Back on the Horse: Glen Rose Recap

I guess that now that all the insanity of the wedding has died down and racing season is pretty much coming to a slow close, I can get back to blogging. Then again, I doubt anyone really missed my entries—didn’t hear a peep from anyone during the past 3 or so months regarding it! Either way, I will try to keep this bad boy going for at least a little longer, but I would like a bit of input to know if anyone even reads this garbage!

So, lets see. I pretty much stopped communication right before the final sprint of the season—I’ll try to recap what I remember from the race. It was hot…again. We had to drive all the way out to Glen Rose, which was basically west and south of Dallas. Scottie was already there, so I met up with her and then did a preride of the course by myself since she had already previewed it. After a bit of screwing around at the race site, we retired to the hotel with Dave P.

Race was brutal because of the nasty climbs and the temps. It started off with a run with an immediate hill climb. It went alright and we were keeping a good pace and were still in the top pack by the time we got back to transition. We had to ride to the boat put in where we ran head on, literally, with a bad omen. I was towing Scottie on the bike down this jeep trail when all the sudden a cow starts barreling down at us! At first I figured it would see us and get out of the way…nope! It kept running towards us until, at the last second, we both veered away from each other! Damn cow was playing chicken! I escaped harm, but Scottie lost control and crashed. We collected ourselves, still wondering if that really happened, then continued to the boat drop.

We started off rough on the paddle as SOMEONE forgot their seat. :) Oh well, we would manage. We actually were paddling really strong; I seem to remember us being in the top 10 or something like that. We consistently started passing teams. We got back to the boat drop and had to lug that rubber duckie up the steep dropoff. We were back on our bikes and had to head back to transition—it was mandatory as a precaution against the heat, to give teams a chance to take on more water.

We start off on the bike and realize we are in front of iMOAT for probably the first time in the series! We tried to keep our lead, but the heat and hilly terrain was just too much for us. We had to actually turn it back a notch so that we didn’t blow a gasket. This was probably our slowest race. Somehow we make it through the course and get back to TA. We have one final leg, a special test. It was kinda wimpy as we had to put on and take off jerseys successively and that was it. We sprinted to the finish with all kinds of anguish showing on our faces. We finished 4th in the race and 4th overall for the entire season, which are both good considering the competition.

I stayed for the awards ceremony then left to Dallas to get Mo’s wedding band…and that was it. Drove back home from there and was back in time for dinner. The sprint series was over and I was pretty happy about it. So, I will stop there and start on the No Sweat race for the next entry. Whew, that was exhausting!