2016
Smithy’s Return to Triathlon 2016
During the summer of 2015, I made a decision to return to triathlon after a 5 year hiatus from the sport. I have had a passion for off-road triathlon and XTERRA races that began in 2004. I won a championship event in 2006 that had a cancelled swim in Milwaukee, WI and was 3rd at the XTERRA World Championships the following year. I decided to race Beaver Creek, the XTERRA Mountain Championship event and had to DNS due to a cold I got the night before. With significant motivation I headed to the USA Championship event and pulled off my best ever result there with a 3rd place finish.
For 2016, as a 40 year old and one of the oldest pro men on the start list, I decided to step up my game again. I again entered the Beaver Creek event, now upgraded to a Pan American Series event drawing top elite athletes from Central and South America as well as Canada. I finished 10th with descent fitness and was motivated to improve my performance for the finals. With my momentum from Beaver Creek, I headed to Snowbasin, Utah . At the Pan American Championship event, on the same course as nationals the year before, I threw down with a stacked field. I managed to finish 9th and was 3rd American. In addition, I stamped my ticket to Cross Triathlon World Championships in Lake Crackenback, Australia.
I had already planned a family trip to visit my sister-in-law in Sale, Australia the previous week so the qualification was a perfect fit with my trip. Now I had reason to check out some of Australia’s alpine country!
I spent October preparing for Australia with some high altitude intensity. I decided to race the Black Canyon Sprint triathlon in Montrose and participated in a heat study in the High Altitude Performance Lab at Western State College University. At the triathlon I had a great race winning the overall and running a 5k run split of 15:16! While participating in the heat study, I ran 4 different 5k time trials under 19 minutes at 7700 feet, 2 being 35 degrees celsius. With some good fast running and 4-5 days of swimming in the month leading up to Cross Tri worlds I felt ready to produce a good result.
My trip to Australia included 40 hours of travel between Gunnsion, CO and Sale, Australia. Everything arrived without damage, just a bit of jet lag to deal with. After 10 days of visiting my wife’s family from New Zealand whom had made the trip to Australia and some shake out training I felt I was ready to compete. My wife Jenny as well as our 3 year-old daughter Jade made the 6 hour drive to the Snowy Mountains of Australia. We stayed at Thredbo, a ski town about 6 miles up the road from the Lake Crackenback Resort. Thredbo is situated at 5,000 feet of elevation, just below the highest point of Australia, Mt Koziosko at 7,000 feet! Compared to the rest of Australia, Lake Crackenback is a high altitude venue. Between Thredbo and Lake Crackenback we regularly saw some of the local wildlife including: wombats, wallabies and kangaroo. Leading up to race day I felt great but the heat was rising and my digestive tract was struggling to recover from travel. I threw down at the gun and was in the mix for the first 5 minutes then I started to struggle. I wanted to stop racing after the first lap of the swim and went no where on the first lap of the bike. My transitions were horrible and my body was not performing. On the second lap of the bike I started to settle into a rhythm and made some progress. By the end of the bike I was in 16th place and my legs came around on the run. Jenny was giving me my time splits and position and my body was finally feeling great. By the last lap I managed to reel in another US athlete for a battle to top 10! I was extremely happy to meet my goal result of a top 10 and 3rd as a US elite but a little disappointed in what my result could have been with a better stomach.
I am really looking forward to the summer of 2017 and beyond to see what my true potential is in triathlon. I feel I have something left to give the sport and want to prove that age is only a number!