Mooseman Olympic

This season I decided to switch up my races a bit. Rather than doing the normal sprints and olympics around here that are part of the FIRM series, I went with a few new ones. The first was the Mooseman Olympic. This was on a Saturday and was followed by the half iron on Sunday. I knew a good group going up, some racing the oly and the rest racing the half. I stayed with my good friends Andy Salmon, and Jim and Kelly Sullivan. We had an awesome condo right on Newfound Lake.

Fast forward to race morning, there were showers and thunderstorms in the forecast so it shouldn't have been a surprise when we were woken up to thunder, lightning, and torrential rain at 3am on race day. Kelly and I were doing the oly so we were up and having our race breakfast as we were looking at the radar. Race is scheduled for 8, but it looks perfect around 9:30.

We venture over to race start to set up transition only to find there has been a 90 minute delay, no swim, and they are shortening the bike from 26 miles to 17 and keeping the run at 10K. The bad news: swim is my strongest leg, bike is next strongest, run is weakest. Good news: we get to race. The race will start in order of race number and we will begin on our bikes in 3 second intervals. I decide that I am going to hammer the bike and try and hang on for the run.

All goes well and according to plan and I feel like I am cruising right along on the bike. The weather is nice and so is the pavement. I move through the pack and hop off the bike in second place about 30 seconds down to the leader. I hit the road running, and as I do so the leader appears to be gapping me big time. I get passed by a few more racers including coach Pat and try as hard as I can to not loose too much time. I turn into the park, head for the shute and finish 3rd in age group and 7th overall. I was able to average 25.1 mph on the bike and 6:19 per mile on the run. Overall I was very pleased with the results given there was no swim.

With the next scheduled race being Providence 70.3 it was time to get back to the plan and have a serious build for my only scheduled half of the season.