Submitted by Ken Frankenbery

Ohio finally scored a stop on the Xterra circuit, so decided to skip the Richmond Virginia race (my favorite- but on same weekend) – to check out their inaugural event.

Henry, Randy and I made the trip down Saturday, to pre ride the bike loop for Sundays race. It was a fun and fast 12 mile loop, and I was glad to have my new specialized hard tail, it was the perfect choice, the course was fun fast, and 90% tight single track. The conditions were great, water temp just cold enough to be wet suit legal, no chance of rain, and an 80 degree sunny day.

The swim was in the East Fork state park lake, a 1000 meters loop- they tried a time trial start, with chip timing each person’s time starts when they cross the matt, so they asked all participants to seed themselves as to expected swim time ( fastest swimmers up front)- after some thought, ( and there was no big fight to go off first- people wanted to draft)- I decided to line up in front- even though I am not a strong swimmer, I figured the fewer people in front of me when we hit the bike, the better ( hard to pass).

My swim was fair at best, it was mentally hard to have so many people pass me (44 to be exact!)- But I hit the bike like a man on a mission, and had a great bike, passing over 35 riders. Had a good transition, passed a few there, and hit the 5 mile trail run feeling good. The run was an out and back tight hiking trail, which was tough, because on the way back, had to deal with all the people coming the other way (had close to 100 people there). It did help tell you where you were ( counting runners coming at you!), and before the turnaround point, I counted 6 people, so knew I had a solid 7th overall, which I held to the finish

I ended up first in my age group, beating second by over 15 minutes.

Henry had a great bike, and He and Randy both had solid races, winning their age groups.