2010 Westchester Medical Center Biathlon - Rico

Event: 2 mile run / 15 mile bike / 2 mile run

Date: June 27th 2010

This was a fun event with several of us racing including, Marc, Mike, Tony, Valerio and doing her very first event, Regina. I would of loved to see Jason in this race also for the trio to once again race but it will have to wait for Greenwich.

I had two goals for the day, first was to beat my brother valerio and second to finish faster than the year before. I was kind of successful in both.

We lined up at the start, I kissed Regina goodbye and wished her luck in her first event. I was very excited for her and feeling proud to see her line up at the start to race rather than with three cameras taking pictures. lol, After that it was on, I followed my brother as he positioned himself, my my main goal being to stay shoulder to shoulder with him. I anticipated him running a 7:15-7:30 pace but he took off much faster. I managed to keep him in my sights but i was not shoulder to shoulder. He pushed me to run my fastest run split of 6:51 placing 54/244 place, blowing away my last year split of 7:57. As I ran into transition, I saw my brother running out with his bike. I had some work to do now to gain that time back. I had a very fast transition gaining 13 position in transition and started the bike in 41st place.

I hammered on the bike, My goal was to average 20mph and catch up to my brother. I felt really comfortable on my Tri bike, every time I race with her I feel more and more confident. It took me allot longer to catch my brother than i thought, I finally got him with about 3 miles left to go. I exchange a few "kind" words with him and than passed him by. Goal was to put at least 30-45 seconds on him plus transition time. (my brother is not very speedy in transitions). I averaged 21.5mph, beating my estimates and gaining another 15 positions putting me in 26th place overall.

I have learned from my past mistakes to not go out sprinting, I kept a pace for the first few minutes of the second run at a steady pace to get my heart rate back in check. Once I started feeling stable I began pushing again, i kept looking back for my brother but he was not insight, I was feeling confident. I probably slowed down my running pace by constantly looking back but i was surprised he was still out of sight. I finished the run with an 8:02 pace and lost 3 positions for an overall finish of 29th place out of 244 participants

So you ask so what happened to my brother? well he ended up making a wrong turn on the bike and finished with a DNF. Very disappointed, realty is I probably would have lost but It sure would of been a more interesting finish.

Overall i was very happy with my performance and year over year improvement. I improved in each of the legs of the race including transitions from the previous year as you can see below.

2010 2009

Run 1 0:13:42 0:15:56

T 1 0:00:48 0:01:29

Bike 0:41:52 0:47:59

T 2 0:00:38 0:01:05

Run 2 0:16:05 0:16:26

Overall 1:13:05 1:22:54

Congrats to all , everyone had a great race and everyone improved from the previous year. Special congrats to Regina who had an awesome first race and blew away our estimated times. I anticipated a finish for her of 1hr 40 min, She finished in 1hr 32min beating Tony's time from last year!!!!.

Mike K had an amazing 3rd place finish, with the two leaders (brothers) having drafted off each other on the bike, in my book Mike won the overall race!!!! Tony destroyed his time from the previous year and had some very impressive splits. Marc well not sure where he found his speed running 7:30 splits and biking only 30 seconds behind me. He has been keeping his speed a secret, well the secret is out and I will now be watching Marc carefully as he is well capable of taking me on in one of these races.

Thanks

Rico