Today was the Mountain Man Triathlon in Flagstaff AZ. I have been living in AZ since june, and this is actually the off-season here, but a short trip up north leads to a completely new world. I have never been so happy to have 65degrees, clouds, and a little rain, after dealing with 115+ over the past couple of weeks. I must say that the area is one of the nicest areas for a triathlon, great roads in the mountains and fabulous views of 12,600′ Mt. Humphreys, the tallest peak in AZ. I was not really expecting to be very competitive today being that my training has been limited due to my clinical rotation.

The day started off with a good warm-up of a 15min. run and a 15min bike. Before heading to the water i decided to make a last second stop at the rest-rooms (which turned out to be a very good decision), but this put me a little behind schedule and rushing a bit. After a little help from a fellow competitor I was all Zipped into the Helix and into the water with just enough time for a few warm-up strokes. (If I do have one complaint about the race, its the rocky bottom of the lake which left my feet all cut up…. but i guess thats not the races fault). At the start I took a few strong strokes to stay out of the madness and found a good set of feet to follow in second position. I stayed there comfortably for the whole swim til 500m to go when i decided to pick up the pace a bit. I came out of the water in first, not a bad start to the day.

 I knew the bike would be a different story though, as that has whats been the most limited in my training. I got beat out of transition so I was second heading out on the bike. I sat about 20-30seconds back for the duration of the bike, closing it down to 15seconds at the turn-around, but just didn’t have that extra gear. The course was mainly undulating with 2 climbs requiring the small chainring (maybe that was the 7000′ talking). It was also frustrating bc I was losing ground on the downhills, I think this is because I was without race wheels and was just riding the training wheels. But I’m not making excuses. I was just happy that no one passed me during the bike. It was hard not to get distracted biking with beatiful views of the San Francisco peaks, and the valleys we were biking around. The lake that the swim was in used to be really big and long, almost 15miles (I think), but because of the current drought in AZ it is only 23% filled. So you could see where the lake used to be but was now just open fields.

Onto the run I was sitting about 25-30second down. Here it was pretty much the same story, holding steady but not able to close it down. At 1.5miles into the run we hit a huge climb with switchbacks that climbed 300+ ft. It was brutal. This was one of the toughest 10k’s I have ever run. After the turnaround the guy in the lead had an extra gear and I just wasn’t able to counter. I came in 1:20 down for 2nd overall.

Overall, a pretty good day, especially since I wasn’t expecting to do that well. I ended up with a 2:02:39. I definatley recommend the race to anyone if you are in the area. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but hard to take pictures of yourself when your flying solo at the race.

 www.mountainmanevents.com