine but I didn’t feel quite right doing it. The bike put me in 8th place.
Once I hit the run it was just plain ugly. I felt absolutely wretched and was quickly in survival mode. Going into the race I was ranked 20th in the 5150 Hy-Vee rankings. I needed to maintain my top 20 position to qualify for Hy-Vee but with Boulder Peak along with a European race over the weekend plenty of guys would be earning points and moving up. See here for my previous points on the Hy-Vee qualifying system. With this in mind I had to tough it out on the run and grasp for whatever points I could get. I felt dizzy and a bit out of it on the run. Finally I got to the finish in 13th place.
That left me very unhappy as I thought that I had blown my chance at Hy-Vee. I wouldn’t mind it so much if I had raced decently but I felt like I was off and sure enough I came down with a virus after the race.
Fortunately, when the rankings were updated I was ranked 19th so I’ll be racing at Hy-Vee. Perhaps the good thing about my horrific Boulder Peak run is that since I ran 6 minute pace it didn’t put a strain on my achilles and it’s FINALLY getting better. In terms of frustration, this injury is the champion. It would slowly get better then as soon as I’d run remotely fast it would blow up and I’d be back to square one. Now that it’s finally truly healing I’m excited to start running again and start improving my position off the bike.
5150 Hy-Vee is September 4th so I have plenty of time to get back into run form and possible race 70.3 Boulder along the way.
Before Boulder Peak
