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Lord of the Ralph wins his 1st WTC age group championship!

Paul HoughPaul Hough
in Races & Places 🏁⛺

 Dateline: Muncie, IN, 7 July 12.  Projected heat index = 107.  Water temp at 0630 = 88.5F.  WTC pulls the plug on the 70.3 and gives us a 1 mi swim, 30 mile bike, and 10K run.  We find out the day before and it took me the rest of the day to get my head back in the game.  Result- 2:42:49 for a 9 sec victory in the M55 division.  

Swim... The race start was advanced 30 mins to 6:30am.  I was most concerned about the swim because if you get cooked in the water it's all over.  I had a fairly clean start and only got bopped in the head once.  I felt good going out but at the halfway point I was feeling the heat and purposefully backed off the pace.  Every once in awhile I pushed the pace until I felt too hot.  You come out of the water with about  200 yards from transition of which the first 150 are uphill.  I jogged up 100 yards then walked to the top before running again.  I was in 5th place coming out of the water and 4th after T1.

Bike... I was really hot starting the ride and did not push the first 4 miles.  Then I felt my legs coming back and started to push.  I was riding with a power tap but threw that out the window since it was only 30 miles.  From 5 to 25 I hammered the bike to move up to first, but then I started to feel the heat again and backed off until the end. 

T2 ... I knew I was first coming into T2 since all the old guy spots were empty.  But before I left transition, the guy right next to me racked his bike.  CRAP!!

Run... Although it was only a 10K it was already very hot and I took it out easy.  If my competition was a lot faster there wasn't anything I could do about it anyway.  By 2.5 miles he caught me walking an aid station but I pulled away fairly easy.  That gave me some hope I could out kick him.  Each mile closer I got more confident.  As I approached the finish I was picking it up and prepared to dig but did not have to even though he had been tailing me closely.  So I got my first ever WTC win even though it comes with a giant asterisk.

The celebration ... Well, after picking it up at the end, I started to go downhill rapidly.  I was walking around a bit but had to drop to my knees a few times.  The 3rd time I went down, I stayed down, and then my body hit the RESET button and I started to spew.  I tried to blow chunks but there were none.  I hurled, I ralphed, I up chucked, and all that came up was water, water, and more water.  I had simply had too much on the run course.   I immediately felt a 1000 times better, but had attracted the attention of 2 race officials, God bless them!

Anyway, I'm happy to win and it turned out to be a great day even if it was a Wimpathon.  But I will admit that it would have been a mega sufferfest if they had kept it to a 70.3.   Great race, great venue, super volunteers, and outstanding community support.  It was all good but the short distance and the lousy compensation WTC offered ($125 off one of four 70.3s in the next 3months).  Worthless because my schedule is locked.  C'est la vie.

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