Xterra Utah Mountain Championship

I went out west to do the Mountain Championship in Ogden Utah. I never do well at the Mountain Championship, but i had a really good feeling about his years race. In all my years of doing Xterra, I never qualified for the World Championship, and I thought it was my time. I figured I could do well because my fitness level is really good this year, my last few races have been pretty good, and i focused on losing a lot of weight (163). It's funny how reality has a way of kicking you in the face sometimes. I went out there, got my butt kicked and came home with my tail between my legs. The race was kind of weird because it had 2 transitions separated by a 30 minute drive. Despite getting to the race 2 1/4 hours before the start, I nearly missed the starting gun. Without a good warm up, the swim went fairly well. I came out of the water about where I expected and looked forward to catching people on the bike. Once I got on the bike I started going backwards. It seemed like everyone was passing me. I was impressed by the climbing prowess of the competitors at this race. Pro women were passing me like i was standing still, and even age group women and dudes with 50's and 55's marked on their leg were passing me all day long. Today I just didn't have the legs to climb that mountain. With T1 at 4500 elevation and T2 at 7000 elevation, the course designers were able to create a course that was about 15 miles of climbing and 5 miles of descending. That's exactly what I didn't need today. After what seemed like endless climbing followed by a disproportionately short descent, I pulled into T2 and headed out on the run. It starts with a steep climb up the ski hill for about one mile, then it flattens out for another mile and you can finally get the legs moving fast. After that you slow down again and run a couple miles of false flats, followed by 1 mile straight downhill. I gave it all I had, hoping to catch at least one person in my age group. To make a bad day even worse, I was passed by one guy with about a mile and a half to go. I finally passed someone in my age group about 200 meters from the finish line but i didn't really feel like celebrating. I finished in 3:16, 69th overall and 8th in my age group. It's time to go back to the drawing board with my training plan. Since Nationals is similar to this course, I have to decide if I want to do it, or if I should skip that race and start focusing on the upcoming cyclocross season. This is a bikers course and I thought I was a pretty good biker. After this race it is pretty obvious that climbing is my weakness. I need to keep working on that power to weight ratio. Tomorrow I go back on the diet.