Spencer and I rolled out of town late Friday morning, in hopes of getting up there early enough to go for a pre ride of the course. I did my road trip usual of Corn Nuts and compression socks. That along with loads of GU2O, I was quite content for the 6+ hour drive.
We rolled into the race venue a little later than I would have like, but it worked out alright. I went for a quick pre ride of some of the key parts of the bike course with Paul Wells, Luke Jay, and Jay's teammate Ricky. Even though I didn't have time to change to the tires I really wanted to ride, I was quite excited about the bike course. Checking in to for the race was very ammusing because... well... it was a bus!
I didn't bring a tent, so I threw my sleeping pad and sleeping bag out on the grass and got comfy for the night. It ended up being very peaceful sleeping right under the stars. At one point of the night I woke up and poked my head of my sleeping bag. I laid there for a few minutes just staring up at the thousands of stars in the solid black night sky. Nothing like it :-)
Race morning breakfast was a couple of eggs, a bagel with honey, and a slice of bacon. I was ready to rock and roll! Getting to transition was pretty easy (I took this picture from my camp site).
A bit to my surprise, the race itself didn't go well at all. I had a decent swim, coming out only a little bit down Kirk (one of my main competitors), and way ahead of Spenser. But things quickly went down hill from there. It took me unusually long to get warmed up. Then when I got to the first major climb, I hit the GO button and nothing happened. I tried to do whatever I could to really get rolling - changing gears, standing, sitting, fast cadence, slow cadence - but nothing worked. The harder I tried the slower I went. My breathing was becoming more and more labored. At one point, I turned to go up a short steep loose climb and couldn't do it even in my easy gears. Something was seriously wrong. I know my body well enough to diagnose when I'm just run down from training and racing, and I knew that this was something totally different.
I rolled into T2 with my tail between my legs and called it a day. I could have gone out for the run, but it certainly wouldn't have been a run. Everytime I tried to put and effort in it was incredibly draining and I really didn't have much. So feeling like a quitter, I packed up my things and descretly walked back to camp. Not wanting to be a total sourpuss, I grabbed my camera and went back to take pictures of friends and cheer other racers on.
Knowing that something out of the ordinary was up, I opted to head back to Boulder early rather than staying and riding on Sunday. I wanted to head into the doctor and get some blood work done to see if they can figure out what is going on. I hope it doesn't have anything to do with the staff infection I had last month, but we'll find out...
