BSLT 70.3 2008 Race Report

**all pictures taken by Dan and added later by Dina - that's why pictures comments refer to Jeff in 3rd person**
If you read Cyndi’s post along with mine you will get the ying and yang of it all.

The red radioactive hoard that is the Triatomics showed up in Lubbock, Texas for the 19th edition of the Buffalo Springs Lake Triathlon. BSLT is a half ironman that is part of the 70.3 series, and as such has slots available for the 70.3 World Championships, in Clearwater, Florida, and as one of the old school half irons is one of the last few 70.3 races one can earn a slot to Kona. We showed up in neon-like numbers with Jim and Barbara Wendelberger, Cyndi Wells, Amy Regan, Char Latham, Martin Pieck, Jeff Johnson (me), Bill Bearden and Tom Bargeloh racing in the 70.3, and Joseph Baehr competing in the aqua-bike.

The race venue is at Buffalo Springs Lake, a man made, spring fed lake that is in Ransom Canyon located about 5 miles southeast of Lubbock, and both the run and bike snake in and out of the very large Ransom Canyon complex and the surrounding farmland. The lake is very nice and unexpected based on the surrounding topography. It is surrounded by a small residential area of year round homes and what appear to be weekend cottages. The lake is fairly clean and a very temperate 75 – 80 degrees, although the triathlon swim always manages to be wetsuit legal, barely.

BSLT has a reputation for being a very hard course that can be hot or windy or hot and windy. I’m not sure what makes the bike course hard because it is mostly flat with about a thousand feet of climbing over 5 moderate hills that are comprised of climbs in and out of Ransom Canyon, but there is something about the bike course that suppresses a high average speed and kind of weighs on you. The run course is flat with three significant hills and a mile and a half out and back on a hot flat road that is called the “energy lab 2”, a reference to the fabled energy lab out and back on the Kona run course.

A delayed storm front brought cool temperatures, overcast conditions, gusty wind and intermittent rain for race day, and although the conditions were cool, which probably contributed to a lot of pretty fast runs, the wind and rain out on the bike course made for slower than normal bike times, and treacherous descents down some of the steeper hills on the course. There were a number of people that came thundering off their bikes but no any serious injuries that I am aware of.

Before I get into the self indulgent details of my race I will recount how the rest of the team performed…

Barbara competed in and completed her very first half ironman, Jim punched in a workmanlike performance in support of Barbara, Amy placed 5th grabbing a slot to Clearwater.

Here is Amy passing some more guys on her way to 5th! :) This is shortly before the finish chute.

Char placed 15th in what has been called this years most competitive age group, Martin was 6th in his AG with very good time of 4:40, and just missed earning hardware by 3 minutes. I think he lost all his time mugging for the camera…. Here are some examples of Martin's frivolous waving to the 'fans' and bicep flexing... what a ham! :)

thanks to Dan for taking pictures! Bill plowed through the race in good form, placing 10th in his AG, even though I know he was under trained, Tom finished solidly in the middle of his AG, and Cyndi showed up and raced despite having her slide-in camper catch fire while en-route to the race. Joe finished the aqua-bike after wrecking his brand new bike on some rain slicked roads and jamming his rear derailleur.

I showed up in Lubbock hopeful for a good performance, and confident I had prepared to execute, but the pre-race omnipresent fear of failure hung over my head. Ever since the previous BSLT I had ridden a wave of good performances and I had raised my personal expectations of race day execution. Proper execution equates to satisfaction that always accompanies accomplishment of challenging goals, but the other side of coin is always there. I had a couple of basic goals for this race, I wanted to improve on my time from last year or improve my overall placement and I wanted to earn a slot to Clearwater.

Anyway, race day loomed. Suzy and I got up at 3:15 our time, 4:15 panhandle time, ate a little, packed and picked up Amy Regan at 5:00. The worst part of this race is a congested drive to the venue. The race starts at 6:30 with all the waves leaving over the following half hour, and there is usually a 20 – 25 minute wait for parking, and a longish walk to transition It doesn’t make for much time to get your transition set up, visit the john, and warm up for the swim.

I basically had enough time after I got down to the lake to scope out how others were addressing the swim start, swim about 150 yards to warm up, and go through the corral to the start. This race has a cheesy legal “cheater” that allows the swimmers to wade along the shore for 100 to 150 yards before starting the swim. It isn’t without peril due to submerged rocks that can twist your ankle or cut your foot. I elected to wade the shore as far as I could and dove in the water in about 5th or 6th place with a pack of 5-10 swimmers just to my left. I don’t think the shore walk gained all that much time but it allowed me to get in the water with a thinned pack and avoid the thrashing that typically accompanies an open water swim start. Being out in the open I was able to put the hammer down and motor through a pretty good swim in just under 26 minutes. I was the second person out of the water in my age group, beating the next pack of guys in my group pack by over a minute.

I got though transition pretty easily and settled in. The prevailing winds on race day were mostly in our faces out and at out back on the return. I figured it would be hard to put distance into people the last 20 or so miles on the return, so the time to make hay was into the wind. I immediately tried to set a steady tempo and work into the wind. My new aero helmet and disc wheel made the head wind pretty easy to deal with. I had been in (pretty minor) angst concerning which front wheel to use in the race, and based on the breezy race morning conditions decided against my deep dish and utilized a basic light weight training wheel with a rear disc. The decision proved correct as many portions of the race had stiff side winds that would have abused my deep dish front, but didn’t phase the steel rim at all.

At about mile 7 or 8 I passed the guy who I knew was first out of the water, and I figured I was in first place in my AG on the road. The ride was pretty uneventful, you had to pick your way down a few of the hills because of the rain but I pretty much relaxed, conserved and fueled up for the run. I must have been passed by someone in my AG near transitions, and due to the rain washing his number off didn’t know it, but I passed him back pretty soon on the run and pressed at a comfortably hard pace to the turnaround. I tried to pick up my tempo on the return, but started feeling the days effort around mile 9, and really struggled to maintain pace the last 4 miles of the run.

Jeff picking up the tempo on the run.

I ended up winning my AG by about 4 minutes. Second place was a guy from Colorado who ran a smoking 1:24 and plowed through a lot people, third was the guy who beat me into T2.


Early in the year when I knew I was going to race BSLT and I established my performance goals, I knew if I accomplished them I would stand a good chance of winning my AG. I contemplated what I would do in the event I won my AG and earned the slot to Kona. In our sport it is almost anathema to decline a Kona slot, and while the distance really doesn’t interest me, the iconic status associated with the race weighed on my decision process. I have always said I wouldn’t race any other ironman except Kona, meaning I would have to win the lottery or a half ironman, and since they are eliminating the half iron slots those opportunities are waning. I finally decided that if I managed to win my age group or finish high enough to have the slot pass down I would decline it basically because I don’t think I would enjoy the training or the race nor did I necessarily believe I would be able to own the opportunity to compete well. The risk to reward ratio wasn’t to my liking. On the other hand, I felt the 70.3 championships in Clearwater were more accessible from both a training and a competition point of view, so I decided early in the year to focus on Clearwater if I could earn the slot.

Jeff with the spoils: computrainer, 1st AG, wine, Clearwater slot!

The second place guy from my AG took the roll down but he looked like he was trying to swallow a buffalo. He commented to me that I was probably the smart one. I wish him a lot of success in Hawaii! Joining me, so far, in Clearwater will be both Dan Reese and Amy Regan, so the Triatomics will be well represented and I suspect we will have a grand time.