by Chris McDonald

The Rockman Half in Rockford Illinois on June 8 was week one of the double. [ed. note: Chris raced Eagleman 70.3 this pastweekend]. On all accounts my travel to the race was very uneventful, and I arrived in Rockford on Friday afternoon for a Sunday race. The weather man was telling me 75 and sunny for the weekend...well, Saturday it rained 60% of the day, and then Sunday was not a whole lot better.

Race morning dawned dark and ominous. I went about my duties and got all things organized. Then lined up in the water for the 7am start, found my position, and we were off. As we started, there was one lady who dropped us like a dirty shirt; within 200 meters she had a 20 meter gap??? what the? I was later to find out she was a gold medalist in the 4 x 100 relay for the USA.

Onto the bike. This is really where I wanted to hit the front and get a gap on the field. However my body didn't exactly agree. I did get to the lead and get a small gap, but I just was not really able to push like I wanted to. This was my first race riding with my new Zipp 900 PowerTap disc, so it is interesting to look back and see that I really was only able to ride an Ironman effort for the entire duration of the ride. I came in with a split just over 2:10 and avg power of 296 watts. Although I did manage to break the old bike course record by some 5 min.

When I hit T2, I had roughly a 1:40 lead on 2nd. I decided I would run 4 miles hard (the first turn around) and then re-evaluate. I did just this and managed to get the gap out to 3 min. With racing next weekend I wanted to leave as much in the tank as possible. I was able to shut it down a little and hold my gap to 2nd and come in with my 3rd win of the season.

Next up: look for my race report on Eagleman 70.3 in Cambridge, Maryland.