New Orleans 5150 Tri

Last weekend I raced in New Orleans which was the second of the five races I am doing in the States.
New Orleans is a cool place, lots of diverse culture, amd I was very fortunate to be allowed to stay in a very nice aprtment in uptown New Orleans.
New Orleans food is legendary and I now have a lot of new menu ideas for when I own a restaurant
 
Unfortunately because water was too rough from the high winds the swim was cancelled and the race was changed into a 4km run, 40km bike and 10km run. I have been focusing a lot on swimming so it was unfortunate considering I was excited to see my progress. A big part of racing is being able to adapt to any given condition, so I continued to stay positive and prepared mentally for a duathlon. I have not done many duathlons, so had no idea of how to really race one well. I decided to run conservatively but fast enough to stay with the better cyclists during the first run. I finished around 5th and was about 30 seconds down from Ben Collins and Kris Gemmell.
 
Onto the bike I was killing it. The course was very windy and had quite a few challenging bridges to ride over. It didn’t take me long to catch up to Kris Gemmell and be in 2nd place. I had 1st in my sights for a while but I could never get him. The first run caught up to be during the last 10km on the bike and my legs started to get tired. However, I still came off the bike ahead of Chris Leito who is considered to by most people to be the best cyclist in Triathlon, and a minute ahead of Kris Gemmell and a few other good runners. I started the run knowing that people would be chasing me and I was just hoping that I hadn’t over done it on the bike so that I would be able to hang on to 2nd.
 
Immediately at the start of the run my legs were heavy and I realized I may have rode harder than I ever have. Kris Gemmell was running really quick and he passed me 3km’s in but I still had a gap to 4th. I was giving it everything to hold on but I was just dead and within 1km from the finish 2 guys past me and I came home in 5th.
 
This result still earned me very good points to qualify for the Championship race and some prize money. New Orleans was a cool place and everyone over here is super friendly and I have to thank them all.Thanks to Sandra Reagan and Trey Stolz of the Hard Inc triathlon club for providing me with your hospitality!

 This weekend I race again in Memphis, my body is still shattered but hopefully I come right in the next couple of days.