Virginia races

Friday we left for Spotsylvania Virgina, which is just North of Richmond and directly in the heart of the Civil War Battlefields, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Manasses, Richmond, Fredricksburg, just to name a few. The venue was at Lake Anna State Park, which housed a gold mine back in the 1800's. The trip took just under 8 hrs. from home which didn't leave us totally drained for the drive down and back. On Friday we drove straight to the park for the tri expo and to also get an open water swim in since this was our first triathlon of the season and we hadn't did any open water swimming yet, and I also wanted to get into my new wetsuit that I had not yet wore.
The water temp. was in the low 70's, which was just wetsuit legal since this was a certified USAT Triathlon. We got out and swam for about a half hour and called it quits since we were going to be reconing the bike course on Saturday and racing on Sunday, no sense of overdoing it. Later that afternoon Doug rolled in after a traffic delay on the Capital Beltway near Washington D.C. and we headed for dinner at a local Italian Restaurant. The food at this place was actually the best I've ever had. From the outside it didn't look so hot, but looks are definitely deceiving. After dinner we met back at our room and watched the Cav's dismantle Boston, (which sure wasn't the case yesterday)

Saturday we were back at the park to support Brian and Kevin who were racing the Half Iron and also to ride the bike course and hang out. Kevin finished 5th overall in the 1/2 and 1st. Master on a sore hip that he's been going to the chiropractor to get worked on lately. His running gate was off but he still looked awesome and had a great race.
Brian had a great race as well but the heat started to take it's toll on him and he said he faded on the 13.1 mile run which was all up and down. The temp's. during the race were in the low to mid 80's and very windy which none of us are used to yet.
After packet pick up later that afternoon we headed out to dinner at a local lakeside diner, and then drove back to the motel to rest up for Sunday.

Sunday morning we were at the park by 7:30 for the 9:00 race start and already there looked to be thousands of people there and the transition area was mostly filled up. We got our spot in transition which couldn't have been better, the spots on the end of the rack in the aisle, perfect!
Got the wetsuits on and did a swim warm up and then Tony was off at 9 sharp in the 35 and under wave. My wave went off at 9:14 which was the Masters 45+ group and the 4th wave to go off. The top swimmers in our group soon mixed in with the group that went off before us so we had to do a little passing to get back in the open. I felt really good on the swim and exited the water either 2nd. or 3rd., Doug was 1st. out and soon we were on the bikes climbing out of the park. I stayed near Doug for the majority of the bike, never making time up on him, so we had to be riding pretty close to the same speed, Doug being faster though. We had a good bike (18 mile bike course and very windy) T-2 went smoothly and it was off on the rolling 5k run which felt to me a little longer, probably due to the hills. The 1st mile was all up hill and my calf was screaming.....I have been nursing a pulled / strained lower left calf muscle since last Tuesday, but since it wasn't knotting up I could live with the discomfort as long as I knew I wasn't doing any more damage to it. I had a compression wrap on it along with that tape you see volleyball players wearing on their shoulders to keep their muscles aligned...I don't know if it did any good but it didn't hurt either. Anyway I saw Doug right at the turnaround less than a minute ahead of me and I knew I wasn't going to catch him since he would pick up the pace on the 2nd half of the run. I came into the finish with a time of 1:25:40 for the 800 meter swim, 18 mile bike and the LONG 3.1 mile run, which was good for either 2nd. or 3rd. Master. Doug had a 1:24:50 and that was good for a Master win which we think.....The results weren't going to be posted for hours later and we had an almost 8 hour drive home so we left shortly after the race. Results are going to be posted at 5 this afternoon.

Tony had a stellar race finishing 3rd overall in the 35 and under group and 3rd OVERALL. He came out of the water in 15th. and entered T-2 in 4th. bolted out on the run, ran his first uphill mile in 6:15 and picked it up from there. He said he felt like someone was pushing him from behind on the run yesterday. Great Job Tony!

Good weekend of racing from the gang from Ohio and to my TLE Master teammates at RATL on Saturday, Nice job everyone!