Race Coverage

Channeling My Inner Kobayashi...

Wednesday, 09 October 2013 00:10

By Matthew Payne (matthew-payne.blogspot.com - Oct. 1)

Leadman 250 Race Report - A couple weekends ago I was in Bend, OR for a 9+ hour death march otherwise known as the Leadman 250, which is a triathlon consisting of a 5k swim, 223k bike and 23k run.  If you're thinking, "wow, that sounds stupid, nobody should ever race that long," you are officially a smarter person than I am....

It went pretty well all things considered as I ended up damn near winning the thing, finishing 2nd overall by a scant 2:54 margin.  Normally racing for over 9 hours only to miss a win by less than 3 minutes would grind my gears pretty hard, but given how the week leading up to the race went down as well as the fact that I was waaaay out of my comfort zone distance-wise I'm actually pretty happy with it.

Looking at the Leadman distances it's pretty clear that success or failure depends entirely on how well the bike goes.  I had a pretty disappointing bike split a few weeks ago in Vegas coming off of a full taper, while I had one of my better rides ever at Chisago earlier this year coming off of a week of hammering up a bunch of Alpine climbs in France, so I figured the right thing to do the weekend before Leadman was to go out and do long (for me anything over 3 hours qualifies as "long") as hard as I can go rides on both Saturday and Sunday.  That ended up being the wrong move as I strained or pulled or otherwise aggravated something in my lower back on Saturday's ride.  I then doubled down on bad ideas and went out for Sunday's ride anyway, which got me from dull throbbing pain territory all the way up to, "Holy shit! Why am I repeatedly being stabbed in the spine?!?!?!"

Long story short I spent the rest of that week walking around all hunchbacked and angry, eating Advil like candy while cursing my bad luck and poor life choices.  It got even more depressing in the days leading up to the race when the weather forecast started calling for rain (with possible snow) and highs in the 40's on race day.

I ended up getting on the plane on Thursday morning legitimately unsure whether or not I would even be starting the race on Saturday.  At this point any concerns about finishing time and/or placing were completely out the window and I was looking to simply get through the thing in one piece.  Worst case scenario was skipping the race and T-Payne and I spending the weekend hanging out with our good friends/France travel companions/Bend residents Dave and Morgan. READ MORE