VERY PROUD...

... of the Syracuse 70.3 crew today.

In my book, it is the performance that matters most, not the placing. As any good athlete knows, you cannot control what the competition does on race day; you can only control your own actions which in turn dictate your performance. This being said, although I love when my athletes land on the podium (which one of them did today as a matter of fact) I love it even more when they NAIL the breakthrough performance we've trained for (which they both did!)

For John Babcock and Keri Boyle, today's Syracuse 70.3 was yet another huge step forward performance wise.

John has already proven himself as one of the most dominant, up and coming triathletes in the NE region this year, having won a slew of events between the sprint and Olympic distance and knocking off some great athletes along the way. Today was a great means of evaluating how much progress he had made since last year on the long course front, and he hit this one out of the park: 4:16, which was good enough for 17th overall, 4th overall age grouper and a HUGE performance PR. To see him run under 1:20 OTB after a strong swim and bike is a great sign indeed, especially since he was running in the 5:4x range through about mile 10 before the wheels started coming off. At just 23, John's best years as a long course athlete are still well in front of him (thankfully, I will no longer be competing by that point!!!) so I'm thrilled with his progress today along with his season in general. If he can keep the fire burning brightly, there is no doubt in my mind that he will blossom into one of the best pro triathletes in the US within the next few years.

Keri was equally impressive. This is a mother of 3(?) who used to be excited about running sub 10 min. pace OTB in sprint triathlons. Today, she gets off and runs 1:38:08 - yeah, that's 7:29/mile pace for 13.1 after swimming 1.2 and biking a HARD 56... If that's not progress, I don't know what is.

I consider this to be Keri's first real year of training so I'm already well aware of the fact that although she is blowing her old 70.3 PRs out of the water by nearly an hour and a half (yes, you heard me right - 90 minutes), she still has A LOT of room for improvement. We typically see the BIG jumps occur after 1 year of solid training (such has been the case with John), so as exciting as this year has been for Keri, she's just getting warmed up for what's in store for next year. Although Keri's AG was SUPER stacked and she fell a bit short of the podium, her performance was good enough for 28th overall and 16th overall amateur. I couldn't be happier :)

Awesome day.

Syracuse 70.3 results