Okay, that felt good. I almost thoroughly enjoyed the attention, but I had to find some quiet space to be as alone as possible before doing my second and last 500 meter sprint of the year.
I went through my customary warm up which customarily felt horrible. I've learned that how I feel warming up has no correlation to how I feel racing, so I was able to remain reasonably calm before my heat was called.
I got my erg set up, and took a little time to talk to it.
The whole 500 can be seen here.
The start was adequate if not fantastic. I was hanging out at 1:20/500, and while it's usually easy for me to hit 1:18 or lower on the start, I didn't feel as though I was strong enough to do it. I chose to hold 1:20 as long as possible before backing down to 1:24, and holding that until falling apart, and finally attempting to go all out the final 150 meters.
I made a rather serious mistake by looking at the big screen once near the end of the race. I saw I was leading by a huge margin, and I reflexively started to slow down. I brought a coxswain and a cheering section with me, and I was an immediate crowd favorite so there was enough screaming to get me to finish as strong as possible.
I turned a 1:25.8 which was the fastest 500 meters of the day, but it was still short of a PR by a tenth of a second. I can't help but think that looking at the big screen must have cost me two tenths of a second or even more, but I did win the race while going hard enough to finish like this:
After the race I had a bunch of people talk to me. I can't lie and say I didn't appreciate the guy who told me I should rank my 500 meters since I was probably one of the best in the world - I did that a long time ago, man - but the kids and their coaches were fantastic. Apparently I was a big hit with the kids from the Monaco Athletic Club.
What a weird way to be a rock star.
I guess I have to do this again next year.
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