Scoggins Valley Sprint Race Report

In preparation for the Grand Columbian Half Ironman in early September, I thought I would go practice my transitions and give my new race wheels a run at the Scoggins Valley Sprint at Hagg Lake. Being that this race was purely a test run before my Half Iron, my expectations were to just run a straightforward race and see what happened. No GI issues (if you aren’t familiar with said reference, please read my Midsummer report), no horrible T1 or T2 snafus, and up my overall wattage by around 25 watts. Folks, this was a training run, pure and simple.

The weather was chilly, with the temperature in the high 50’s when the gun went off at 8:30 AM. I warmed up for the swim, which I usually don’t do, but figured it wouldn’t hurt being that I had the time. Steve Murcott, another Ironhead, was a last minute entrant, so it was nice to have a teammate in the mix. I floundered around in the warm lake, which was probably about 70 degrees, until it was time to line up and let it fly. Feeling a bit more confident with my swimming, I put myself up front on the inside line to first buoy of the diamond shaped course. After the gun went off, I was able to clear the main pack in my wave swim in clear water, maneuvering through the slower Olympic distance swimmers on their second lap. Could I have pushed it harder? Yes. Was I pleased with the important stuff like sighting and the line I chose? Yes. Not a great swim time-wise, but it was serviceable. 13 minutes and 30 seconds is what the watch tells me.

T1 was east jesus from the water, as the lake was low being that it was late in the season. As opposed to my last race, I didn’t totally wet the bed during my T1, and logged a 2 minute and 21 second time. This was a much faster T1 than the time indicates, and I’m relatively happy about it.

At this point, I’m freezing my butt off, and dreading the bike portion and how cold I’m going to be. Knowing that Steve was going to chase me down on the bike, I wanted to get up to speed fast. In retrospect, I should have hammered things a little harder, but I did average 275 watts, which I’ll take. As predicted, Steve passes me as I power-slide around the turn around, and we then engage in a really fun horse race for the remainder of the bike portion. Knowing he was going to dust me on the run, I tried to put some distance on him on the bike. I would pass him on most climbs, and he’d pass me on the descents. The gamesmenship was the best part, as this was the most fun I’ve ever had in a race. The net result was me beating his bike split by 1 second, with a time of 35 minutes.

Both Steve and I decided to make T2 difficult, and both ran to the wrong racks. Upon sorting ourselves out, we went out on the run together after recording 50 second T2’s. Anything below one minute works for me.

The run at Hagg is always a bitch, but the low temperature made it much more manageable. My goal was not to get passed, as Steve was already off to the races as predicted. I ran slower than I wanted to, just below a 7 minute mile, but the hills at Hagg keep a guy like me from knocking out a really fast time. I got passed with .5 miles left by a guy who was hammering the run, so I’ll yield to him and let the fast runner has his day. At the turn around, I saw a pack of about 5 runners coming, and I wanted to keep myself in the top 10. Mission accomplished. 21 minutes on the run.

In summary, I surprised myself with my overall placement and winning my age group. Even though this was a local sprint, it does give me a nice confidence boost before the Grand Columbian in two weeks.

Total time: 1 hour 13 minutes
Overall Place: 7th
Age Group: 1st