Last two trical races

Terry Davis’ tricalifornia series of races are by far my favorite races to attend. He and his staff do an amazing job and you know you can rely on a professionally run event. I really looked forward to the last two races of the year: Pacific Grove and Scott Tinely’s.

As PG is a draft-legal affair, the swim was crucial and I exited the water with two other strong athletes, Brian Fleishmann and Kyle Leto. We really pushed the pace on the bike and opened up a 1 min 30 sec gap on the chasers. Although I had felt comfortable on the swim, I was really suffering on the bike around the half way point. It felt as though I had a flat, but I thought that my legs were just having an “off day.” After the race I did find out that I had a slow leak in my rear. Thank goodness it did not go completely flat during the bike, otherwise that would have been a real costly flat. Anyway, I ran in second place until the 4th mile before the wheels really came off and I faded to third. Brian was truly the class of the field and deserved the win!

Anyway, I was hoping that I had got my bad luck out of the way for Scott Tinely’s, the finale of the trical series, as this would be my last race before Clearwater. This year Scott Tinley’s was not the usual Olympic Distance affair. It was a 1.5 mile swim, 49 mile bike and 9.3 mile run. I knew it was going to be a tough day as the Olympic run is one of the harder 10ks I have ever done and this Long Course made us do another lap on that hilly route. Not to mention the bike is pretty hilly as well! Hills and I have a love/hate relationship, well mostly HATE!!! However, the race could not have gone any better! My partner in crime Kyle Leto and I put a minute and a half on the field on the 1.5 mile swim. We then stretched our lead to about 5 minutes on the bike. I immediately took over the lead on the run and opened up a minute gap after the first lap of three and maintained it during the second lap. However, Leto dug deep and caught me with one mile to go on the third round. After 3.5 hours of racing, it came down to a sprint finish which I was fortunate enough to win by a mere 4 seconds! This result is going to give me good motivation for my build up to Clearwater, which will be my last race of the year.

Thanks to Marlene for the pic from Tinley's!