Today was the Lake Havasu Triathlon. It is a collegiate event that others are welcome to participate in. We had 5 BYU mens triathletes stay at our house. The top BYU guy was at our place and did the olympic tri in 2:04. That is really fast. He took 7th overall. I didn't want to get into the cold water, so I organized a relay team and only had to run the 10K at the end. There was another local relay team we were trying to beat. Our swimmer did great swimming a 24 minute 1500m, and we were only 1:30 behind our competition. We had to get a last minute cyclist since ours was sick. The new guy claimed to be able to do the 40K in 1:05. We were counting on him to match or better the cycling time of the other team. Unfortunately he was significantly slower than advertised and we were almost 15 minutes behind by the time I was given the timing chip. I knew the most I would be able to make up on the other runner was 4 or 5 minutes, so I just tried to run a good steady 10K. I started strong even though the first mile is brutal with a run through deep sand and up some steep stairs climbing the London Bridge. I hit 6:15 on the first mile which is way faster than I thought I would be. I thought I was feeling fine and had not pushed too hard, but that first mile took more out of me than I thought. As the race went on I gradually faded and finished the 10K in a disappointing 39:50 which was about 8 seconds per mile slower than I ran the St. George Half Marathon. This leaves me wondering why I am getting slower instead of faster. What do I need to do to get my legs back before Boston? I felt fine during my 2 mile warm up and at the beginning of the race, but I just couldn't hold the pace like I should have been able to. My legs didn't feel dead or anything. I was hoping this race would give me a good confidence boost heading into the last few weeks before Boston, but it seems to have done the opposite. I guess I have 4 weeks to figure it out. I figure I'll try and cut miles but maintain intensity (speed) and hope to be feeling good on race day. We ended up about 9 minutes back of the guys we were racing, so I did make up some time, but really never had a chance being so far back. | 