Shawn Jackson - N.D. Tri Race Report

From the "Shark" himself:
This past sunday was the first race for nytri to take place in Wilcox Park in Milan NY, Northern Dutchess Tri/ Du. The race started off with a short and cluttered 1/4 mile swim. Luckily I pre entered and was staged on the 2nd wave. So I only had 50 sets of kicking feet to deal with. After the swim was a 100 meter sprint across a beach to transition. As I was leaving transiton my buddies from the Team Bikeway tent scream out some words of encouragement and some info and I was off on the bike. At this point I had already passed everyone who started on waves 1 and 2 except one guy. A mile into the bike I set my sights on him and by the top of the first hill was out front all alone with a pace quad clearing the streets for me. The bike was quite hilly with some fun fast downhills to keep the speeds up. After the hills you enter back into the park to a last digger hill back to transition.
Coming back into transition off the bike was a straight shot to the dismount line where I hussled in and had the fastest T2 time by 6 seconds. Grabbed my run gear and it was a race to the finish line. I knew my main competition was on wave 3 and 4, so it was a race against the clock due to corrected time. During the run there was an out and back section where I was able to catch a glimpse of the competitors that were chasing me down. First person I saw was John McGovern and then shortly after was Tony Tanzi, and if you have ever raced or trained with these two it would leave you slightly uneasy to see either one of them anywhere near you during a race. So from that point on I just put the hammer down and crossed the finish line to start the count down to see if I took the overall. As the racers came in it turns out I had a margin of 90 seconds over McGovern, and took the victory!
The event was great and very well organized as usual. The people from nytri really put on some great races.
This weekend is the Williams Lake Sprint Tri, which is one of my favorite race locations. Should be a fun weekend!