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 ;).
