Mazatlan and Sarasota Recap combo

A two-for-one blog post, brought to you by Gary Wallesen, whose old computer I'm typing on!

A quick note..
It is such a relief to be typing this on a laptop instead of my android phone. For the last couple months, I haven't had a computer for email, blogging, power files, etc. My laptop from college flashed the "blue screen of death" and my good friend and boss, Gary came to the rescue with a used machine.

The Races

Mazatlan was a beautiful place to have a race. I enjoyed riding up and down the waterfront road (which served as both the bike and run course) and watching the ocean. The race swim itself was actually in the ocean, so after a sprint down the beach and out into the water, we crashed into some decent sized waves to start the first of two laps swimming. The wind was very intense and made for a very choppy swim, even once we made it past the breaking waves. I fought to lock in my stroke while getting bashed in the face, and by the end of lap two, I had gotten myself comfortably in the lead group out of the water.

The Start!

Gathering my bike anger pre-race

 I tore through transition as quickly as possible and took a strong pull in the first half mile of the ride, only to find that the 3 other athletes with me had no intention of working with an American. My coach, Paulo Sousa, had warned me of this and that I should not do too much work in a race full of Mexican athletes, so I slowed and we let the main pack catch us up. The wisdom in this became apparent as the 30-something Mexicans began to work team tactics against the other other non-Mexican in the field, Reinaldo Colucci. My hat goes off to Colucci for doing virtually all of the work on the bike, bringing back (almost) every breakaway, and then being able to outrun the top Mexican runners.

I started the run with the main group, about 2min behind a three-man breakaway, and tried to run with the leaders as long as possible. I made it a mile before their pace became too much to sustain, and I spent the rest of the run trying to minimize my pace dropoff. I finished the windy 10k in 33:11, my fastest tri 10k to date by over 30 seconds. 11th Place

Doing work with Triathlon Squad Teammate Joe Maloy

Sarasota was marked by a VERY physical swim and at one point my teammate, Joe Maloy and I were actually smacking each other around while trying to move to the front. I exited the water with the chase bunch and by 5 miles or so we had caught the lead group of 3. We all rode well together (15 of us) and put 2 minutes into the chase pack of athletes. I held strong with a more even paced 10k, and came home in 33:03. 9th Place

Lots of travel! Mazatlan Airport

I am happy with my runs and placing because they are by far faster than I've ever run, but I also feel like I have more to give. Each race gives an opportunity to learn pacing a little better, and every workout I do with my Triathlon Squad teammates pushes my run fitness higher.

Next up is one of my only non-draft races of the season, Nautica South Beach triathlon. Time to put in some TT bike workouts!