Friday, October 31, 2008

World championship Xterra race

Kristi and I : Cool calm and collected

Okay maybe a little nervous! don't drown hugs.
Krisit and I come out of the water together... classic!

Brian raced great. His time was within a minute of the previous year. Given the run course being about a minute longer and harder this year, you could say his race was very equivalent. The men's field was STACKED with talent and the bar was definitely raised. Brian was 9th this year and 50 seconds behind the first American Josiah Middaugh. He had a great swim 22 minutes!! solid bike and as always one of the fastest runs. I think he was was happy.. He should be! The mens race was won by the Spanish mountain bike champion, 2nd was Michael Weiss a former under 23 World Mountain bike champion. 5th was Eneko Ylanos 2x World Xterra Champion and 3x ITU Olympian. I think you get the idea. Brian was less than 4 minutes back from the fastest bike time, truly not bad! 4Min's off World cup MTB pace?!!!

Me? I had a good swim, 24 Min's 15... was so psyched! This was a big goal for me, so I was really happy. My bike was solid and I rode up to 4th coming off the bike with Renata Bucher of Switzerland and 2 mins back on 2nd place at the time who was Shonny V. My run was crap. I'm sorry but its true. To my credit I hung in there and re passed 6th place then held off a hard charging Jenny Tobin to finish 6th.
All in all I'm just so psyched that the season is over. I got tired at the end this year, in a counting down the days of training kind of way, So the finish line was sweet, That's it I'm done for a little while no intervals and structure. I need a break.

Its been a good year though and I'm very grateful for all my good races, for my Achilles being healed and solid, for my 5th at USA Championships and 6th at Worlds as I realise they are very decent results, for Ann Trombley my coach for putting up w/ me, for my swim getting better, for my sponsors Trek bikes/Volkswagen MTB team, Salomon mountain company, JBL,Shimano,Rockshox,Bontrager,Xterra wetsuits. And a bunch of other stuff.. I mean...

We have it really rather good!!!! and now we're in Hawaii!!!! Wheres the ocean??

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I got to see you sprint for the finish line on the live streaming on-line; very exciting!! Your pics in your other post are AMAZING. Jealous!

"JK" said...

Hey, James Kennedy here - I was racked next to Brian and still have his suit. You can email me at jimbok33@hotmail.com with an address and I'll send it back if you like. Otherwise, I'm happy to hang onto it since my blue seventy suit is petering out. Cheers - JK

Anonymous said...

congrats on great races! i've got a couple of pics of brian as he's coming out of t2 to start his run (i was a spectator in maui) if you want me to send it over... email is alittlemoth@gmail.com. i'm sure you have tons of pics, but... thought i'd offer anyway! :)

Anonymous said...

Awesome you guys! See ya in a couple of weeks...

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