Chris Madzi - Escape to Miami Sprint Race Report 9/23/12

I raced the "Escape to Miami" sprint on Sunday even though my training had fallen off in the past few weeks I had decided to go anyway. 

The morning started off a little odd, a drunk guy came over to the truck asking for a ride to South Beach. He had just been beaten-up and robbed a few blocks away, the gash by his eye told me he wasn't lying. He was upset when I told him I was parking but was OK with a couple of bucks for bus fair. Standing around for two hours while the long course athletes cleared the swim was for the birds. 

The swim was brutal, the first buoy was 50 yards away so Matt Newman and I got on the outside and decided to swim on an angle and avoid the congestion. This worked great I was about tenth to the buoy and made a left to swim parallel to the shore, well everyone else was made a 45 and was swimming to another buoy. I was slap in the middle of the pack, exactly where I didn't want to be, so after fighting and slowing down I spotted Matt on the outside (where I should be). I worked and got out there and fell in line behind him until we got to the last buoy and pulled away from him(just kidding Matt), I exited three seconds before him. 

T-1 was horrible bike got caught on the rack I stood there fighting it, finally got it loose and hit the streets. Well as normal Matt passed me on the bike and disappeared, I was really hoping to catch his wheel and hold on for some pacing but that didn't happen. Finished the bike which had a couple of long steep bridges in my normal pace of 18.5-19.0 MPH. 

T-2 was uneventful. My run was a bit slower than my norm but the massive bridge was on my mind and didn't want to blow myself up so I just took it easy. My shoe came untied at mile number two and many friendly people warned me of it, the truth was "if I stopped I might not have started again". I finished with a 1:28, I'm not happy with it but I'm the only one to blame.

Overall 122/664
AG 11/55
Swim 9:55
T-1 2:32
Bike 43:17
T-2 1:35
Run 31:10
Total 1:28:28