2012 L.A. Tri Series Final

TriEvents races just keep improving every season. 30 year anniversary. That says heaps. PR manager Alex Soto comes up with great ideas. One was to push Jodi and I to race the entire Express Series and aim to earn the first ever overall series champion titles. As a couple. Married at that. And we are no spring chickens (although Jodi looks like a young chick).
          Jodi had no problem as she won all three races outright. Overall every time. She is swimming like a fish. Cycling like Jan Ullrich (dating myself with that example) and running like: The wind!!!!!
          As for me well swimming like a fish but more like a big Giant Sea Bass than Barracuda-like. But I have layed down some good bike splits entering T2  in 1st place a few times. Stayed there to the finish line one race. And two 3rd overalls. Problem was I had a younger speedster named Heiko (even his name sounds fast) with the same stats. I came into this race with 5 seconds on him. Meant he had to beat by 6 or more seconds to claim the overall Series Champion. He proved in an earlier race he could do so.

         But being a non spring chicken can have it's advantages. At the run turn around I could see Heiko was close. Real close. So I just ran a tad below lactate threshold. At about mile two he came up on me. Surged. I answered. Surged. I answered again. It was one heck of a painful blast to HAVE to run that pace. We were busting sub six minute miles those last few. Step for step. Heiko hit the finish line two steps which I cooly calculated 2 seconds. I narrowly took the title of Overall Series Champion. A big deal? Of course not. Fun, exciting while doing it? Heck yeah.
             Thank you Terry Martin for being out there working your ass off taking several hundred pictures of everyone. Your love is felt. Hope you feel it in return. You are the best. And again congratulations to Ryan and Carlos. The biggest winners of the day. Hands down.