Is anyone racing Wildflower this weekend? I am racing the Long course, and my wife is racing the Olympic
Jerome
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Yoop! I have both races scheduled. Forgot to eat yesterday while driving up, but psyched for both!
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Good luck to both you you!
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Good luck everyone! Enjoy the ride 
Oh good luck all doing Wildflower 
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Thank you everyone.
I finished first in my AG in 5:32:19
Swim: 00:33:31
T1: 00:03:53
Bike: 02:53:24
T2: 00:02:34
Run: 01:58:57
59 over 333 (small group this year as it restarted).
It was a great cool day for Wildflowers. Water was 71F. The road condition are pretty bad but I had 28 mm tubeless inflatables at 60 front 70 back and it helped. The run is 60% trail with step ascent that I powered walk and steep descent.
We camped with my club and were a group of 20+. It was great.
Jerome.
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Well done, @Jerome! As you blazed past me at mile 16.5 or so on the bike, I thought, “That guy is gonna crush it!” And you did!
Great to have been able to meet over the weekend. Well wishes for the remainder of your racing season.
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What a race! Echoing @Jerome, the weather was just about perfect. Not chilly in the morning, with enough cloud cover to keep us from having to squint to see the buoys on the swim, which for me went like most races: I got through it in an okay-enough fashion.
Took my time during T1 but set out onto the bike course feeling pretty strong. For sure this course is the most challenging of any mid-distance race I’ve completed. Sure, it has a good amount of climbing. But, for me at least, the road surface proved the greater drain of energy. More than a couple folks thought out loud that a gravel bike would have been the better choice on the day. I was pretty pleased to have my road bike (my only non-MTB bike, actually), as it made for some really fun descents. Nonetheless, as challenging as it is, it’s also among the more beautiful courses I’ve ridden. Here, too, the weather mostly helped out, with only a minor bit of wind pushing the wheels around.
About two-thirds into the ride, though, I started feeling a bit drained and chose to relax the output a bit as my quads started seizing when out of the saddle. Not sure why that was so…wasn’t like I hadn’t ridden that far many times over the course of my training leading up to the race. Had me beginning to worry what was in store on the run. Even so, in hindsight I am happy with my performance on the ride, which fell within expectations and was still an improvement over more recent mid-distance races (though perhaps not as much of an improvement as I thought I might have seen).
Can’t say as much for the run, though. Soon as I headed out, I thought to myself, “This is gonna be a bear.” And it was. About a mile in I realized that I had forgotten my bib, so I stopped…staring back toward the transition. Guy behind me asked what was wrong. I told him. He said, “Well, you have your timing chip.” Indeed. So, I turned back around and continued along the course. This first half of it sees a good portion of the vertical come via pace-sapping steeps—up and down—rather than more comfortable ramps. At one point, as I was power walking up one particularly steep bit, I said out loud, “STOP BEING SUCH A WHINY BABY!” Surprisingly, that bit of self-coaching helped and I feel as though the second half of the run went much better than the first. Still, I’m not happy with my run performance. But so goes racing sometimes, versus expectations (I got punched in the face).
On the flip side of that thought, though—thanks mostly to the Athletica plan!—I absolutely crushed my 35 year-old self on the same course, with the only exceptions having been a good bit quicker a swim and much less fussing during T1 back in 2007 (an otherwise pretty good year from a results standpoint over shorter courses):
On Wildflower^2
So, I was supposed to race the Olympic on Sunday as well, but I chose not to. Boo. Some internal combination of being wrecked by the long course and mostly solo and in-my-head over the prior several days sapped any interest in pushing through another half of a half. Of course, as I was heading out early Sunday morning back home, I thought to myself that I might have been able to trudge through the thing. Later in the day, though, I was still glad that I didn’t. More than a bit of a disappointed in myself, but I suppose there’s always next season…
Other notes on the race:
- This course is brutal. I have not completed that many halfs, but this course certainly presents the greatest challenges I’ve encountered over the distance
- The Wildflower crew truly seems to be trying hard to resurrect the Wildflower Experience of the past. The expo was great, with a range of familiar vendors, lots of food options and super entertainment
- Attendance was light this year, versus years past, but I have the sense that—so long as the lake retains sufficient volume—it’ll continue to grow as I’m challenged to find many faults with how I perceived the production to have run
- So happy that I rented a small RV for this race. Would not have loved to have tented for the three evenings
- I believe 2007 was the first year I raced with my Garmin Forerunner 305. Neat to have those old data!
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