First off, Blake killed it for the overall win in 3:54, very impressive.

 My goal for Racine was to break 4:10. I’d been putting in some extra hours in Waterloo working on super double top secret triathlon things, and it left me a little tired on race morning, so I wasn’t so confident that I was going to have a great race. I was pretty excited that the run supposedly went through the Racine zoo, with the race flyer promising “Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!”  While expressing my excitement to a friend pre-race, a near by ease dropper chimed in with “The zoo sucks!” I was still hoping to see a Giraffe. Also, I was given the wrong color swim cap, and pre-race announcements said this was going to be a penalty. It took me a shocking amount of time to convince the race director I was not a 40-44 year old woman, so I didn’t get much of a chance to warm up in the water, which didn’t help my cause.

 I had a crap swim. The course was either a hair short and/or there is a current, because I still exited the water in 24 minutes and change.

 Onto the bike, my heart rate was pegged at LT for the first 20 minutes, even though I wasn’t pushing it too hard. I rode through some of the faster swimmers, and within the first 10 miles, and ended up riding with some guy that was riding a pretty comfortable pace up until about mile 35.  All of a sudden, on a long false flat, my legs came alive, so I turned up the heat and smoked 2 or 3 more people before entering T2 in 3^rd place with a 2:14 bike split (2^nd fastest of the day to Blake’s redonkulous 2:09).

 A quick T2 put me out on the run about 100 yards behind 2^nd place, Adam Zucco, who is a stud swimmer and biker, but I had passed on the run at Rockman earlier in the year. My legs immediately felt gooooood, and I moved into 2^nd place within the first mile, still about 8 minutes behind Blake. Other parts of my body weren’t so happy, as even with a super smooth carbon TTX under me, the pavement of the bike course made the ride feel like 2+ hours of getting punched in the taint. The run was pretty uneventful. My best efforts to pull back time on Blake weren’t good enough, and the time gap remained relatively steady for the whole run. I was second across the line, with a run time of 1:22 and a total time of 4:03 (a huge PR for me). I have to thank teammate and coach Eric Bean for milking some speed out of me this year.

 I can also confirm, the zoo did, in fact, suck. Not only did I not see a Giraffe, I didn’t even see the zoo itself.

 Results:

1.  Blake Becker (USA) 3:54:04
2. Jeff Paul (USA) 4:00:58
3. Mike Lavery (USA) 4:03:51
4. Adam Zucco (USA) 4:06:33
5. Jeremy Davis (USA) 4:07:09