EFA Race Report!

Just finished Escape from Alcatraz on a picturesque day in the best city in the world! While I didn't quite reach my goal (top 10), I finished 12th in a time of 2:09:29 and was really pleased with my overall effort.

The swim was super fast this year and I attribute that to the current, NOT to my 40K yard swim weeks! Came out of the water only 4:30 back from the leaders this year, as opposed to 9 minutes last year. My new Xterra Vendetta wetsuit got a little caught up on my timing chip in T1 but I was quickly off to the races in no time!

Despite the fact that most of my training has been focused on the swim, my bike split was roughly 75 seconds faster than last year! The run was a little funky for me for some reason. I was basically two minutes slower than last year and that is probably due to a couple of reasons. One, my runs have not been quality-oriented as of late, because of the emphasis on my swim training. Two, last week in Florida I felt like I lost a lot of steam in the latter half of the run and I didn't want that to happen today so I went out probably too conservatively. And three, I felt like the beach portion of the run this year was A LOT tougher than last year, especially the first part of the dreaded sand ladder. Speaking of which, I was 1 SECOND away from winning the sand ladder time bonus! Just my luck!

All in all, I feel really great about my performance today and every race I'm creeping up on the winners slowly but surely!

Results can be found here:

http://alcatraz.onlineraceresults.com/search.php

Next up for me is another ITU race in Ixtapa, Mexico on the 22nd of May. Till then!

Oh! Thank you all for the kind supportive notes prior to the race and for the congratulatory notes after the race! It is truly motivational!

Talk soon!

-HH