RR: Kansas 70.3

Today I realized that I love riding the bike (and especially riding the bike at the track) more than anything.

So...it's a 2/3 race report. I did the swim and the bike. Bailed on the run with a sore knee and since Track Masters Nationals is my A+++ event this year, it was a no-brainer.

Swim: chop and current. I swam just under 49 minutes. Amazingly slow, but I think I added 400-500 meters extra. Swim times were slow across the board according to the RD.

Bike: freaing tough bike! All hills, lots of long rollers. Afterwards some of the pros were saying it's more difficult than the Ironman bike course in Idaho.  Started out ok--hot and sunny and light wind. WIthin 10 miles the wind gusted up and we had headwinds on most of the remaining legs. I was actually getting blown around by the winds coming from the side. The last out/back was a beyotch going out. I was on a loaner bike, so no computer, but if I was going 5 mph up the hills I'd be surprised, though coming back, I knew I wasn't going to do the run, so I put it in the biggest gear and turned up the cadence to about 130 going down the long hills and holding it on the flat. Very fun and I passed a ton of people. Still, one of my slowest 1/2 IM bike times.

About 1:30 PM a huge black cloud dropped out of the sky and the temps dropped by 15 degrees and the wind about blew all the tents down. I think they were diverting the later people directly to the finish (instead of out for the second loop) as then it started to thunder and lightning and two seconds after Dad and I made the long hike to the car and got in, it started to rain.

Super volunteers, super race organization. Swim would be good if the lake hadn't risen 2 feet in the past few days from the big storm on Tu/Wed this week. Very good bike course--hard but doable. Run--Ziebart said he's gonig to work on it and see what they can do about it. It was 2 loops today which made for great spectating. Post-race pizza, sodas and sandwiches. Nice crowd support. Good community support. If I weren't a bike racer, I'd do it again (and actually train next time).