Back to the drawing board

This is a very hard blog to write but as they say -- I need to cowboy up! Things today did not go as planned in St.Croix. All week I was feeling positive and the body and mind were good. All my tune-ups went well and on Thursday I went up the Beast(the .7-mile hill of avg. grade of 15%)in 7 minutes, pretty much no problem at 140 HR. I felt rested, and nervous, but ready to roll and I was confident that I had done all the prep I could do to be ready for this test. Race morning was also good with all my gear and nutrition ready to race this very difficult course.

The swim started and I got out to a good start and settled into my pace and felt pretty good and relaxed. I got a good draft from Roger Wacker and another in my group on the way back in. I came out in 32 and change and thought -- "Damn, I thought I could go more like 30 here," but looking at the times and my place (7th) out of the water I was in pretty good shape going into the bike.

Then everything went bad. I started the bike and immediately thought, "Shit, my legs feel like crap!" but I didn't panic, I knew it was a long hard race and my legs surely would come around. The first short loop and into town, Sarah shouted that I was in 4th. OK, my legs feel like shit but I am OK if I get some legs sometime soon, I tried as I might, easier gears, harder gears, standing, etc.... but it was like I had a bad electrical current in my legs that wouldn't allow me to push any power to the pedals. At mile 20 I hit the "Beast," where just a few days ago I went up it pretty easy. Not this time. I was barely able to get up the thing. Over the top and down to the faster section of the course. I stayed in the game and continued to fight to find something. By mile 30 I was actually pushing my hand on my quads to push the pedal down. I was relegated to the small ring and barely able to push 200 w. I was done.

I spun easy to the short loop and cut through --- I really don't think I could of got around the hard side of the island for the last 20 miles. And certainly could not have run. It was like I was bonked after a century. I saw Sarah at the corner of the short loop and said to her, "I have never felt legs on the bike quite like that before." I was able to get to the room barely and now I am processing what exactly happened.

I can't tell you how disappointed and embarrassed I am about this. I knew this quest was going to be hard but I really thought that my training numbers were good and I was ready to perform today. I obviously wasn't. I have had so many people routing for me and supporting me in this quest. I have let you all down today and it really hurts. I even had a good cry as I watching the "Bucket List" on the tube. I have no idea why it went bad today --- which is the most frustrating. Everyone has bad days with bad legs and I --- like everyone has had my fair share of bad days on the race course. There were a couple of incidents in Training were something like this happened to me. A few weeks ago at a practice TT (17 miles) my legs where a bit bad like this and I was very average on the bike. And In Las Vegas I had a day with very little power as well. But everyone has bad training days within a training block. right? Last week, however, I felt great and my power was very strong. I tapered from 20 hrs to 10 hrs to 6 hrs the last 3 weeks and nothing seemed to indicate a problem. Although maybe tapering was the problem? But there was certainly something very wrong today. I don't know whether my heart had anything to do with this but I am scheduled for testing in the next couple of weeks to make sure it had nothing to do with the way I felt today. My gut feeling is that my heart is fine, my breathing and heart felt fine today it was my legs that were the problem.

In any case there is just a couple of choices for me going forward. One, give this whole thing up and forget about racing at this level or fight back and give it more time and another shot at Buffalo Springs. This is not the end..... Buffalo Springs 70.3, here I come. and tonight many drinks

thanks for all the well wishes and I am sorry for today

Jay