Elephant Man, Olympic distance, Elephant Butte, NM 09/26/10

Another great race weekend at Elephant Butte thanks to Kori, Scott, and the entire Elephant Man race crew. I love this race – in a town of 2500, they get 150 volunteers to help out. How cool is that? A new twist this year was the kids race (Elephant Kids) held Saturday evening at 5:00. Made it easy for you to get registered, get your kid registered, and then watch him race, AFTER a day of soccer in Bernalillo, or whatever. Lots of age groups, different distances for each. Very well run and a great experience for the kiddos. Free T-shirts, race number belts and chip bands (thanks to Dam It Man leftovers – a lot like our Splash n Dash (Atomic Man) swag this year), real timing chips, open water swim point to point parallel to shore, then into the Elephant Man transition area where their bikes and shoes were waiting. They had a nice way of identifying kid ages (straight from Kona Ironman last year) – not only were they body marked with their number and age, but each age group got a color-coded swim cap and wrist band – which made it very easy for the volunteers to identify the proper turn around spots on the bike and run for the different aged kids. There’s a hill immediately coming out of transition for the bike, but the littlest ones (6 and under) got to simply do flat laps around transition in the large parking lot before heading out onto the run. I love those training wheels speeding around the corners. The older ones headed up the hill and out into the state park a certain distance depending upon their ages (oldest: 13-15 age group), before returning for their run. And did I mention that Ben crushed the 9-10 year old competition?! (Just a little proud mom crowing here).

OK, Olympic distance report: weather is always nice down there this time of year; it doesn’t get real hot till the end of the race, however there was more wind than in the past – never a good feeling to watch the strongly flapping flag early in the morn. Four waves of athletes this year – all the women except the athenas went first. A huge group got off in the front; I certainly was not one of them. The wind caused a decent chop so one leg of the triangular course was tougher than the others. Out on the bike the wind made the ride more interesting than usual. We headed out into the wind, though the tough hill is situated such that the wind was actually helpful. It’s still a steep section, though, that separates the strong from the not-so-strong. I had passed a number of those good swimmers by this point but there were was still some unknown number ahead. Came into T2 and took my good ol’ sweet time, just as I had in T1. As Dan reminded me later, you can’t transition an Olympic distance the way you do an ironman. Oops, that sure cost me.

The run was its usual scenic self – sandy for almost the entire first mile makes it tough, but then it’s up onto the dams with nice views. I saw the first four women way ahead of me and had little hope of catching up. Then I saw Mary Uhl, always a very tough competitor, coming at me as I was coming up the hill to the turn around so she became my goal. Finally caught her around the 5 mile mark (lucky for me she hasn’t been able to train much this year!). There’s nothing like running downhill and along a sandy trail hoping someone’s not right on your tail. I ended up 5th OA, 1st AG. As usual, an early race start gave me plenty of opportunities to cheer for fellow Team TriSports.com people, as well as fellow Triatomics. Speaking of which – a great Los Alamos club showing this year: Bill Bearden, Frank Cherne, Chuck Farrar, Greg Geoffrion, Matt Heavner, Char Latham , Amy Lee, Max Light, Clay Moseley (overall winner – congrats!!), Dina Pesenson, Sanna Sevanto, Andy Sutton, Karen Young, were all there (sorry if I missed somebody). A decent number of cool bottle opener medals and a signature EM beer were awarded to our club members. For those of you who missed it – put it on your calendar for next year – the last Sunday in September. It’s a fun weekend and a great race.