This post is kind of sad because I lost it and a few others when a joker decided to deface the site. I may have to redo this post a few times just to remember everything, but for now I will just summarize things.
We drove down the day before and spent just over 24 hours in Lubbock this year. I will likely race this way again here, there isn’t a lot to do in the middle of summer in that heat. The conditions were VERY mild compared to last years windy and hot disaster. We met friends on Saturday at packet pickup and for lunch/dinner then went to bed. It was really an uneventful prerace day. I was mostly happy to eat since we had a stomach bug in the house most of the week. I went from Tuesday to Thursday with no solid food really.
Upon arrival to the race site Devon got to really see the hills going in and out of transition. He had been told many times, but until you see them with your own eyes you don’t grasp the reality of IM BSLT. It is a very special race course. We setup and got ready to race with mild temps and almost no wind. The water was warmer this year than last, but still wetsuit legal.
I had a PR on the swim of 38 minutes and raced into transition. Since I knew what was ahead I took my time in T1 and really prepped my body and mind for the bike (lots of Glide).
Onto the bike I took off on my new girl (love this bike so much) and the first 2 hills felt nothing like last year. I did the first 20 miles right at an hour and realized I was going to blow up at that pace, no food for a couple of days prior to race equals bad nutrition for a 70.3. I backed off the push on the next 20 miles to conserve energy for the run and really enjoyed the course. It was rougher roads than last year, but almost no wind until the last 10 miles. I shaved 21 minutes off of my 2014 time even turning off the power (have I mentioned how much I love my bike). No excuses and no complaints, I liked my bike time and had enough energy to start running.
The run started off as normal except instead of going out to the Energy Lab II this year we turned around at the park entrance and ran around the lake for 2 loops. I found this much more difficult than the out and back both mentally and physically. The lake is surrounded by a LOT of small ups and downs that really take their toll after the first loop. At mile 10 I was officially done running so I resorted to power walking (see above, stomach bug and going out too fast on the bike). The last 5k seemed to go on forever, but I made some friends with others that had similar experiences. I left enough in the tank to run the last half mile and do a good Roger Airplane into the finish chute. It’s actually one of my better finisher pictures and I was genuinely smiling.
Over all I ended up being more than an hour faster than the 2013 race and I took 3rd place for my final Clydesdale race. IMBSLT went from being the worst race of my life in 2013 to one of my favorites in 2014. I can honestly say I am looking forward to racing there again in the future!
