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Terenzo Bozzone's Journal
Wildflower Weekend
posted by at 08:31 AM on May 07, 2008
I guess you need more than two weeks strength training to race a tough half Ironman!!! But at the end of the day I shouldn't really use that as my excuse. I knew where my fitness was and if I raced inside my zone I am sure the second half of the race may have unfolded differently.
The swim was great, I relaxed the first half of the 1.9km swim and with 500m to go I went to the front and pushed the pace to get a bit of a gap on the weaker swimmers. It worked well and I picked up the swim prime exciting the water first.
The first part of the bike is very tactical and I kept pushing the pace even though my heart rate was a few beats higher than what I wanted. But I got a good lead and as my pace settled so did my heart rate. At about 10km into the 90km bike Bjorn Anderson the fastest biker around over this distance caught up, I thought the pace he was riding was comfortable for me so I tried to stick with him for a while. Then all of a sudden my legs started to die, I was only a quarter through the bike, this was not good. My pace started dropping and continued this trend trough the race, I could see on my power meter the numbers drop, about 100 watts difference from start to finish. Not good at all. I was really paying for my mistake, the same mistake I have made a couple times, you think I would learn from mistakes. I like doing and learning things the slow, hard way it seems. Not for any longer.
Off onto the run in 6th position, I tried to let my race start again. I found a steady rythem and for the first 5km I was moving well. But my legs were still deteriorating and I was struggling to keep going. Blisters that had formed and bleed out due to the high proportion of the run course being on soft surfaces and every muscle from my hips down just wanted to rest. I could see a couple of competitors up the road and every time I tried to pull them in I died a little more. I was passed by Chris Liegh but caught Bjorn in the final stretches so finished in 6th spot.
All in all the atmosphere was great, just like I remembered. The great support from the spectators and volunteers and the racing environment is a lot friendlier than the ITU Olympic distance stuff. Whenever a competitor passed me yesterday they either smiled at me to keep going or told me to keep it up. Even Chris "Macca" who ended up winning said when he passed me near the end of the bike "stick with us, you are the fastest runner here, you will be able to make up time." I am fortunate to be able to do a sport that I love for a living and to be around great competitors and supporters who make my life enjoyable. Even at moments like these I can reflect on what I do have in my life and I find myself smiling. That's not to say I am happy with my performance, in fact the complete opposite is how I feel, but I will not dwell on that for too long, instead I am going to fix what went wrong and make sure next time I am more prepared. Yesterday was not my day, I put myself in a position for a great day as doing average is not what I reach to achieve, but a bit more control would have gone down a treat.
I was also fortunate to have my little brother Dino down from University at Portland, Oregon looking after me. We are know back in San Francisco to watch a couple of his team mates run a 10km invitational race at Stanford tonight, then we head back up to Portland to figure out if the surrounds are perfect for me to train and get ready for the northern hemisphere summer of competition.
Next stop for me is the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon in 5 weeks which will be a good day for me to have a perfect race.
I hope that everyone is well, I will keep in touch to let you know how everything unfolds.
Regards
Terenzo
categories: General , Race Reports
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