XTERRA Beaver Creek // Second Place

[Music] yo yo yo here we are everyone avon colorado beaver creek colorado in the transition area 28 minutes before the start of xterra beaver creek that is right you heard it xterra off-road getting gnarly doing the mountain biking it's actually my third time doing this event so you could say i'm familiar with the course but it's been a few years and yeah i'm excited i'm really here people might say what am i doing here you know what i mean but the guy wants a selfie we still got all the fans wanting selfies and um yeah i try to do one one event a year that's purely for fun right and and so that's what this event is um about fun winning is fun so yeah but how much do you want to keep though i mean kicking is fun so i want to kick you know um but it's also like it's just cool to get rid of the expectations because nobody knows i do xterra but uh i won't tell you my past results here i'll make people look them up i've historically done very poorly here so i have to step it up and do better that's all good [Music] so here we are i mean we're getting the striptease oh yeah just kidding what we're seeing here it's the first edition big unit merch my my captain and my mom here they made it for daytona and that was really when things started taking off they wore them in the crowd and that's what really got the crowd going for then that's when we got the ideas you know to be an entrepreneur all you really need is a gildan heavy tea and a sharpie our dreams can come true okay sorry talking to the producer [Music] um so [Music] you [Music] [Music] here we are uh we're sitting at beaver creek i just did a quick race a quick xterra and by that i do mean quick it was two hours um so really just got warmed up but uh yeah the race was awesome i got second place of course uh you know me i'm always going for the win whenever i come out here and believed in myself and i had the fitness i just i just lacked a little bit of the technical finesse needed which i knew that'd be my big weakness all along i mean these guys do this for a living they're they're true professionals sam oz one with the win obviously uh he really showcased just how good of an athlete he is and and a huge props to josiah and third uh you know he out rode me he got fastest bike split he struggled a bit on the run but it was it was super fun running riding with a true legend of the sport and working together and so yeah i guess i mean the swim went pretty good um i knew i'd be about 2 15 back from the lead uh at altitude i actually said like start basically at iron man pace because if you start too hard here you you really can blow up at eight eight thousand feet so my start wasn't great but then uh i ended up catching a number of folks on the swim who started too fast and then yeah came out and just got right to work on the bike and the first half is all climbing uphill and uh josiah was just on my wheel i think i got about 20 30 seconds on him and i just caught sam at the top of the climb and then yeah you know he just he got about 40 seconds back on the first descent and then josiah caught me as well and then we we've reeled sam back into about 20 seconds before the final descent and then yeah uh josiah caught sam i got dropped on the on the last and most technical port portion which which that's what cost me the race i lost 50 seconds there yeah thank you anyways 50 seconds and t2 and uh but i wanted to set myself up for a hard round i knew if i was gonna win i probably needed to come come within 30 seconds of the lead just because a minute over 10k is is a lot you know but uh still i believed in it i went after it i caught josiah on the climb and uh i ripped the downhills and uh a huge reason i wanted to do this course actually is because it's it's like st george the st george world championship run course on steroids right so it's 1100 vertical feet of gain and 1100 vertical feet of loss in 10k st george has 1300 over 21k so it's it's twice as much climbing and descending as saint george per mile and yeah it went great i mean uh yeah i was getting close to the getting close to catching sam i i had a few low points on the run but uh i actually was feeling the best at the end which is a great sign obviously for 70.3 and i gave it everything i had i had a great time it's it's just totally rad to be out here and mountain biking in the mountains and the beautiful weather and i love to push my limits i love to see where i'm at uh i love to get out of my comfort zone and um i think a good piece of advice to people who want to improve their bike is that you can't only do one thing to truly become a good cyclist so if you if you really want to be the best cyclist in the world in in 70.3 or iron man racing um or let's just say 70.3 racing like i think you need to mix it up you need to be able to climb especially as a bigger guy if you can climb you need to be able to do tts on the flats and then doing things like cycle cross or mountain biking it just adds to the skill set i mean even then yeah sometimes riding on the trainer is great because it's just it builds specific strength but i'm a huge believer in in having a huge toolbox on the bike and so i always always try to make that toolbox bigger and um the cool thing is that i'm i'm qualified for for maui exterior world champs in december if i choose to do it and uh i i can't be upset with that i'm stoked uh my record here is now second third and another second so i gotta come back again it's a dream for me to win the nextera i just want to add it to the resume and but here's what's cool man triathlon is like a culture in a community i thought oh now maybe only the on-road guys would know me and i thought i'd come here and be a bit of a no-one and and everyone's still like yo yo yo let's get the autographs but the best part and this is why i love josiah the the highlight of the day was everyone at the start of the swim which you could probably hear everyone's going yo yo yo yo yo yo go sam long and josiah shouts no no no and i just love that i just thought that was like awesome to give it to me in that way you know because he's the local legend so uh yeah thanks everyone we'll keep it rolling we'll have a video next week with the world championships update and the rest of the season planned so here's the video thank you kenny i got to sleep in until uh 6 50 this morning kenny still had to do the 3 a.m wake up call so and tomorrow guys tomorrow i'm riding my bike home from beaver creek to boulder it's still a training week but i decided that wasn't hard enough so i'm throwing a little mount evans up to 14 000 feet on the way home so uh i'll let kenny off the hook for having to follow me in a car for 12 or 13 or 14 hours tomorrow but it's gonna be baller and i'll i'll do a gopro it'll be the the ghetto sam long film anyways thanks guys cheers peace check check so here we are guys who is this man this imposter stole my kit that's actually my dad there he came out he raced it's awesome because he he obviously showed me the love for the endurance sports of course with my mom as well but uh it's always awesome when you get a race with your dad and he actually didn't show me triathlon he showed me cycling and now i've gotten him into triathlon and i don't know how he did but pretty good and he's also racing 70.3 worlds at st george um and he runs like five miles a week because he wants to save his knees for the race day so i told him that's not the best training plan but that's what he does and yeah it's awesome so let's let's celebrate and enjoy the party now

Channel: Going Long With Sam Long

Views: 30,134

Rating: 4.9828916 out of 5

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Id: 7Lt-hIgF7mc

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021