A week out from the race I made a request that I have never done before in my career, I asked for a number change. On the start list I was number 5 and I had been number 5 twice before. The first was at Rev3 Knoxville in 2010 in which I was clipped by an officer and sent careening into a curb and out of contention for not only the race but for the next two months. The next time I was number 5 was in 2012, Abu Dhabi…need I say more. Heather Fuhr gladly adjusted my number to 26…which is 13×2 right? Perfect!
When I got to transition race morning number 5, was a mere feet from bike in/bike out while number 26 was 75 feet from the spot I was originally designated. That means 150′ an extra of running with my bike instead of running hands free, doesn’t sound like much but I am one that fights for every inch and gave up a few because of a historical jinx.
Much less did I know at the time that the race would come down to mere seconds.
With the tide out the swim in the Choptank river was a very shallow one, which meant any wind at all the swim would truly become very choppy. Unfortunately the winds were very calm and the bay only had a few ripples before the start…that was until the cannon fired. Immediately Eric Limkemann and Andrew Yoder to my left were sending off yacht sized waves flying through the water. I was on Eric’s hips and I could see there were a group of three about 30′ to the right spearheaded by Tim O’Donnell (TO). After a 1/4 mile the two lines converged and I was swimming next to somebody about the same size as me that I kept on getting sucked into. I kept thinking…who the heck is this. Finally I got a good glimpse of his number…Docherty. We did this same game of smacking into each other for the better part of an hour at Kona. After about a minute of smacking hands and fighting for the single pair of feet ahead of us, I decided to slip behind Docherty knowing that the chances of him getting dropped were as good as USA beating the Kiwi’s in rugby. Just as I started to get comfortable suffering at the blistering pace that Eric was setting…Docherty sprinted around the swimmer in front of him and left a bout a 10′ gap to whoever it was. I tried to close down the gap, I could see the bubbles but just could not close the gap and I could see that whoever’s feet I was chasing was yo-yoing from losing the pack, come on baby…800, 700, 600, I was swimming well above where I should be for a half but I knew if I didn’t do it I could lose a minute really quick. I still had the end of the draft but could never get close enough to get a good draft. Finally the end of the swim and…TO was the one that was getting dropped…along with me! I counted only three in front of TO and then glanced over my shoulder to see how far back the chase pack was…this race was already a 5 horse race with the chase pack over 150 yds away from shore. We dashed quickly through T1 and closed the time that I had lost in the water because I was racing the Orca RS1 suite which meant I didn’t need a swimskin!
I quickly mounted the Orbea Ordu. I got in my Mavic’s sucked down a lot of Gu Brew because I knew that it was about to get real. Around mile 2 we went through a turn and got a run on everybody else and in a half mile section around two turns I went from 5th to 1st. I set the pace strong but I just did not feel razor sharp. I felt like a freight train that I was just pulling dead weight. At mile 5 I glanced between my legs and was hoping to see nothing, instead I saw a close up of Docherty. I then looked over my shoulder because when I went from 5th to 1st just 5 minutes earlier I had to jockey around two officials and right now he was playin’ dirty. The officials were back there but not doing anything so I just shook my head and kept the hammer down. About a mile later I could here a bit of yelling…it was Docherty and the official having a heated conversation.
During this time Yoder moved around Docherty while TO and Eric sat behind the draft being created by and arguing Docherty next to the official. I just kept drilling the pace and at mile 25 of the bike Docherty headed to the sin bin (penalty tent) creating a gap between Yoder and TO. I hit a double caffeinated Chocolate Raspberry Roctane and launched a 5 mile effort to make that gap grow. I think that gel had miracle-gro in it, because after 5 miles the gap was over a minute with Yoder still on my heels. Yoder came around for the next 5 miles and I got to see how much talent that young man has. He was smooth, aero, and made the pace look effortless. I retook the lead for the next five miles but still felt like I was a freight train…then about mile 42 the body came alive and the pedals just seemed to turn themselves. Yoder slipped away in the final miles as I rode like a bullet train.
T2 was a bit slow as I had forgotten to unstrap my heart rate monitor in the final miles of the bike so I spent and extra 5 seconds in transition pulling it off…now it was run time. Running in the Alphawoolf’s felt like I was on a false flat down hill for the first 6 miles out to the turnaround just turning over 5:50-5:55′s like it was easy.
At the turnaround I saw what I did not want to see, TO was right there, less than half a minute back…the gap back to the rest of the field was nearly 5 minutes and with just 10k to go it was a two horse race. I kept hitting 5:55′s through mile 10 and at each turn I could see that Tim was creeping in. At mile 10.5 he pulled up beside me and thew in a little surge. My legs screamed to high heaven to match the pace but they did and after 1/3 of a mile TO let up as we headed into an aid station.
I slid in front of TO and we ran single file at a relaxed 6:00 pace and the closer we got to the line I was trying to figure out what crafty move TO was going to come up with. With 300m to go TO attacked coming out of a turn and he got a small gap, my legs were cramping and I was waiting for any second for my knees to buckle and collapse to the pavement. TO held this blistering pace all the way around the park but when we finally lined up for the 75m finish line stretch I got finish line eyes and launched a vicious attack, with 25m left I glanced over my shoulder and TO had reduced it to a trot conceding the victory.