The BIG Easy

I raced Down In New Orleans in the inaugural 70.3 in 2009 and have to be honest had an awful race! so with a great year in the bank from 2011 and a good hit out in Oceanside I thought that 2012 was the year to go and try and make immense with the race and have a good solid crack at the race. It also happened to be timed perfectly for me with a solid hit out two weeks out from Im St George .

Another great reason to head down and race was Mark Miller from Precisions bike in Lafayette LA invited me to come spend a couple days with him and the crew down there ( more on that in another post )

So after a relaxing couple days in Lafayette I headed over to Nola on Friday and let me tell you I wish the race was run that day! the lake was calm the was just a nice slight breeze and the tempos were perfect! BUT!! all things pointed towards everything but those conditions come race day.

Long story short they cancelled the swim and we had to prepare for a duathlon…a DU!!! I have done one duathlon in my athletic career and it was in 2003!! I honestly was not sure what I was in for but I had a feeling it was gonna hurt!

Because of this I thought to myself I am going to warm up really well as I know someone is going to make me suffer on the first run. So off i go on my warm up and I was chatting away with my buddy Blake and I think we both realized at the same time …shit we better turn as it is getting kinda close and we have run 2 miles away from the start.

So after booking it back i get to the start line well and truly warmed up!

As the fire the horn I expected it to be crazy fast and as it turned out it didn’t feel to bad at all . I just placed myself in the front group and let someone else set the pace. ( we ended up going 5 min the 5:14 ) for the two mile splits of the opening run. )

Now onto the bike and this is were things did get crazy!! you had a lot of people getting on the bike near the front of the race that a normally not that close to the front and i think everyone of them wanted to get there moment in the lights as people were dropping bombs of the front like rapid fire.

Myself I just tried to stay out of trouble until the first turn and assess were things were at . as it turned out TJ had a solid 90 sec lead with tom lowe sitting at about a min then you had pat evo and Trevor wurtel sitting at about 30 sec . I decided that this was my card  so I went about bridging the gap. I did manage to gap the huge group I was with a then closed the gap to Pat and Trevor . I thought we the three of us we should be able to close to tom and hold that gap to TJ . not in my plan as as I picked up the boys they were both starting to fade. I did get some help from pat on the return leg back to town but it was now more about staying away from the big group I had just gaped.

onto the second run….my plan was to try and run a 1:14 …now I know that might sound quick but I have done it before and i have been running well so that was the goal. again to cut a long story short….I didn’t!  I ended up with a 1:17 xx . Pat and I were pushing each other along nicely and the Sir Richie bridged up to us . when Richie came along the pace went down or up depending on which way you look at it. I hug there for a short while but this is when my accidental 4 mile warm up started to hit me!  we were now at around mile 7 and i was just starting to feel tired! with the 6 miles of extra running i had done in the warm up and the first run i was pooped out!  after doing a few quick calculations and seeing were I was sitting in the race I decided to save the mojo needed to push on for IM St George. (I ended up holding on for 9th)

I will say I totally enjoyed going back to the big easy but let me say the race was all but easy!

Next up is IM St George!

see ya out there

well after two year hiatus from the New Orleans 70.3 I thought is was time for me to head back to the big easy to