Racing at 7000ft

Just an hour away, up in the mountains, lies the great little Village of Ruidoso. It's completely different from my town in atmosphere, weather, landscape, and altitude. Where we have cacti, they have pines. Instead of IHOP, they have delicious local bakeries. It's a little ski resort town at the bottom of Sierra Blanca, shown here:

The Ruidoso Sprint Tri was Saturday, so we traveled uphill that morning to much cooler weather. The car said 37F at one point. Since there is little swimmable water in this state, it was to be a pool swim, with the run around a cute little fishing lake nearby. Distances advertised to be 3.5 run/ 10 bike/ 400yd swim.

The women started off 10 minutes behind the men, running, of course, up a hill. I recognized about two of the women, one of whom is a super fast 50 year old, and the other a blond woman who ran in just ahead of me at my DNF race a few months ago. I didn't know if I'd have been able to catch her on the bike then since I didn't get a chance. At the starting horn, a well-tattooed chick took off up that hill and held her lead. I settled into 4th behind Tattoos, the fast blond, and another woman, with the 50 y-o behind me, like I expected her to be until the bike. About 10 minutes in, we turned off a perfectly nice fire road onto a rocky, dirty, 20% graded trail. I was trying to keep the two right ahead of me within a reachable distance, and found that even though they were running, I could walk and not lose time on them. So I walked.  Multiple times, in fact. I twisted an ankle only once and never fell down the sloping hill into the lake.

Here is the scenic Grindstone Lake. Too bad I was too busy looking at the rocks in front of me to enjoy the views.

I ended up passing the woman just in front of me at the end of the run, but never caught the blond or tattoos. But I could see blondie from the start of the bike. I noticed that I would slowly pull her in on the steeper sections of the uphills, but when it flattened out, she'd pull away. Maybe all those hills have been helping! But still I couldn't keep my speed above about 9 mph, and it didn't seem to be that steep of a grade. At the turnaround, I found out why. It was not only more of a hill than I'd realized, but we had also had a headwind! The 50 y-o had passed me just before the turnaround, and she and blondie took OFF down that hill. I thought my 35mph would be plenty fast, but they were gone. I get a little scared and wobbly over 35, so the brakes came on then. Tattoos had been just a little ahead when I saw her, but I wasn't sure that my downhill abilities were going to be enough to catch anyone. 

About a mile before the finish, blondie was pulled over messing with her bike. Turns out it was just rubbing a bit when she stood, but I still had to pass and move on after making sure she was ok. Now I had someone chasing me, which helped me not get complacent.

After T2, for which I was not ideally positioned, we had a carpeted run up onto the road, across the road, down a hill, through a parking lot, between some buildings, and into the pool. I had plenty of time to pull on a cap (it makes me feel faster when my head floats) and my goggles. I jumped into a mass of chaos. Men were everywhere thrashing around, passing, clocking me, breaststroking. I was somehow able to get a few good strokes in when not getting backed up on a wall. There were very few chances to pass, except when you got to the end of the 4 lanes and had to get out, get marked, run around the pool, and get back in. When I caught a glimpse of Tattoos, I thought I had a chance to catch her. If she had planted those men to fight me back they couldn't have done a better job of slowing me down. I even started yelling at one point while standing behind 4 guys at the wall, "It's a race! Go!" Out of the pool, we had to run another couple hundred carpeted yards to the finish line. And by the time I got there, Tattoos was out of sight. Turns out she beat me by 20 seconds, while I had beat 2 of her 3 splits. Why can't I run faster??

But thanks to mechanical failures of others' bikes, I maintained my 3rd OA position and got the best trophy ever -- a carved bear that stands on my mantel at about 2 feet high. 

Jeremy and I both checked our bike splits after the race to find the exact same time on our computers. But turns out he beat me by a few seconds in the official results. He also beat me in T2, which was essentially a cyclocross practice of carrying my bike over spots of carpet that covered large, sharp gravel. I wonder if everyone did that. He had a smoking fast "swim" time, which included that adventurous carpeted run x2, and finished just out of the bears.

At the end of this week, we're off to California with our bikes to enjoy the Pacific coastline for a while.