Drive-thru Daiquiri or Beignets, why not both.

That's a salty taste in the mouth, and I don't mean from Lake Pontchartrain. The theme for the weekend followed the Sergio Leone classic, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

A general overview to set the scene: Over 3000 participants (counting relay athletes), made the largest 70.3 series race in the history of the sport and possibly the largest transition area at the University of New Orleans. The bike course takes you out to the bayou - where the road was populated by a dead snake roughly every mile, a lot of tall grass and murky water. The run followed city streets through an empty park and down to the French Quarter to the Jackson Square finish. Great race management and organization, now lets get to the interesting stuff.

Squeezed into the wetsuit and waded into the 70deg water awaiting my swim wave start. Real calm and focused at the start, positioned myself on the outside - plenty of open water in front of me, and quickly settled into a pace. A few individuals established themselves early in the swim and I couldn't stay on their feet. Dodged plenty of lap traffic from the swim waves already in the water and swam a solid swim leg PR in 31:16.

Quick transition and hopped on the bike. The wind made its presence known from a cross-wind and tail-wind on the way out of town and a nice smack you in the face head-wind back into town. Regardless of the wind, felt effortless on the bike, rode hard, but never felt I was getting myself into trouble, the HR stayed low, legs felt great and I was continuously passing everyone throughout the bike. Ended up dropping a bottle from a broken bottle cage bolt (?) and could never recover hydration wise from missing my sweet concoction of sports drink - ultimately my fault for not picking up enough water at the bottle drops on the bike course. Obviously the pace slowed back into town, kept my HR and effort pinned around a similar exertion level, came into transition at 2:25:03 bike leg - 6/186 in my AG - immediately said to myself, this is your run, let's see what ya' got. I knew at roughly 3 hours into the event I set myself up perfectly for a PR day, worst case run scenario, I still figured I would PR by 5 minutes.

The first mile went great, immediately settled in, legs were fresh, only a few HUGE problems - body temperature was way up there coupled with an unquenchable thirst - both manifested from the poor hydration on the bike and the mid 80deg temp's and humidity - ouch. Run pace continued to slow, and I could never quench the thirst - downing at least a cup of water, sports drink or a mix at every aid station. As the pace slowed I began to lose focus looking for any excuse just to walk a few steps. Dehydration...I had nothing in the tank on the run, stumbled across the line finishing at 5:03:06 for 27th out of 186 in my AG; and 190 out of 2319 overall.

On paper those results don't look to bad. However, I know what I am capable of on the run, the overall time is 18 minutes off my current PR (which I have hit twice) and a good 25 to 30 minutes off my goal for this race. Lessons learned, feed the dynasty.
-A.