XTERRA M2Xtreme

So last Sunday I competed in my first full distance XTERRA triathlon; M2XTREME. If you've never heard of these races (as I hadn't 2 years ago), they are off-road triathlons consisting of a 1500m swim, 17 mile mountain bike, and 5 mile trail run.

Ok, some background now, a couple years ago I decided to run a half marathon with my friend Nicole. We trained for a couple months and got up every Saturday morning and ran around 10-14 miles. I felt very accomplished when the race was over, but knew I had to set my goal for next year. Since the idea of getting up at 7am every Saturday morning and running double what I just trained for didn't sound very fun to me, I decided to move on to triathlons. Given the fact that I don't own a road bike, and LOVE mountain biking, I turned to XTERRAs. That next year I half-assed my training and did the sprint version (750m swim, 12 mile mountain bike, 3 mile trail run). It was the most fun I've ever had at a race... I knew I would try for the full the next year.

This year I bought a training plan online for the full XTERRA at Holiday Valley Ski Resort in NY (the M2Xtreme). I followed it pretty closely and dragged myself out for a couple hours every day after work to train. This year I was determined to do well on the swim because it was my weakest part last year so I even took a few lessons at the YMCA.

I brought my parents with me to watch the race (they love that stuff). The swim went really well (although I don't know my exact time yet, I know it improved greatly since last year)...yay! I threw all my mountain biking gear on and started the course. They had to change it this year because of the ridiculous amounts of rain. I could tell why when I saw all the mud on the course. I'm going along and doing OK, but I've never ridden a mountain bike in the mud...I'm going kind of slow and getting a little frustrated. I wonder how I'm going to do 2 more laps of this, then next thing I know, I'm going down a hill, slide on a bunch of mud, and my bike throws me onto a log... yeah that hurt. I lay there not being able to breathe for 5 minutes with my bike still in the path (not safe). Some nice guy helped get my bike out of the way and asked if I was ok. Actually about 5 people asked if I was ok, and I didn't want to trouble anyone so the answer was always, "yeah I'm fine."

The entire right side of my body was aching in pain (ribs, hip, some blood and bruises). I walked my bike on the trail for a while thinking maybe I could finish, but then decided that wasn't going to happen and met one of the volunteers near the bottom of the mountain and he walked me back to my parents. He was awesome and had just done a half Ironman... I'm jealous. I felt like a huge tool walking in front of everyone and not being able to finish...especially after all that training... o well :(. My friend did well so I was happy for him. This is a ridiculously long blog so I'm going to continue on some injury details tomorrow...

Buy some mud tires from these people next time you go mountain biking after a downpour: BikeTiresDirect.com - they have lots of other biking stuff too...