New this year, the New York Road Runners Club held a race the day before the ING New York City Marathon called the Dash to the Finish Line.  NYRR recruited about 40 of America's top distance runners, assembling a field probably more competitive than a national championships.  Adding this 5k gave many of the runners who are training for the US Olympic Marathon Trials (in Houston in January) a chance to participate in the NYC Marathon festivities, even though racing a marathon right now wouldn't fit into their programs.  

Photo by Eric Wynn

This past weekend, we wrapped up the Lifetime Race to the Toyota Cup with the final race in Rockwall, TX.  This was the second year for this Dallas suburb venue, which centered around a Hilton resort on the shores of a large reservoir.  Due to the drought in Texas, the water level was too low for the traditional dive from the dock start, so we started in the 74(?) degree water with no wetsuits.  The swim started off fast and I quickly found myself in a large group with all of the major players except Sara H., Sara M. and Anabel, who where out front

 On Sunday I successfully defended my title at the Westchester Triathlon. That makes it four Wassner wins in a row! (Bec won in '08 and '09). The rain held off and we had a great day for racing. Since it was a local race, I was able to take a car service right to transition - meaning I didn't have to drive and was able to think about the race and hydrate with EFS on the way up! It was nice to have that extra time to relax.

 

My race yesterday at USA Nationals in Buffalo, NY was going well until a crash on the 7th of 8 laps of the bike course.  After recovering from a very slow swim, I was actually riding well, helping my group chase down all of the packs in front of us, and trying to maintain a fast pace.  Most of the time I was rotating with a few others at the front of the pack, but with 2 laps to go, I kind of drifted toward the back to assess who else was still with us, to see what I was dealing with for the run.  Just at that moment, 2 girls in front of me got tangled up and went down, I did my best to avoid the situation, drifting to the right where I saw open road.  Unfortunately, someone came up on my right and I was knocked off my bike into the gravel shoulder.  My coach, Cliff, was right there and told me to get up and keep riding.  It took me a second to figure out what was going on, but I got up, did a few minor bike repairs and started riding.  I was having a hard time holding on to the bars and looked down and saw that my hands were all bloody.  Then I thought, ok, just use the aero bars.  Tried that and realized that I had a cut on my elbow and blood running down my arm.  I managed to finish the last 2 laps of the bike (with a rubbing brake) and thought I may as well try running, even though I had lost so much time.  Once I got on the run course, I realized that my hip was really sore and looked down and noticed that I fell on my hip too.  I tried to keep running, but things just didn't feel right and then everything started to hurt.

Last weekend, the twins drove up to Syracuse to compete in a "local" 70.3  The race took almost 5 hours, but Bec and Laurel finished just 12 seconds apart, in 6th & 7th places.  Unfortunately, Bec was misdirected on the swim course and ended up coming out of the water several minutes behind the rest of the field.  She was able to climb her way back into 8th place after the bike and then moved into 6th on the run.  Laurel had a solid run, staying just a few seconds behind Bec during the very hilly 13.1 mile course.  As you can see in the photos below, it was a chilly morning, only in the mid-40's at the start of