St. Anthony's triathlon brief recap...

I'm finally home. It seemed like a long travel day.

Anyway, not the best season opener. I don't want to go into too much detail right now, maybe later.

But to hit on a common theme from the race I had some issues. Matt Reed had a flat and dnf'd a few others had issues as well, blah blah blah, that's racing.

As for me I swam like crap in the chop. I think it all comes down to needing to be more aggressive. You just can't think of trying to swim "well" in bad chop, you just have to put your head down and hammer. I swam better then I have in the past but still 2 min off where I should and could be. I'll just have to prove that this week at Wildflower. The lake doesn't seem to get 4 ft. breakers very often.

Out of the swim I felt a bit flat but not too bad. I stated winding it up around five miles and was bringing back the line of bikes ahead pretty quick. There is a zig zag section through down town before you head out to the golf course. I don't know the exact intersection but coming through a corner in the bars I nailed what felt like a foot deep pothole. I didn't see anything. It knocked my hands over the end of the aerobars and I kind of pathetically tipped over. I got back on quick and started getting back to where I was. However, the force of the hit knocked my saddle down about an inch and the nose down about 20 degrees. Also the bars were knocked down below horizontal as well.

It really is amazing how much position affects you on the bike. After only about 5 miles or so I was cramped up in by lower back and quad. I was feeling like crap and going nowhere. I was going to tough it out and finish etc. since I hate the reputation pros have for dnf'ing whenever things aren't 100%.

The fact is my quad was cramping bad enough from pushing myself back up on the saddle as I slid off about every 5th rotation that I thought it really would have an effect on the run and this week at Wildflower. So after a bit of debate with myself I decided to pull the pin.

Like I said I hate dropping out. So, I have been trying not to beat myself up too much about this decision. I have left it to "I better kick ass at Wildflower or I'm gonna look like a moron for making this decision".

Anyway that's what happened.

On the upside Cam was 7th and brought home what I will call the Without Limits Team's first podium. What makes "podium" is a bit up for debate. But, they called 10 guys up to the stage at St. Anthony's yesterday and in my book that's the podium.

Lance and Kristen went well also. Not a great as they might have liked but not bad for the first race of the year on TT bikes we have only been on for about 10 days.

I gotta try to get back to west coast time so I'll add more later. But, for now that's the story.

Jimmy