After the race many people asked me why I came all the way to Raleigh, North Carolina for the Duke Liver ½?  Well, the truth is I am living with some friends down here in Durham, NC doing some “heat acclimatization” and my final build up for Kona.  The 50-60 degree weather of Vermont is just too much of a jump to Kona’s 90 degrees.  But I digress, onto the race report!

The race was put on by SetUp Events and they really did a great job.  They had done some publicity before the race saying that I was coming down to race “fresh off my win at Ironman Lake Placid.”  As a result I was a marked man on the course, but at the same time everyone knew who I was and were all very supportive.  I had a great time during the race, but an even better time after the race meeting people.  Thank you to the entire North Carolina triathlon community for being so welcoming.

Since I came for the heat, obviously on race morning it happened to be 50 degrees.  During the race it was sunny and in the mid 70s, basically perfect race day weather!  I was hoping for it to be 95 and humid just to practice racing in the heat.  I’m sure I was the only one who was hoping it to be disgustingly hot! 

I did not even bring my Helix wetsuit on this trip expecting the water to be well above 78 degrees.  However, because of a few cooler days before the race it was a wetsuit legal race, measuring in at 77 degrees.  I had decided regardless of water temps to wear my Blue Seventy Point Zero as I have yet to wear it in a race and wanted to before Kona.  The water level in Jordan lake was about 2 feet lower than normal due to the drought most of North Carolina is experiencing this summer.  As a result the swim was an out and back instead of the preferred triangle shape course. To add to this there was a pretty strong headwind creating a very rough and choppy swim particularly on the way out.  As a result my swim was significantly slower than I was hoping and a little further back, 30mins, 8^th place and 5 ½ minutes behind the leader. 

After a quick T1 I headed out onto the bike.  This bike course is absolutely beautiful through rolling farm land with a few small climbs and very few cars.  At one point during the race there were about 10 wild turkeys in the middle of the road, at the time I was traveling about 30mph and had to swerve and fortunately avoided them, needless to say this experience was a little scary!  The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful.  I was working pretty hard and found a great rhythm until the last 10 miles when the slightly rougher road and head wind began to make it a little tough.  I pushed through and finished 2^nd off the bike in 2:19. 

I cruised into T2 just as the leader was heading out onto the run course.  After another quick transition I began my pursuit about 2 ½ minutes down. 

This run course is two loops on a series of hilly, dirt and grass trails located in New Hope State Park.  This run course is hard, but very beautiful and peaceful through a forest and overall a really enjoyable run.  I began the run with several tight muscles and twinges after a solid bike, but after a mile or 2 I began to loosen up and found my stride.  I caught up to the leader at about mile 4 and kept up the pace because there were some very talented athletes in this race that I knew would keep the pressure on.  I finished the run in 1:22.

I finished first overall in 4:13 which I was told is a new course record.  This was a great confidence boost and measure of my fitness heading into October and I’m getting very excited!  Lastly, I really like this area of the country and the triathlon community is pretty impressive.  There is a chance I may move here next year…we’ll see! J

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Thanks!

Alex M-M

http://www.alexmmtri.com/