Getting back to my roots I raced my first sprint triathlon in over five years this morning at the Florida Great Escape (1m swim/18m bike/5m run) in Clermont, FL. I was 6th overall in 1:30 something and splits unavialble at time of this post. My goal was to simply go hard and see if I could find a few extra gears. It was a super fun affair with several of my friends from Boulder and two of my teammates from Team Sport Beans/NTTC toeing the line. Great to see my friend Carole Sharpless getting back in the mix after a two year hiatus...way to go Sharpie!Congrats to Kevin Collington & JZ for their overall wins!
My accommodations for the quick trip south included a homestay with Dave McFarland. He has been running a triathlete hostel of sorts for numerous years and it was a great time. We had a good number of athletes in the house including: Dave - owner, Filip - Slovakia (been here training for 4 months and finished 4th overall today), Rob - D.C. area (here for a training camp hosted by the National Training Center & 4th in his age group), Josh - Ontario, Canada (escaping the frozen north for a solid 10 day training block), Leah (Sport Beans/NTTC teammate & 4th overall woman) & her buddy Kevin (completed his first triathlon today in fine fashion). It was a hoot preparing & sharing a few meals with the other athletes. The location & casual atmosphere of the house is sweet and very conducive to focused training. If you are looking for a winter training camp Clermont is a great place with plenty of good riding, running & the National Training Center. Dave runs a pleasant homestay operation ($25 bucks/night for short visits) and can be reached at trihomestay@cfl.rr.com.
It was a hard 1:3x effort and I really enjoyed the late start time (9:00am v 6:45am) and being done with my race by 10:30am. A few of the more simple pleasures from this race included: not having to pack a boatload of race day nutrition, no separate gear & special needs bags and being able to run with no socks! Each of my big toes is sporting a blister on the tip from the no-sock deal, but c'mon it's a sprint right!?!
Heading back to Boulder tonight.
Keep it smooth...
Brad
Hey Brad!
ReplyDeleteI saw you are on the start list for Cali 70.3 and thought you might be interested in this as a tune up the week before. The SuperSeal and the Relay formats have prize money and they usually fly under the radar so not many fast pros come to race.
http://www.superfrogtriathlon.com/prizes.html
Lars