LifeTime Tri Chicago

This was a rough one. I did not have a good swim. It was an in water start and I got beat up for the first 100m. I was not able to get onto the main field and paid for it in the choppy water.

It was a windy bike with a tailwind for the first 10km then right back into the wind for the next 10km. I was able catch a lot of people in the first half of the bike. With a nice chunk of strait road on Lake Shore. I paid for it a little on the back end of the bike but held it together. It was not enough to put me back into the hunt. I was able to PB on the bike so that was a bonus.

The run was a hard and long no where near my best but that is the way the cook crumbles sometimes.
In the end of the day I was 13th. I will take what I can out of the day and learn something.

Huge thanks to my home-stay the Hillenbrands.

My Cheering squad

Thanks to Caledon Hills Cycling and Cervelo for all the bike equipment, Saucony for the run shoes, Nineteen Wetsuit for the FastSkin/Wetsuit, Kinetico, Royal Containers and C3 for the flight support.

Some Footage.

Workout on Wednesday

Did a brick workout with Lionel Sanders and some of the C3 gang. Fun with Barrie Shepley and Miguel Vadillo open water swim coach.

New York LifeTime Tri

This was my 3rd non-drafting race. It was a good day, I was able finish in 4th place. I landed in New York the Thursday before the race and was graciously put up by Ken Rideout. I had great time with Ken and his family. I made a cake as a small thank you.

He also set me up in the New York Athletic Club for Sat and Sun of the race. Perfect spot for the race.

I went into the race very relaxed not really thinking about the out come just wanting to put out a great effort. I got up around 3:30am for the 6:00am start. Set up my transition and did my warm up. We were not allowed to do a swim warm up because the current was too fast. The record for 1500m swim was around 9min and we had guys swimming 11min for the swim that day.

After we were lined up on the starting pontoon I kept moving around to keep loose, but this also was my down fall I lost my balance and all most fell in - luckily Kaleb Vanort pulled me back, Huge Thanks there. Dove into the water and had a good start but got dunked right as I found a good position  and it took about 700m to get back what I lost. I came out of the water right in the middle of the field.

There was an 800m run to transition that I took advantage of, moving up a few spots.

It rained for the whole bike and there was a lot of movement in our group of 5 men. By about 25km we started to thin out and no penalties were given. I came off the bike in a very good position and was able to rock T2.

Out of transition I quickly moved my way up to 2nd with a group of 4 behind me, and Ben Collins in 1st and out of reach. I lead our group through the first mile then let Kaleb Vanort and Chris Foster move in front. On the first big hill Kaleb Vanort put in a big push and gapped the group. I moved into 3rd behind him and tried to keep the gap the same but he slowly pulled away. From mile 2-3 I had a good back and forth with Jesse Thomas. I was able to get away from him after that but after mile 3 Chris Foster came by me and I was not able to respond putting me in 4th. I could see him for the rest of the run but just was not able to bring him back. A very close race from 2-5 with only 40sec separation.

All in all it was a great honor to race against this stacked field and I will hope to do it again.

After the race was able to go checkout the metropolitan museum. Greek and Roman stuff.

Thanks to Caledon Hills Cycling and Cervelo for all the bike equipment, Saucony for the run shoes, Nineteen Wetsuit for the FastSkin/wetsuit, Kinetico, Royal Containers and C3 for the flight support.