BSLT 70.3

Sunday (6/29/08) was the BSLT 70.3, formerly known as the Buffalo Springs Half Ironman. I was the cyclist/runner on a relay team for three races (2002-2004) and then I did the race "solo" twice (2005-2006). Last year I did the Tri-Raider sprint which they run on the same day in the same location. Mike and Marti Greer are the race directors for both of these races plus a few others. They do a super job putting their races together.

http://www.buffalospringslaketriathlon.com/home.php

You can usually count on Lubbock, TX, being hot, dry, and sunny in the last week of June. It certainly has been every other year I was there. The sun and the heat take a lot out of me. Throw in the hills on the bike, and especially the hills on the run, and this is a tough race. They have slots for Kona and Clearwater, so you get some of the heavy hitters from all over the United States showing up. I just look for a reasonable time and hope to finish in the top half of my age group.

This year, it was cool (temperatures in the 60's/low 70's), with gray skies, lightning in the distance, winds gusting to 25 mph, and rain. If I had been the race director, I would have been worried about having 1000 triathletes riding bikes on wet and slippery roads getting blown around by the wind. If Mike and Marti ever considered cancelling the race, I never heard about it. Other than a delay because people were late getting parked and down the hill to the transition area, everything went off without a hitch. Sure beat my experience at the USAT Age Group Championships in Kansas City in 2005 where they cancelled the race because of wet roads.

The swim starts in a small cove. There is no way to have a mass start, so everyone goes off in waves of 100-200 or so swimmers. This year, some of the pro's figured out you could run through the shallow water on the south shore of the cove rather than starting your swim from the middle of the cove. This saved them about 100 meters of swimming. Sure enough, the age groupers saw this so every wave had some "runners" at the start of the swim. I didn't want to step on something in my bare feet, so I started swimming from the middle of the cove. I could watch the "runners" and except for the few "runners" at the front of the group, most of them were bunched up behind the leaders so they were just walking. I don't think it cost me more than 30 seconds, and probably less.

The roads were dry at the start of the bike, but then a bunch of showers started coming through. Along with the wind, it made the bike course extra difficult. Some of the corners were really slick. In particular, you come down two hills with some fairly sharp curves after the second and third turn-arounds, and everyone that I saw was sitting up riding the brakes coming down these two hills. I saw one guy who had failed to make one of the 90-degree turns from one road to the next. The EMT's were already working on him, but he had road rash from his knee to his arm pit. I had a fairly slow bike, but I never went down.

The slow bike meant that I had quite a bit left in the tank for the run. It was still pretty cool and the sky was still overcast, so I was able to get in a pretty good run. I had never been able to run a sub-2-hour run on a half IM, but this time I made it in 1:56 and change. That doesn't sound very fast, but given the three hills on the Buffalo Springs run, I was pretty pleased.

I read on Iron "Geekgirl" Misty's blog that races in Texas always start with a prayer and end with beer.

http://athenadiaries.blogspot.com/

Now that I think about it, in my experience that has been a true statement. Sure enough, this race started not only with a Christian prayer, we also had a Native American prayer (although it might have been a plea for rain). At the finish, the local Miller beer distributor was passing out free beer.

Great race, gutsy race directors, and free beer. What a day!

muffinman