I guess today goes to show that even when I feel tired and unmotivated, I can still throw down. The Ann Arbor course is not the easiest course out there: the bike has some rollers, and the trail runs include steep climbs (yes, they do have some in Michigan), tight turns, and sand.

We started 18 minutes after the first triathlon wave, and I led from the gun, taking the first two miles hard. I wanted to give myself enough breathing room that I could take it easy on the bike, and I entered T1 with about 50 seconds of cushion.

After a little bit of a rough start, I was out on the bike course and working. I realized early on that - to my dismay - I would need to really work hard if I wanted this race to help my USAT ranking for this year. Annoyed (because I wanted to take it easy today), I put some power into the pedals and started cranking hard. The bike leg was tricky because I was continually passing people from earlier triathlon waves. While I like having people in front of me to pick off, it was dangerous in a few places because of slow-moving cars and riders blocking the entire lane. I lost 5-10 seconds waiting for the road to clear enough to pass in a couple different places.

Congestion aside, I churned out a good bike split and transitioned quickly to the run. This race has one of the harderst run courses off of the bike that I have ever done. It took me longer than usual to find my legs - about a mile - and then I was climbing. The whole race consisted of trying to pass people on pretty narrow singletrack, keeping myself mentally sharp when it started to hurt, and dodging all sorts of roots, rocks, and other obstacles on the course.

I ended up coming in under 1:19:00, winning the duathlon by almost nine minutes. I also outsplit most of the triathletes on the bike and the second run, which was pretty cool. I'll be taking a break from racing for a bit, because I am pretty burned out and I am going to summer camp anyway. Next up for me will be the Columbus International in late July.