With the alarm blaring at 4:30, I stumbled to start the coffee. 30 mins later we're in the car and the thing won't even turn over. PANIC PANIC PANIC. I pumped the gas, cranked the key. NOTHING!! AAAAHHHHH……**eyes open**….Thank the Lord in Heaven Above, that was a dream. It's only 2:30am.

No seriously, that actually happened. I literally woke up in a sweat. Mamma Gina was sawin' logs! I noticed as we pulled out of the parking lot that the skies were completely clear. The race started at 9…why so late? I have no idea. The Dalles (the race location) is just beyond the eastern board of the rain forest in which Portland is located and is actually is the western edge of the Eastern Oregon desert. If this race goes too long, this could get UGLY in the heat. I was shootin' to get in by 11:30 to avoid the heat of the day. That would be pushing all of my splits to make a 2:30 Oly.

Mamma Gina pretty much summed up the pre-race stuff. What the hell is a "Skipper Meeting" anyway. Have I missed something somewhere?

Anyhooo, I think I have started "back and to the right" for my last race. I caught a pretty decent pair of feet for about, oh say, 10 yards until this tiny woman decided to slam on the breaks. How you do that on the swim I have no idea. Unfortunately, I officially swam over someone for the first time. If she's out there, I'm REALLY sorry. Pretty uneventful except I experienced my first mid-swim hyperventilation. Ya know, it's hard to NOT hyperventilate when you have freakin' sea weed wrapped around your freakin' NECK!!!! AAAGGGGHHH!

Out of the water, through T1. Fairly uneventful. On the stretch out of town to start the bike leg that was 6 miles longer than advertised, this tri-babe slowly rides up next to me. She smiles with her teeth clinched, like she's in the dentist chair and says, "Hey, do I have any sea weed stuck in my TEETH?!?" Later, I looked down and I had dried sea weed stuck to my forearms and all over my watch/HRM. HR was sky high but what else did I expect. The course loop they added included three major hills that were between .5 and 1 mile climbs. That was the ONLY time I was glad I was riding my stinkin' mountain bike. [note: that will be the LAST race on that stupid thing!]. On the first 1/3 of the bike, I kept getting stuck behind this freakin' peloton…literally. These 7 guys formed a DAMN wedge and were rotating I couldn't believe…and of course of $4k KM-40's or however much those things cost. Anyway, several of them kept saying on the uphills, "How in the heck do you go so fast on that freakin' mountain bike?!?" I was basically out of the saddle for all of the three long climbs, the second of which was followed by a LONG downhill. I hit 38.5mph and made it up the third climb in time to drop the peloton. I think one of them caught me at the timing mat. That's ok…dropped him on the run.

Off the bike, onto the run. Felt ok but not great. I was SO glad that I had suffered through Hazen's quality workouts from the TNO training page. I had the goal of reeling in every "M3" bodymark in sight. I don't think I got passed by anyone on the run. It was, however, getting REALLY hot. At each aid station, one water cup went in me, one went on me. Kind of uneventful other than running at or above my LT for the vast majority of the run. Must need to retest. The last 1.5 miles I ran at about 3 beats over my LT and fully expected to blow up before the last timing mat. I made it down the hill, into the parking lot without stumbling and across the mat for 7:26 10k split. Beyond pleased with that!

I hung around for a while lookin' for Mamma Gina. I must have eaten 5 or 6 pieces of fruit, downed 6 cups of water and 3 cups Gatorade-stuff. It was getting really hot and I was worried Mamma G out there in the heat. She came trottin' down the hill and we headed for the barbecue. hung out in the hot sun, slammed some barbecue and packed up the car to head back to Portland.

Swim: 12:19 - I have no idea what the distance was. They calculated the 100m splits assuming it was a 1k swim, so my splits were listed as 1:08/100m. Yeah, right.

T1: 2:43

Bike: 1:33:03 for approx. 29.5 miles. Ave: 19.18 mph

T2: 1:49

Run: 46:09 for 10k. Ave: 7:26 min/mi

O'all: 2:36.03

Tri-peeps ROCK! On the way back, we passed several people on I-5 that had tri-bikes and had obviously been at the race. We had to pull off on an exit in the middle of no where to check something on the back of the car. One of the trucks we had passed probably 10 minutes earlier pulled off to make sure we were ok. That freakin' rocks and made my day.

Time for modified caveman diet to lose some of my blubber to run the Portland Marathon in a month. Aahhhhh looonnng slow runs now. I'm really sick of the freakin' lactic acid.

Thanks for reading this TOME!

Jeff in PDX