Starting to come together: Loveland Lake-to-Lake report

On the drive to Loveland, Colo., for the Lake-to-Lake Triathlon, I felt kind of like Georgia State's basketball team taking the floor against, say, Duke. While I don't get caught up in age-group placings and such, I have gotten spoiled, what with taking home a little hardware in my first two races of the season, including last week's race, a day when I didn't feel particularly good. At the same time, I show up for every race hoping to beat a few people and truly compete, something I've done the past two weeks.

So the Lake-to-Lake, contrary to what I reported last week, is not the Colorado qualifier for the Best of the U.S. competition. That distinction is the Rattlesnake Tri Series No. 3 in August. But the Lake-to-Lake is USA Triathlon's Rocky Mountain regional championship so there were some fast MFs there. As I told people beforehand, I anticipated getting my clock cleaned. I thought finishing in the top third of the field and having some decent transitions would be a realistic goal, and I was right.

But first, I arrived later than I'd anticipated and I still managed to forget the heart-rate monitor strap. That's unfortunate because I put out a very good effort and would have loved to have seen the feedback during the race. Oh well. And because I arrived later than I'd planned, the transition area was almost standing-room only. An official directed me to a rack in the "back" of the transition area, which put my bike steps away from the back entrance. Score! I jogged a warmup and started getting my stuff together when I heard the siren designating the start of the first wave.

Amazingly I wasn't rushed at all. I worked my legs into my Orca sausage casing/wetsuit as I walked to the beach; it was 6:30 and my wave didn't leave for another 20 minutes. It was 6:45 when I finally zipped up my suit with my arms dangling at my side like gymnast Shawn Johnson. This thing is that tight. Some witty banter with other guys in my wave followed, as did the exit of the first swimmer (18 minutes for 1.5 kilometers!), and then we were off.

This race puts us in a 62-degree in-town lake, fed by runoff from the mountains. Thus, I was glad to have two swim caps on. Once I got wide of the field I got in a rhythm and didn't get assaulted in the water, a novelty. Now, time suspends itself when I'm in the water, partially because I love to swim (unlike a lot of triathletes) and partially because I can't look at my watch. I generally get out of the water with no clue as to how long I've been in, except to see the different colored caps of the waves ahead of me, and I noticed quite a few green, blue, yellow and red caps around me as I got out of the water. That meant I was catching up to people who head started as much as 15 minutes ahead of me so, harsh as it sounds, I knew I was beating some people. I then looked at my watch to see 23:48.

Or something. I just noticed the 23:XX. That would be by two minutes my fastest swim of that distance. I pumped my fist once before remembering I had to peel myself out of my wetsuit, and that the swim finish timing pad wasn't until just outside the transition area, about a 150-yard jog. I walked along, unzipping the suit and pulling my arms out before I started running. When I got to my bike I slipped out of the suit in what passed for no time; you have no idea how hard it is to get out of this thing. And before long I was on the bike.

The bike leg in Loveland is 30 miles and takes you into the foothills above Loveland and Fort Collins. While the first lake in the name of the race is Loveland Lake, the second one is Horsetooth Reservoir. It takes quite some time to get to Horsetooth and an awful lot of it is uphill. You can spend the first 20 miles of the ride in your little chainring, which is what I typically do. I'm a spinner (like Lance, as opposed to a masher like Jan Ullrich) so this course sets up nicely for me. I passed a lot of people on these slight grades but was cautious on the screaming downhills that followed. You have to see this course to believe it, it's so beautiful. Downhill hairpin turns, some flat hammer territory, suburbia -- Loveland Lake-to-Lake has it all.

I made it to T2 in time to see the winner finish. Told you there were some fast MFs here. I jogged out of T2 but settled into a pace pretty easily. Had no clue how fast I was going until after the turnaround, when a guy I had passed caught up to me again. He said we were running 7:30 miles, which again, felt comfortable. It felt good to actually race a guy, even if he had a 20-minute head start and I was going to finish ahead of him in the results. We ran side-by-side for about a mile-and-a-half, until I slowed to get water at 5 miles and he sped off. Good on 'im. He had it in that last mile and I didn't.

There wasn't much of a sprint to the finish but I did pick up the pace a little bit, a true sign that I need to do some speedwork. I crossed the line in 2:37:40, a PR for this course by about a minute, and thinking back to 2003, when I raced this place for the first time, I'm in better shape now than I was then. The 10K run was 45:54, more than 2:30 faster than the standalone 10K at Bolder Boulder.

So along with faster transitions, I learned I can race a bit. That will come in handy this weekend at the Cheyenne Sprint Triathlon.