Hammerman, almost.

So yesterday was the one triathlon in Alaska that I really look forward to. It is called the Hammerman Triathlon. I came into it with a lot of pressure having won last year, and it didn't help that Matt Novakovich was telling me that people are betting on whether myself or my teammate Adam Miller would win. I couldn't play his mind games so I biked off before the start to get into my own zone, and that helped, being in a forest all alone calmed me down for sure.
45 minutes later I hop in the water to warm up for the swim, and the nervousness went away. Then we start, im swimming within my limit, which is normally not super fast, but at halfway, I realize that im only 25 meters behind the leaders and with Shannon Donnelly, Alaska's most dominant female triathlete. I get out of the water with Shannon but got very dizzy in transition and had to sit down to even get my bike shoes on. So at the point of leaving transition, the big competitors are Jens Beck who was 2 minutes ahead, Andy Duenow and Adam Miller 35 seconds ahead, Luke Kiskaddon and Jason Lameroux 1 minute back and Matt Navokovich 8 minutes back.
Within minutes on the mountian bike leg, I pass Adam and Andy. Andy keeps up with me for quite a while till the most technical singletrack of the course. The uphill of death is what blew the gap, it turns out I was the only one in the race to ride the hill. Once up that hill I finally see Jens up in the distance, and I chase after him for the majority of the bike course until another singletrack section where I pass and get 25 seconds on him. I come into transition in first with a huge crowd cheering only to hear the crowd start cheering again much sooner than I had hoped. Jens was on the way and he is quite a runner. He catches me which was to be expected but I hung with him which was not to be expected. Eventually he pulls away.
In the end, Jens was the winner with me 55 seconds back, Andy 6 minutes back, Jason and Luke 7 minutes back, Matt 9 minutes back and Adam 10 back. A great race for me and a much better run than normal. Even though I won last year, I think I raced better this year.