NEMO

I left for NEMO Saturday afternoon, checked in, caught up with a lot of CMCers, and headed to pick out a campsite. I'm not going to say that I camped since an air mattress and a fan were both involved... but I did sleep outside.

Woke up in the morning with a decently painful headache. I rinsed off in the shower quickly and changed into my suit. It was a bit too chilly for my liking in the early morning. I headed to bodymarking and from there it off to transition to rack. Of course I always forget my stupid electrical tape, so I went back to the campsite to get it.

The swim was pretty peaceful... I didn't really put out too much effort on the swim knowing full well what was ahead of me. The first transition felt pretty quick and I didn't waste any time. The bike was pretty decent... I averaged a little over 20 which I hope to work on improving one of these days. As has been the case the past couple of weeks, there was a headwind coming back which sucked. My second transition wasn't as fast since I didn't take my feet out of my shoes beforehand... although it wasn't really that far back to the rack anyhow. Remembered my number this time so that's an improvement over last week. The run was pretty much atrocious. I haven't trained on hills at all this summer... heck, I haven't even really been able to run for the past two months. By mile 2, I was really feeling pretty horrible. Just like high school cross country, I was freezing although it was probably in the 90s all day. I was second overall until about mile 3 when I started getting passed. By the finish, I was dying. Still freezing, I just didn't really have any energy left which landed me in the damn medical tent. That is something that has never happened... and I know why. They make you chug crap (lemon-lime Gatorade)... which only made my stomach feel horrible. Although I guess I did feel better after a while and eating did help to a degree.

So by the end of the day, I ended up 6th overall and 1st in my age group. Not bad for a race I wasn't even planning on participating in.

Lake Saint Louis

So I still had no car to get myself anywhere... got a ride into St. Louis with my brother. Borrowed the big green van from my parents to get to the race Saturday morning...

Got to the race site at about 5:15 as usual... I don't know why I have to get everywhere so early but it was nice since I the transition area was virtually empty. I didn't really get anything set up for a while since I was so cold; I really just wanted to go back to bed. I finally had to get everything set out since I had to get out of the transition area nearly an hour before I was due to race.

The water was decently cold but I had an okay swim... running to the transition area has been a real pain (literally) the past two years since my bare feet are not fans of the sidewalk. Had a quick first transition and then everything fell apart...

I was overconfident in regards to my familiarity with the race venue and failed to realize that the course was now a loop versus the out and back course of previous years. So needless to say, I had some trouble, missed two turns, didn't put out as much effort as I had wanted... blah, blah, blah. I learned some valuable lessons.

T2 was pretty worthless. I neglected to put on my race number with the ghetto timing strip so I was worried about that during the whole run. I had this guy who I later met, Chad, on my heels the whole time. He introduced himself after the race and thanked me for pacing him since he claimed he had nothing left... yeah, until the last 10 meters when he blew by me at the finish. I had to track down the fleet feet guy and have him put in my race number since I obviously didn't had the timing strip.

Officially, I came in second in my age group and something really horrible overall... but my time was +4 minutes somehow (I checked out Chad's time for quick comparison). So technically speaking I probably should have gotten first in my age group but it was my own fault so there is nothing to do but learn from my many many mistakes.... until next time.