Hagg Lake Olympic

Raced the hagg lake olympic on Saturday, another Tri-Northwest, AA event. Nearly perfect day for race conditions and I felt better in this one than my last olympic at Blue lake. The blue lake race was a PR for me at 2:04 at the oly distance. Hagg lake is a much tougher course with 1600 ft of climbing on the bike and a few hundred on the run. This is the USAT Nationals Olympic course this year so it was nice to race on this course.

I set my PR for this course by 8 minutes at a 2:09, won my 5th masters title this season and managed a 4th overall. Very happy with the 3rd fastest bike split of the day and 5th fastest run. While the race is small with only a couple hundred people, a few of the fast oly distance athletes in the area showed up. Matt Berg dominated the race with his 18 min swim, but his bike time not as fast. His run was pretty dominant with the top guys. I'm sure he let up a bit as he had a 2 minute lead on Dave Campbell. I managed to nip Dave at the 3 mile mark at blue lake oly few weeks back and at the 10 mile mark at pacific crest. He hammered me at the Corvalis sprint 7 wks back and again hammered me yesterday by about 90 seconds. When he has a good race its nearly impossible to catch him off his bike split.

Anyway, my legs felt fairly good on the bike which made my day here. My overall time would have placed me 13th at USAT nationals last year on this course. So, I wont be racing nationals. Ann and I have both qualified for Oly USAT nationals for 2008 and I was using this race to see how I could race this course, and get an idea on my potential placing at nationals. To me, I'll save my legs in September and wont spend the money to race this one. Ann's time of 2:22 was enough to win handedly and was the 3rd fastest time for women at this event since 2005. Her time would place her 8th at USAT Nationals, not bad considering she's not the youngest in her age group at 38 this year.

Ann was impressive as she stalked the leading female. I saw Ann at mile 4 when she was at mile 2 and told her the leader was only 40 seconds ahead and "didnt look good". I could see the womens leader was not smooth, and Ann was smooth and strong. So, I had a good feeling Ann would catch her, which she did over the next mile or so. She won by about a minute or so and its her second overall win this year.

Legs feel good today, rebounding nicely after the race. Regardless, I wont needlessly over train and we will rest a bit so we can have some good quality workouts mid week.

We've knocked out our 5th race this summer out of 9 before Kona. Next up for us is the Troika 1/2 ironman in Spokane, WA. Ann may race a sprint distance the day before so wont be quite as strong on race day, but I am confident she may win or at least be 2nd overall in Spokane even racing the day before. We'll check the race list the week of, and if a couple of really fast girls register, then its best Ann doesnt race the day before. After Troika, all we have is ITU world long course championsips (3 times the olympic distance), then I will be racing an olympic the weekend after. This takes us to Sep. 7th, 5 weeks from Kona.

We may do a short sprint 3 wks out from Kona, havent decided. Very tricky with so many races going into an Ironman and I'll keep my coaches strategy for us a secret for now.