What a difference a year makes

It's over, and it went a lot faster than last year!
Jason's times:
Xterra Sport 2007 - 3:05
Xterra Sport 2008 - 2:12

Several factors led to cutting nearly an hour off my race.

• Coming into the race at 178 lbs instead of 195 lbs and in much better condition overall.
• Went into last years race with minimal time having been spent on the Mtn Bike. Decided I liked it - to be brutally honest, thought I'd ridden well by nailing a 1:55 bike split, pure naivety! So, bought a good bike and spent a heck of a lot more time on it this past year, including some races. Was able to attack the bike portion of the race this year.
• Think I swam a little better (not good, just better than last year), haven't seen the splits yet for this years race.
• Think the run course was shorter this year? My run is still really poor, walked the same sections I walked last year, but the route seemed to be over a lot faster?

Several factors still costing me a lot of time...

• Still have 10 lbs of extra weight I'm lugging around - possibly more, but gauging it every 5 lbs and know right now that there's at least 10 extra around my midsection. Am thinking I should be close to where I want/need to be at the 165-168 lb range. Cutting 17 lbs bought me 53 minutes, think the next 10 lbs will be worth no less than an additional 10-15 minutes. Want to be clear that I'm not a weight junkie. I don't count calorie intake or expenditure, exercise any restraint when something tastes good, or even refrain from my hardcore night time binges. I'm just talking about getting in good shape, a process in which my weight is maybe the 3rd or 4th indicator I look to in regards to progress. What I'm saying is that when the first 2 or 3 indicators are in line, I think I'll be about 10 lbs less than where I'm at today.
• The run - not much I can say here - mine is sloooooooooooow. No good excuses just going to take a lot of hard work. Actually I just thought of a good excuse - I was a solid sprinter in HS (50.93 400M), it just became obvious to me that my body was conditioned in my early years to blow up at 401M regardless of the intensity of the effort for the first 400M which is precisely where I blow up on these damn runs! Translation for those not familiar with the metric distances - I'm cooked after the first quarter mile. Seriously, I've got a lot of suffering to inflict on myself to get these runs up to speed.
• The swim - won't know until I see the split times. This in and of itself is a problem - I feel a little exposed having written above that I think I was faster this year, because in reality, I have no clue - I'm still just happy when they're over. I just know I'm yet to maintain a solid stroke for an entire race. But am getting closer - I think.
• The bike - will continue to get faster here just because of the fun factor that comes with training on it.

More detailed race reports later - yes, the girls ran again....