Boise 70.3

After a noon start at my first Xterra in Coeur d'Alene a week ago, I'm getting used to this sleeping in the day of the race. Waking up about 9am, making a big egg, bacon, and avocado breakfast with the Montana crew, haning out with Linsey Cobin's family, finally starting to think about getting ready about noon. It was great watching my friends Brendan Halpin and Jen Luebke getting ready for their first pro race, and getting little Matt Shryock pumped to try to go top 3 in the age group race. The walk up the huge hill to the swim was entertaining, plus after getting to the top, there was no need for a warm up, as I was already sweating. The day seemed like the weather was going to say nice, no wind, kind of sunny, but about half way through the swim, with wind came up and made things a bit choppy, luckily the last leg the wind was at our back. Riding across the dam and down the hill after T1 was quite sketchy with the gusty side winds, but it was great to have a tail wind at the bottom. Then about 5 minutes into the ride, the sky opened up and a wall of water was dropped for about 15 minutes. Even thought it was pelting rain, it felt great and was a blast speeding down the road spraying water everywhere. It’s surprising how quickly you dry off after the rain stops, too bad that didn’t last, it then rained on and off, with burst of downpours, making the road really slick. After finding out several people ate it on the bike, I didn’t feel so bad being such a wimp and taking all the corners nice and slow. The rain finally let up right about T2, and the run was nice and cool. The spectators were great lining the streets of downtown Boise, and the course was flat, fast and scenic by the river. At the turn around on lap one, I saw Halp moving up through the field. At the turn on lap 2, he was bearing down on me. I knew he could close strong and consistently run 1:17’s, so I new I had to push to stay ahead. Thankfully I took the first part of the run out a bit conservative, and had energy at the end to finish 20 sec. up, but we both PR’d and had a great race. Jen was not so lucky on one of the corners of the ride about mile 35, but toughed it out and finished strong. Matty ended up :45 sec. out of 3^rd for 4^th amateur, but wining is age group by 10 min. Then the eating, massaging, and relaxing began. The nice thing about a Saturday race, is that we don’t have to cram into a car and road trip back right away. The whole weekend was pretty relaxed, and the drive down and back from Missoula was beautiful. Looking forward to the next one. Also glad I got to hang out with Jake at the Zoot both for a bit before the race as well. Attached are some photos of the Xterra. I'll add the Boise ones when I get them.