Kansas is always kind of a half way point in the season for me. When I have been racing, Kansas would be the "A" race at the end of my first half of the season. However, for whatever reason, I haven't had much luck there. In 2009, I had a great swim/bike, then totally blew on the run because of the effort I put out on the swim/bike. In 2010, I had a bit of an "off" winter of training but still put together a decent bike/run. The swim on the other hand was like I was out for a active recovery day swim. I came out pretty far back and was never in the mix. I even had spectators yelling that Chrissie was going to catch me (hence my fast run split that year). In 2011, I was feeling great about my fitness and thought I had a good opportunity to finish in the top 3. The swim again wasn't my best, but I stayed positive until about mile 15-20 on the bike. I wasn't putting out my normal amount of power and just felt terrible for the whole bike. I ran decent and ended up finishing 9th, first to not get paid. I found out later my bike seat was way too low. It didn't drop, I just had been riding like that for a few weeks for some reason and Kansas was the ride that made me realize it was WAY too low.
So, this year, my swim/run workouts have been going great, but my bike has been a little bit of a hiccup for me at every race. Just getting comfortable in the aero position, and racing has been hard for me. I felt that I had it all figured out going into Kansas. The one thing I didn't think too much about was my saddle sores. I get these when I'm riding quite a bit and just deal with them. Well, these were much worse than I've had in the past and I didn't realize it until I hopped on my bike this past Sunday.
Race morning was 60 degrees and cloudy. The pro field had a couple of stud swimmers, but only a couple. I felt that I should be right in the mix. At 6:45 the gun went off and I got a great start. Maybe I did go a little hard but I got in a good rhythm and was only about 10 seconds off of a 3-4 guys feet who I thought was the first pack at the first turn buoy about 900 meters into the swim. Unfortunately, that was a pace I couldn't hold and I lost about 45 seconds to them during the second half of the swim. I came out of the water in about 8th, leading the 3rd pack. Three or four of us ran into T1 together and I had a fantastic transition and was first out onto the bike. I felt ok for the first 5 miles but nothing great. Once again, I wasn't comfortable in the aero position. I was sliding off the front of my seat and I had to stop peddling to push myself back onto it every 10-15 seconds. This motion irritated my saddle sores and about 10 miles into the bike, my bottom was on fire. Anyone who has had saddle sores knows how bad they can hurt. All of this really got into my head, I lost my focus on the race itself and the group of 5-6 guys just pulled away from me. I slowly got caught and passed by a few more guys until I couldn't even stay in the aero position because of the pain I was in. I sat up and rode easy the last 30 - 35 miles. Casey was happy to see me as she thought I had crashed considering I had 5 girls beat me back to T2. My legs/feet felt weird/numb and I knew that nothing good would come from the run so I opted to not run. My first unplanned DNF was a hard pill to swallow considering we drove a long ways for me to race. But I knew a DNF was a better idea than running a slow 13.1 miles in racing flats and hurting myself and just making the this past a week a recovery week as opposed to the great workouts that I have been able to get in. It was good see my fellow team members rock the race. Jared and Natasha both finished in the top 10 which is awesome and Ryan had a great race even though he has been honeymooning all spring ;)
I did have a great weekend with my Tri4Him teammates. We had a wonderful homestay at the Leepers. Casey and I travelled to Olathe, KS on Friday, we had some great fellowship and dinner, and much more of the same on Saturday. The weather could not have been more perfect this weekend. I will eventually get my bike issues solved and be able to race the whole race.
Up next is the Chattanooga Waterfront triathlon on the 29th of June.
Tony
