I like numbers. So here are the fun comparisons to last year's race stats.
Swim
This year - 11:10. 63rd out of 108.
Last year - 13:18. 81st out of 109.
This is the area I did the most consistent work on through out the year. I focused on getting more power out of my strokes.
Transition 1
This year - 1:56. 46th out of 108.
Last year - 2:50. 85th out of 109.
Being in the mentality of wanting to win instead of just finish I pushed harder to get through transitions quickly.
Bike
This year - 1:13:20. 78th out of 108.
Last year - 1:13:52. 88th out of 109.
I practiced on the course a lot more and got a professional bike fit to make it possible to get more power out. While the time did not increase, my relative placement improved so that is the equalizer of the course having extra gravel.
Transition 2
This year - 1:32. 73rd out of 108.
Last year - 2:09. 93rd out of 108.
Like T1, I knowingly tried to speed this up.
Run
This year - 40:14. 93rd out of 108.
Last year - 32:17. 77th out of 109.
Last year I routinely ran multiple times a week but this year I just didn't have that same commitment to the run. I clearly paid for it.
Overall
This year - 2:08:14. 86th out of 108.
Last year - 2:04:26. 87th out of 109.
So despite the longer time, I was in the same relative position as last year. I am happy with decreasing my swim, bike, and transition times.
Showing posts with label Sprint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sprint. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Race Report
Woohoo! I took first in my category!
Now to the full face report.
Prerace
I arrived at 5:50am to Walnut Creek Park. Took my bike, a towel, and my race number down. Saved my rack spot with my bike and towel, then went to get body marked. After that I went to get the rest of my stuff. Got all of that done by 6:10. Transition didn't close until 7:10 which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Took a short run, did a short bike ride (which was good because I was in the wrong gear initially).
Swim
I was in the 6th swim wave since I was racing in the Athena Category. The prerace camaraderie was great. We were just joking around, supporting each other with Q/A, and cheering for each other. It was great.
Once we got in the water I placed myself in the middle of the pack figuring I wasn't a terrible swimmer but definitely not great. It seemed longer than 500m, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I actually felt better about it this year than last and I came out of the water with still quite a few women behind me so that felt good.
Bike
Coming out of the swim I was more tired than I expected which I attribute mostly from running through the shallow part of the water to get out. So by the time I got out on the bike I was already breathing hard which is just a great place to start when the first mile is 90% uphill and a rather steep one at that. Thankfully I had trained on it and new I was getting a nice downhill once I got to the top.
The first major downhill I just blew down. I was in my top gear possible and still felt like I could've pushed more. I've really learned to enjoy the speed I can get from that and how far it'll carry me up the next one. Once I got to the first turn on major roads I had to slow down more than I wanted for two reasons. First as I stated yesterday, they had just laid fresh gravel down so it was a bit more treacherous and that means the road isn't as smooth to just crank it. Second, I had managed to catch up to a whole group of people ahead of me and just didn't have the speed to pass. Since we can't draft I had to stay 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of me. I did eventually pass a whole group of them but it was still not as quick as I would've liked.
When I got to the halfway point it is the only relatively flat road and I normally crank hard on it. I pushed hard, but I felt like I could've given it a little more but my energy was starting to drag. I did make sure I pushed hard enough so that if the notorious dogs came after me that I could get out fast since at that point I was pretty much all alone (as far as seeing folks ahead of me, not sure about behind me).
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I did use a powergel on the ride back so I could hope that I had enough energy for the run.
Run
I got back from the bike and had promised myself Gatoraid so I guzzled (mistake #1) more than I should have especially since I had not had positive experiences in the past while running with fluids sloshing in my stomach.
This year we did a slightly modified start to the run so that we wouldn't have to run over wet, slippery, uneven rocks and instead extend the path a bit to use a new bike path they had put in to address the issue of bikers trying to go over those same rocks.
The run time will not be good this year. The gatoraid caused my stomach to cramp and lack of enough trail running caused me to walk a large portion of it. I ran off and on passing Lance who I met on Thursday at a tri-club meeting. Eventually I was only walking and he caught up with me and said "come run with me." So I did. It was great to have someone to run with and he had the same opinions about up-hills that I did... they should be walked. Probably around mile 2.5 my stomach was just getting worse so I told him to go ahead and I would catch up. I finished probably about 20 seconds afterwards.
Overall
I crossed the mat at clock time of 2:27ish. Given that I was in wave six that put me 20 minutes behind the clock time, so I did it in 2:07-2:08ish depending on how the chip time comes out. Which means this year I was slower than last year. It could depend on many things... was the swim course actually longer this year (it felt it), did the gravel roads slow everyone down and thus my relative placement isn't as bad, just how much worse was my run since I think my bike was better. In the end, I'll look at all the pieces and see how I did and compare my relative ranking to the other women.
Placing
This year I competed in the Athena category (women over 150 pounds and opt-in to this category). In the past 3 years there have been 6-8 women who have finished each year. I figured I stood a much better chance placing in that then in my age group which had almost 30 women. As of race day there were only two of us. I raced the entire thing not being sure where the other woman was so I needed to either catch her or not let her catch me. In the end, she didn't end up racing. Thus I took first place by default! I still raced hard and given that when I signed up I did expect 6-8 other women, it's still a victory.
Epilogue: Nutrition is the 4th Sport
As mentioned in the run portion mistake #1 happened when I guzzled gatoraid before going out on the run. This was compounded with mistake #2 that I drank an ice cold gatoraid as soon as I finished. I both chugged it and was not used to drink ice cold water or gatoraid. Mistake #3 was eating about a full orange in a rather ravenous manner. Mistake #4 for drinking another ice cold gatoraid. Can you see where this is leading?
If not, let me guide you. In my cube I have a photocopy of a shoe ad that has the slogon "In triathlons, victory and defeat often taste the same" and a picture of a female triathlete on the side of the road curled up and clearly looking like she lost breakfast. Yep, that was me. Expect instead of losing breakfast I lost all that lovely gatoraid and orange pieces. I ended up doing it twice in two separate locations since I was dumb and tried to eat part of banana and water to calm my nerves. Nope, that just came up too.
This left my body in an extreme sugar low (which I already have issues with) and unable to eat. Thankfully the triathlon community is very supportive and so I had many offers of help to either take me to a hospital for IV fluids, take me home so I could rest, or just get me anything I needed. I appreciated it all.
Lesson learned: be careful about both pre-race and post-race nutrition.
Now to the full face report.
Prerace
I arrived at 5:50am to Walnut Creek Park. Took my bike, a towel, and my race number down. Saved my rack spot with my bike and towel, then went to get body marked. After that I went to get the rest of my stuff. Got all of that done by 6:10. Transition didn't close until 7:10 which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Took a short run, did a short bike ride (which was good because I was in the wrong gear initially).
Swim
I was in the 6th swim wave since I was racing in the Athena Category. The prerace camaraderie was great. We were just joking around, supporting each other with Q/A, and cheering for each other. It was great.
Once we got in the water I placed myself in the middle of the pack figuring I wasn't a terrible swimmer but definitely not great. It seemed longer than 500m, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I actually felt better about it this year than last and I came out of the water with still quite a few women behind me so that felt good.
Bike
Coming out of the swim I was more tired than I expected which I attribute mostly from running through the shallow part of the water to get out. So by the time I got out on the bike I was already breathing hard which is just a great place to start when the first mile is 90% uphill and a rather steep one at that. Thankfully I had trained on it and new I was getting a nice downhill once I got to the top.
The first major downhill I just blew down. I was in my top gear possible and still felt like I could've pushed more. I've really learned to enjoy the speed I can get from that and how far it'll carry me up the next one. Once I got to the first turn on major roads I had to slow down more than I wanted for two reasons. First as I stated yesterday, they had just laid fresh gravel down so it was a bit more treacherous and that means the road isn't as smooth to just crank it. Second, I had managed to catch up to a whole group of people ahead of me and just didn't have the speed to pass. Since we can't draft I had to stay 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of me. I did eventually pass a whole group of them but it was still not as quick as I would've liked.
When I got to the halfway point it is the only relatively flat road and I normally crank hard on it. I pushed hard, but I felt like I could've given it a little more but my energy was starting to drag. I did make sure I pushed hard enough so that if the notorious dogs came after me that I could get out fast since at that point I was pretty much all alone (as far as seeing folks ahead of me, not sure about behind me).
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I did use a powergel on the ride back so I could hope that I had enough energy for the run.
Run
I got back from the bike and had promised myself Gatoraid so I guzzled (mistake #1) more than I should have especially since I had not had positive experiences in the past while running with fluids sloshing in my stomach.
This year we did a slightly modified start to the run so that we wouldn't have to run over wet, slippery, uneven rocks and instead extend the path a bit to use a new bike path they had put in to address the issue of bikers trying to go over those same rocks.
The run time will not be good this year. The gatoraid caused my stomach to cramp and lack of enough trail running caused me to walk a large portion of it. I ran off and on passing Lance who I met on Thursday at a tri-club meeting. Eventually I was only walking and he caught up with me and said "come run with me." So I did. It was great to have someone to run with and he had the same opinions about up-hills that I did... they should be walked. Probably around mile 2.5 my stomach was just getting worse so I told him to go ahead and I would catch up. I finished probably about 20 seconds afterwards.
Overall
I crossed the mat at clock time of 2:27ish. Given that I was in wave six that put me 20 minutes behind the clock time, so I did it in 2:07-2:08ish depending on how the chip time comes out. Which means this year I was slower than last year. It could depend on many things... was the swim course actually longer this year (it felt it), did the gravel roads slow everyone down and thus my relative placement isn't as bad, just how much worse was my run since I think my bike was better. In the end, I'll look at all the pieces and see how I did and compare my relative ranking to the other women.
Placing
This year I competed in the Athena category (women over 150 pounds and opt-in to this category). In the past 3 years there have been 6-8 women who have finished each year. I figured I stood a much better chance placing in that then in my age group which had almost 30 women. As of race day there were only two of us. I raced the entire thing not being sure where the other woman was so I needed to either catch her or not let her catch me. In the end, she didn't end up racing. Thus I took first place by default! I still raced hard and given that when I signed up I did expect 6-8 other women, it's still a victory.
Epilogue: Nutrition is the 4th Sport
As mentioned in the run portion mistake #1 happened when I guzzled gatoraid before going out on the run. This was compounded with mistake #2 that I drank an ice cold gatoraid as soon as I finished. I both chugged it and was not used to drink ice cold water or gatoraid. Mistake #3 was eating about a full orange in a rather ravenous manner. Mistake #4 for drinking another ice cold gatoraid. Can you see where this is leading?
If not, let me guide you. In my cube I have a photocopy of a shoe ad that has the slogon "In triathlons, victory and defeat often taste the same" and a picture of a female triathlete on the side of the road curled up and clearly looking like she lost breakfast. Yep, that was me. Expect instead of losing breakfast I lost all that lovely gatoraid and orange pieces. I ended up doing it twice in two separate locations since I was dumb and tried to eat part of banana and water to calm my nerves. Nope, that just came up too.
This left my body in an extreme sugar low (which I already have issues with) and unable to eat. Thankfully the triathlon community is very supportive and so I had many offers of help to either take me to a hospital for IV fluids, take me home so I could rest, or just get me anything I needed. I appreciated it all.
Lesson learned: be careful about both pre-race and post-race nutrition.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
12 hours...
12 hours from now I will likely be on my way to the park. Yep, I'm planning on being there by 5:50 so I can set up my gear right when the transition area opens at 6. Then time to chill out for an hour, eat a banana, and relax.
Swim - A couple days ago I did my first open water lake swim for the year. I really had forgotten how murky the water is and how variable the temperature is. One section would be chilly and another would be warm. A report from earlier today said the water was around 77 degrees which would make it wetsuit legal, but given that it is over 90+ and direct sun out there right now it will probably get back up to the normal 80 degrees.
Bike - Rather concerned about this because %()*&#($*& VDOT decided that Friday would be a great day to tear up one of the main roads we use. It's only a couple miles torn up, but we use that portion twice (going out and coming back). What's worse is that I've really practiced getting up my speed on that portion so I feel like it has been a lot of wasted effort. I guess we'll see how it goes tomorrow morning.
Run - some folks today said that it wasn't nearly as muddy as we were fearing thanks to a lot of the heat in the last couple days. Like always, I'm more worried about my nutrition for that portion.
Race placement - I'm in the 6th and final wave which means I'll have a lot of folks to pass on the bike if I'm lucky. That being said, there will also already be people done with the race by the time I get back from the bike.
Race category - the best I can tell there are still only two Athenas. I know the number of the other woman so I should be able to spot her reasonably well and just make it my goal to get ahead of her and stay ahead of her.
Swim - A couple days ago I did my first open water lake swim for the year. I really had forgotten how murky the water is and how variable the temperature is. One section would be chilly and another would be warm. A report from earlier today said the water was around 77 degrees which would make it wetsuit legal, but given that it is over 90+ and direct sun out there right now it will probably get back up to the normal 80 degrees.
Bike - Rather concerned about this because %()*&#($*& VDOT decided that Friday would be a great day to tear up one of the main roads we use. It's only a couple miles torn up, but we use that portion twice (going out and coming back). What's worse is that I've really practiced getting up my speed on that portion so I feel like it has been a lot of wasted effort. I guess we'll see how it goes tomorrow morning.
Run - some folks today said that it wasn't nearly as muddy as we were fearing thanks to a lot of the heat in the last couple days. Like always, I'm more worried about my nutrition for that portion.
Race placement - I'm in the 6th and final wave which means I'll have a lot of folks to pass on the bike if I'm lucky. That being said, there will also already be people done with the race by the time I get back from the bike.
Race category - the best I can tell there are still only two Athenas. I know the number of the other woman so I should be able to spot her reasonably well and just make it my goal to get ahead of her and stay ahead of her.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Rename to Muddy Buddy?
Earlier in the year I was considering doing the Muddy Buddy which features a large mud pit at the end of the run/bike race. I may get my chance to get truly muddy anyways this weekend. It has been raining every night during the past week and the trail for the run portion was already fairly muddy and waterlogged on Sunday. The forecast continues to call for more rain through the rest of the week, thus the trail is going to be essentially 3 miles of muddy fun. And when I say fun, it really won't be. The trail isn't that wide and mountain bikers ride through it so there are deep gashes in the trail in many places. Therefore, I suspect I'll have to either walk a fair bit in order to not slip & fall, and/or just kick up a bunch of mud onto myself. I predict run times overall this year will be slower. That being said, I'm still going to try my best.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
1 Week!
The final stretch for the Cville Sprint Tri is upon us. In one week from today, the triathlon will take place. This week I'm going to focus on eating right, not injuring myself, and light exercise. Unlike school tasks, this cannot be crammed for. Infact, training hard the last week before the event can reduce performance since it wears you out and the muscles may not be optimally reseted. That being said, it is good to keep moving.
As for my competition... First and foremost I'm trying to improve on my personal recored from last year. It's the same course, but the conditions may not be the same. Temperature, wind, and how much the trail is will all affect things. So I will use both the time but also relative position to the other women. The second part of the competition is that I've stated I want to place in my category of Athena. Right now that won't be too hard, there are 273 people signed up but out of that there are only two of us in the Athena category. There are still 57 spots open so we could get more, but right now its a small field.
The whole thing feels rather surreal. I know it is 7 days away, but it still seems like months away.
As for my competition... First and foremost I'm trying to improve on my personal recored from last year. It's the same course, but the conditions may not be the same. Temperature, wind, and how much the trail is will all affect things. So I will use both the time but also relative position to the other women. The second part of the competition is that I've stated I want to place in my category of Athena. Right now that won't be too hard, there are 273 people signed up but out of that there are only two of us in the Athena category. There are still 57 spots open so we could get more, but right now its a small field.
The whole thing feels rather surreal. I know it is 7 days away, but it still seems like months away.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
4 Weeks!
There are only 4 weeks remaining until the Cville Sprint Triathlon. Which really means only 3 more weeks of training and one week of tapering. It seems so far away and yet not enough time to really improve much on my training.
Swimming
I've been doing 1000m in the pool about twice a week for the last few months. I may pick up a little time over last year, but I will only be able to tell in comparison to my relative standing since as a previous post noted - the times vary greatly year to year. The 1000m I've been doing is plenty since the actual race is supposedly only 500m, but I will need to be able to do 1000m for the IronGirl Sprint Triathlon in August. Therefore I need to start increasing my distance to train for that. In addition, all of my swimming has been in the pool. The local parks open this weekend for swimming, so I shall try to get some murky water swim time in soon.
Biking
I've only been biking about once a week. I seem to come up with all sorts of excuses as to why. The only good thing is the once a week is riding the actual course and thus really learning the hills. I have gotten better at them. I don't know how it'll compare since I've only been doing group rides. In addition, last week was my first time since getting my bike professionally fitted, so I'm still working on building the correct muscles. That being said, already it was better than the old set up I had.
Running
I've been consistently getting 2 runs in a week at 3 miles each run, but on far too many of them I've had to walk a portion of it. Plus, I have only run/walked the entire sprint run course once since last year. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can get out there a few more times.
Overall
I know I'm going to finish it because I feel like I'm in good enough shape for that. I don't know if I'll do better or not from last year since I feel like each of my areas has lots of room for improvement. If I could do this training time all over again, I would've gotten serious about it much sooner and actually stuck with my plan of increasing distances.
Swimming
I've been doing 1000m in the pool about twice a week for the last few months. I may pick up a little time over last year, but I will only be able to tell in comparison to my relative standing since as a previous post noted - the times vary greatly year to year. The 1000m I've been doing is plenty since the actual race is supposedly only 500m, but I will need to be able to do 1000m for the IronGirl Sprint Triathlon in August. Therefore I need to start increasing my distance to train for that. In addition, all of my swimming has been in the pool. The local parks open this weekend for swimming, so I shall try to get some murky water swim time in soon.
Biking
I've only been biking about once a week. I seem to come up with all sorts of excuses as to why. The only good thing is the once a week is riding the actual course and thus really learning the hills. I have gotten better at them. I don't know how it'll compare since I've only been doing group rides. In addition, last week was my first time since getting my bike professionally fitted, so I'm still working on building the correct muscles. That being said, already it was better than the old set up I had.
Running
I've been consistently getting 2 runs in a week at 3 miles each run, but on far too many of them I've had to walk a portion of it. Plus, I have only run/walked the entire sprint run course once since last year. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can get out there a few more times.
Overall
I know I'm going to finish it because I feel like I'm in good enough shape for that. I don't know if I'll do better or not from last year since I feel like each of my areas has lots of room for improvement. If I could do this training time all over again, I would've gotten serious about it much sooner and actually stuck with my plan of increasing distances.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Registered for the Sprint Tri
Nothing says motivation like forking over the money to commit oneself to the cause. I am now registered for the 2009 Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon. In order to not make a fool of myself out there, time to get serious about the training. Only two months left.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Race Report
I completed the Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon two days ago and from my perspective, I rocked it! My only true goal was to finish the race and not pass out afterwards. My dream goal was to be in the middle 80%. I accomplished both. I finished the race in 2:04:26 which was 87th out of 109 women. My other time splits were 13:19 for the 500m swim (81st), 1:13:52 for the 16.5 mile bike (88th), 32:17 for the 3 mile run (77th). The rest of the time was transitions.
The story of all the training begins way back in January (or possibly even before) but I'll start the recap from Saturday.
Saturday morning I went to the women's 4 miler training program since I felt I needed to wear my new race gear once before the race. In general this is a very bad idea to try anything new so close to the race, but I felt I didn't have a lot of options. I meant to only do the 1.5 mile intermediate run, but ended up doing the advanced group's 2.5 mile. Plus I had walked there and back so add approximately 2 miles of walking.
Later that day I helped with packet pickup. Since I knew parking would be an issue, I decided to walk there too, so another 3 miles of walking. Once there I did a variety of jobs but mostly on my feet. Thus I was certainly not resting like I should've been.
That night I had a good meal of pasta and a 32oz smoothie. I really think the smoothie helped because it had some additional protein and I know it doesn't tend to sit in my stomach too long. Ironically while reading a bicycling magazine and drinking the smoothie, I came across an article that listed smoothies as one of the top pre-race meals.
Sunday morning came way too soon since I rustled myself out of bed at 4:30 to eat breakfast and finish any packing (most of it was done Saturday afternoon/night). I got to the site around 5:45 so that David could pick up his packet and get all of his stuff prepped before the 6am opening of transition. Since we knew we'd be coming out of the water at different times, we parked our bikes next to each other and set up our area. From there, we went and got our numbers written on with Sharpie.
When transition set-up closed at 7:15 we all went down to the beach to get pre-race instructions and get ready for it to start at 7:30.
For the swim we started in waves based on age and gender. As 20-29 year old woman, I started in the second wave with a neon pink swim cap (I hope there are pictures somewhere). The other groups were labeled with yellow, red, light blue, white, and neon green. So at 7:33 we entered the water and made our way out to the first marker. At 7:34, we were off. Myself and 40 of my closest swimming friends started swimming out to the first buoy. I got hit, kicked, and did the same to other swimmers. At first I was having a hard time breathing but then remembered that even in the pool my 500m swim time was 12-14 minutes, so I shouldn't be trying to keep up with the folks I knew would be finishing in about 8 minutes. After slowing down the area became less crowded and I was able to breath a lot better. I got passed by guys in the following wave (4 minutes behind us) but I was ok with that.
When I finally came out of the water we had to run up a grassy hill to the transition area with our bikes. They have volunteers at all transition entrances and exits to keep us excited and point us in the right direction. It was nice to have a few folks I knew volunteering with that because I felt there was an extra connection and they actually called out my name in encouragement.
In the transition area, I dried off a bit (mostly my feet), put on all my bike gear, and headed out. My coworker Courtney was in transition about the same time I was but I would not see her again until she passed me on the run.
Out I went on the bike and up the major hill. Having trained on this route a number of times I knew that first 4 miles were tough with a major uphill climb. So I paced myself because I didn't want to have to stop at the top to rest. It was a nice feeling as I actually passed a few folks. The rest of the ride I was pretty much brutally passed by everyone and their mother.
The bike ride went amazingly well for me. Part of it was that I was much more confident because I knew the route, and knew all the traffic had been warned about the 270(ish) cyclists on the roads. For the first time I seriously pushed on the biking, I pedaled on some downhills instead of breaking and really tried to ride hard when on the flats. Part of my encouragement was figuring David would be about ~8 minutes behind me (4 minutes for starting in a later wave, and ~4 minutes because I am a faster swimmer). I kept telling myself, all I have to do is get to the next landmark in the bike course before David passes me and I shall have a minor victory. As I got further and further along the more determined I was to get as far as possible before he caught up. He never did, instead he was cheering me on as I came into transition and out for the run.
During the transition into the run I grabbed some gatoraid, threw on my bandanna, and I was off for the 3 mile trail run.
The run was hard. I've done it before and been rather tired going into it, but this time that wasn't my issue - I felt I had plenty of energy. I though I might feel the typical brick in my legs, but I didn't get that either. Instead, as I was going up the first of the hills on the run a muscle in my butt started getting incredibly sore. It wasn't bad on downhills or flats, but it just burned going uphills. It started just on my right but by the end of the run both sides hurt like none other. So I ended up walking up a fair number of the hills.
With less than a mile less, the pain was starting to get unbearable and I was finally starting to feel the energy drain despite having taken in an energy gel (but probably far too late). I did a mix of jogging and walking. What really kept me going was a guy behind me kept yelling encouragement to me to not let him pass me and to at least walk faster. He did catch up to me, but when we hit the last level area he told me to get in front and keep going even though I hurt. It was just a great show of community support. (Somewhere in there Courtney just blew by me too).
As I came in the last little leg and saw the finish line, David & Karen were cheering me on as well as one of my friends was on the announcement system picking folks out to announce their names as they came in. Even though there were a few folks with me she knew me so gave me a grand announcement. It felt great to cross that finish line. As soon as we finished we were supposed to turn in our timing chips and another friend was there collecting them so I got a nice congrats from her. It's a really great thing to know so many folks that can be happy with you when you accomplish something like this.
In the end, it was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. Thanks to everyone who supported me through out the training and have actually managed to read this entire rambling post ;).
The story of all the training begins way back in January (or possibly even before) but I'll start the recap from Saturday.
Saturday morning I went to the women's 4 miler training program since I felt I needed to wear my new race gear once before the race. In general this is a very bad idea to try anything new so close to the race, but I felt I didn't have a lot of options. I meant to only do the 1.5 mile intermediate run, but ended up doing the advanced group's 2.5 mile. Plus I had walked there and back so add approximately 2 miles of walking.
Later that day I helped with packet pickup. Since I knew parking would be an issue, I decided to walk there too, so another 3 miles of walking. Once there I did a variety of jobs but mostly on my feet. Thus I was certainly not resting like I should've been.
That night I had a good meal of pasta and a 32oz smoothie. I really think the smoothie helped because it had some additional protein and I know it doesn't tend to sit in my stomach too long. Ironically while reading a bicycling magazine and drinking the smoothie, I came across an article that listed smoothies as one of the top pre-race meals.
Sunday morning came way too soon since I rustled myself out of bed at 4:30 to eat breakfast and finish any packing (most of it was done Saturday afternoon/night). I got to the site around 5:45 so that David could pick up his packet and get all of his stuff prepped before the 6am opening of transition. Since we knew we'd be coming out of the water at different times, we parked our bikes next to each other and set up our area. From there, we went and got our numbers written on with Sharpie.
When transition set-up closed at 7:15 we all went down to the beach to get pre-race instructions and get ready for it to start at 7:30.
For the swim we started in waves based on age and gender. As 20-29 year old woman, I started in the second wave with a neon pink swim cap (I hope there are pictures somewhere). The other groups were labeled with yellow, red, light blue, white, and neon green. So at 7:33 we entered the water and made our way out to the first marker. At 7:34, we were off. Myself and 40 of my closest swimming friends started swimming out to the first buoy. I got hit, kicked, and did the same to other swimmers. At first I was having a hard time breathing but then remembered that even in the pool my 500m swim time was 12-14 minutes, so I shouldn't be trying to keep up with the folks I knew would be finishing in about 8 minutes. After slowing down the area became less crowded and I was able to breath a lot better. I got passed by guys in the following wave (4 minutes behind us) but I was ok with that.
When I finally came out of the water we had to run up a grassy hill to the transition area with our bikes. They have volunteers at all transition entrances and exits to keep us excited and point us in the right direction. It was nice to have a few folks I knew volunteering with that because I felt there was an extra connection and they actually called out my name in encouragement.
In the transition area, I dried off a bit (mostly my feet), put on all my bike gear, and headed out. My coworker Courtney was in transition about the same time I was but I would not see her again until she passed me on the run.
Out I went on the bike and up the major hill. Having trained on this route a number of times I knew that first 4 miles were tough with a major uphill climb. So I paced myself because I didn't want to have to stop at the top to rest. It was a nice feeling as I actually passed a few folks. The rest of the ride I was pretty much brutally passed by everyone and their mother.
The bike ride went amazingly well for me. Part of it was that I was much more confident because I knew the route, and knew all the traffic had been warned about the 270(ish) cyclists on the roads. For the first time I seriously pushed on the biking, I pedaled on some downhills instead of breaking and really tried to ride hard when on the flats. Part of my encouragement was figuring David would be about ~8 minutes behind me (4 minutes for starting in a later wave, and ~4 minutes because I am a faster swimmer). I kept telling myself, all I have to do is get to the next landmark in the bike course before David passes me and I shall have a minor victory. As I got further and further along the more determined I was to get as far as possible before he caught up. He never did, instead he was cheering me on as I came into transition and out for the run.
During the transition into the run I grabbed some gatoraid, threw on my bandanna, and I was off for the 3 mile trail run.
The run was hard. I've done it before and been rather tired going into it, but this time that wasn't my issue - I felt I had plenty of energy. I though I might feel the typical brick in my legs, but I didn't get that either. Instead, as I was going up the first of the hills on the run a muscle in my butt started getting incredibly sore. It wasn't bad on downhills or flats, but it just burned going uphills. It started just on my right but by the end of the run both sides hurt like none other. So I ended up walking up a fair number of the hills.
With less than a mile less, the pain was starting to get unbearable and I was finally starting to feel the energy drain despite having taken in an energy gel (but probably far too late). I did a mix of jogging and walking. What really kept me going was a guy behind me kept yelling encouragement to me to not let him pass me and to at least walk faster. He did catch up to me, but when we hit the last level area he told me to get in front and keep going even though I hurt. It was just a great show of community support. (Somewhere in there Courtney just blew by me too).
As I came in the last little leg and saw the finish line, David & Karen were cheering me on as well as one of my friends was on the announcement system picking folks out to announce their names as they came in. Even though there were a few folks with me she knew me so gave me a grand announcement. It felt great to cross that finish line. As soon as we finished we were supposed to turn in our timing chips and another friend was there collecting them so I got a nice congrats from her. It's a really great thing to know so many folks that can be happy with you when you accomplish something like this.
In the end, it was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. Thanks to everyone who supported me through out the training and have actually managed to read this entire rambling post ;).
Monday, June 16, 2008
Eep!
The Cville Sprint Triathlon is this Sunday. Yes, as in 6 days from now. I waiver between feeling not ready and knowing that I will be fine. I won't be first, I won't be last, I just hope to survive. In training I've done the entire distance and even done some of them on the same day.
In other news, I knew I was not going to be ready for the biking and running for the International distance so I will be participating in that as part of a relay team. I will be doing the swim portion. 1500m of pure swimming joy.
Last piece of news that isn't really triathlon related is that I've also registered for the Charlottesville Women's 4 Miler again. I'm doing the training program again this year and put myself in the advanced group since that starts at 2 mile runs. Since I'm doing over 3 miles for routine practice, this is entirely reasonable. I'm going to try to follow the training schedule the best I can but after this triathlon I'm still going to need to get in swim time and I really want to up my boxing time to twice a week.
In other news, I knew I was not going to be ready for the biking and running for the International distance so I will be participating in that as part of a relay team. I will be doing the swim portion. 1500m of pure swimming joy.
Last piece of news that isn't really triathlon related is that I've also registered for the Charlottesville Women's 4 Miler again. I'm doing the training program again this year and put myself in the advanced group since that starts at 2 mile runs. Since I'm doing over 3 miles for routine practice, this is entirely reasonable. I'm going to try to follow the training schedule the best I can but after this triathlon I'm still going to need to get in swim time and I really want to up my boxing time to twice a week.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Swimming update
This does not meet any goals, but I wanted a beginning time with doing only freestyle. I swam 20 lengths (500m) in approximately 14 minutes. This is the distance I will need to do for the Sprint Tri and the middle 80% (not first or last 10%) of the women ranged in time from 8-13 minutes. Clearly I need to build some more power and efficiency in the next 4 months, especially because I was pretty exhausted getting out of the pool. Had this been a real race, I would've had to biked 16 miles then run 3. I definitely have room for improvement.
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