the guy who beat me straight up last race. he was tailing me, really breathing hard af, for 1.5 miles, then i started fading, and he stayed until 2, then he made a move and i couldn't stick, i was dead. he was dead too but he just pushed through it.
anyway, he's not necessarily "faster" than me, i mean by the stats he's way slower on avg, but he's an ironman guy, and those guys are fu*king tough. he showed his toughness in that race, really impressive. I mean he doesn't get into sub18 much but he hung with a 5:27 first mile, that seems outside of his "norm" i imagine. just shows how important "guts" are. he hit like 17:4X that race. Honestly i thought he was going to be toast by 2.. he just sounded like he was overworking. but then it turned out I was toast, and he was toast-but-kept-pushing.
lots of ironman's, triathlons, etc.
he was a really nice dude too.
https://www.athlinks.com/athletes/173894410/resultsi've trained with a "former top sfl ironman guy" before, those dudes are tough. they really know how to grind out the pain.