Race Coverage

"...I Put it All Out There...BUT"....

Sunday, 17 July 2016 23:10

By Nathan Ansbaugh (nathanansbaugh.blogspot.com)

Life Time Tri - Minneapolis Race Report - Last year, my 8th place finish at Lifetime Minneapolis followed by a near miss of the podium at Lifetime Maple Grove finishing in 4th left me feeling both a bit frustrated and hopeful for the 2016 season. In particular, I set my sights toward this year's Lifetime Minneapolis with the goal of sneaking my way into a win or at least a podium spot. With the likes of Matt Payne, Kris Spoth, Sean Cooley, and a handful of other top notch athletes, I knew this would mean a couple things: 1) amongst the competition for the podium spots, I needed to have a gap out of the water, 2) I needed to try to keep the bike under an hour on this fairly technical course, and 3) I had to run sub-sixes and likely negative split. As the off-season and spring progressed, this seemed to be coming around. That said, I have always struggled with earlier season racing and peaked late summer, and this season has been no different so far with Gear West Du ending with Matt Payne...

calling my bluff on the run when I went out at 5:12 pace and then died on the unexpected hills and again at the Liberty Long Course where my legs fell off for the run again (Liberty Race Report). With those races behind me, I was anxious to see what I could do at Lifetime Minneapolis.

Swim exit with Sean ~25 seconds back and Matt
and Chap just behind him

The Swim: Sean and I had a similar plan, just try to get a gap on Matt knowing what he can do on the run. I knew what both Sean and Matt could do on the bike, so I knew I had to take the swim out hard. Right out of the gait, the pace was super quick. Two groups split side by side, and I chose the group that seemed to be going straight (logical, right?). Well as we got to the first buoy, I could see that our group had been gapped by the other and that several of us were starting to spread out. I made a couple passes trying to catch the front group, made probably 3 solid efforts to do so, but they kept pulling away and I found myself left alone between packs 1 and 2. I resigned to working alone and continued to try to push the pace. The swim measured a bit long, and I was not entirely surprised to see my time was about 3 minutes slower than last year. I wasn't exactly sure where Sean and Matt had landed, but looking back at the results, I exited the water in 6th with Sean just over 20 seconds back (see picture to the R), Chap Achen on his heels (he'd turn out to be a problem for me later), and Matt Payne almost 50 seconds back. So far so good...