Team Member: Sam Morgan

Race Name: Chattanooga Waterfront Triathlon

Race Date: 6/11/10

Race Placement/Time/Qualification: 4th Elite 1:59:31

Tell us about your race (limit 500 words)…: “It’s on my race calendar but I haven’t signed up yet… maybe I’ll be there”, was the story ever since St. Anthony’s leading up to this race. I had nothing but bad memories of this race from the previous year. Hot, humid, and I exploded on the run. My fault for not training.

I’m glad I signed up (on the last day of early registration) and raced hard. The training I’ve done has really paid off. I was over 5 minutes faster on the bike this year and dropped about 3 on the run. Swim was about the same I suppose. I had the fastest swim by a few seconds instead of being beat by a few seconds. Kinda anti-climactic for me because I generally never give the swim a second thought at these bike-run races, although I do miss it when it’s not there.

I was glad I did the GA TT Championships a week prior because murdering that hilly course gave me a lot of confidence going into this race given that I consider myself more of a flat lander. I do admit that it was fun leading the bike from roughly mile 10 onwards. Compared to last years results I’m about 1 – 2 MPH faster climbing the 4 – 6% grades than I was last year. I dropped my chain once at mile 17 going from 20 MPH to 5 pretty quickly up a 2% grade, and then again climbing MLK on the way back. . . It’s hard to recover mentally and physically after losing all of your momentum, although it didn’t seem to affect my overall placement. Not sure if I had the fastest bike split or not since the splits seem to be lost in the final results, but I do know that I felt like I had a tailwind at my back the whole time and that’s a good feeling to have.

I was leading the run up until about 2 miles in when Eric passed me. I figured I’d get passed by a few guys eventually even with a healthy lead off the bike. Even though I took the run out uphill in a conservative 6:20 feeling surprisingly fresh, I just couldn’t hide from the gigantic ball of Hydrogen and Helium undergoing self sustained nuclear fusion 93 million miles away dumping 1,000 watts of electromagnetic radiation per square meter directly on my face. I was cooked by the end of the run. Last .3 miles was a pedestrian 6:00 mile pace for what’s supposed to be a fast downhill finish.

Anyway, I know if I keep training and losing weight (and growing more sweet calf veins) my run times will continue to drop and I’ll handle the heat (and the competition) better and better. I was about 9 minutes faster this year than last.

Thank you Nanci and Juanice for the pictures!