Posted by Leif Irgens on October 16, 2007 at 15:55:39:
In Reply to: Hey Leif posted by Allyson Lamey on October 16, 2007 at 15:05:53:
We all did the Olympic distance. It was a bit of a rough day. Medium to strong winds resulted in a very choppy lake swim. I thought I'd never get back to shore. The strong winds were also quite the nuisance on the bike course with the first 10 miles being mostly uphill with a strong cross-head wind. We thought the rest of the course (after the turn North to Dallas) would be lightning fast (it was a point-to-point bike leg) but a considerable cross-wind component still made bike handling a challenge. Between that and the bumpy pavement, many folks wisely chose to stay off the aero bars on the bull horns (or drops) for much of the bike leg. Quite the considerate group of competitors over there, though. I had several instances where yelling "on your left" as I rode down slightly less than one lane of highway (coned off from the motor vehicle traffic) resulted in people breaking off their own passing efforts to let faster riders through. I'm not saying our Southern competitors are rude but there was a pleasantly noticeable level of courtesy in this race.
The run was nice. A 2-loop course in the area around Reunion Arena. Who knew Dallas had so many hills? Except for the wind and the bumpy concrete, I really enjoyed this course. With cloudy skies and moderate temperatures - except for the wind - the weather was perfect.
All of us were quite satisfied with our performances. Ron clocked me by about 30 sec. I think he was pretty satisfied with that. I won't complain. While I never really felt like I was going well, my splits and placing showed I did indeed have a very good race.