Jack’s Generic Triathlon – Woman vs Nature

While I’ve loved the TX Tri series the last two years, I think I’m going to have to cut the ties next year.  It was a cool, fun goal to finish 6 triathlons in a season, but I really don’t need the motivation to finish that many (this year, we were/are signed up for TEN).  Also, at first, I thought it pushed me to do some races that are outside my comfort zone, and that’s cool and all, but I’ve decided that there’s outside your comfort zone, and there’s stuff you really just don’t want to do.

2013-08-04 06.39.44

Racing an Olympic distance tri on August 4th in suuuuuuper hot weather starting after 8am?  Put this on the latter list.  It’s not that it was all terrible, but the memory of that run will haunt my dreams for a long, long time.

Pre-race:

  • Shakeout bike that AM, easy 35 min spin trying out our new speedfill aero bottles
  • Food the day before: pasta w/meat sauce + salad + bread, and a random smattering of snacks like brie and pita later.
  • Spent time with my parents, and had a mostly relaxing day and evening
  • Got TONS of sleep (for a race night), at least 7 hours where I didn’t budge.  Felt super rested in the AM.  Totally different than last year, where I was falling asleep standing up.
  • Thought I was getting sick, but ended up just being allergies from them burning crap in Mexico.  Stupid people burning crap messing with my head, but thank the dear fluffy lord of triathlon that it wasn’t actual illness!
  • Had an oatmega bar, and about half of a starbucks mocha.  Tummy was a little off with the infusion of dairy and caffeine but settled quickly.
  • Got there early-ish (6:15?), but not early enough to get a prime spot (it was totally fine though, Pflug transitions are great).
  • Got a warmup run and legs felt decent, hung out with Zliten and B and B’s mom and then got a warmup swim.
  • Ate my fruit punch sports beans and then it was time to get this show on the road (I was in wave 4).

Swim:

This was going to be a different experience.  First of all, they started all 89 ladies in one wave, in a tiny narrow corral, and it was a beach run start.  The horn went off, I ended up towards the middle/back and inside, and we ran towards the water and the ladies in front of me kinda stopped and walked.  Hellloooo, it’s a race, I thought, and I high-kneed my way around them until I got into deep enough water to dive in and start swimming.  Then, I ran into more ladies swimming slowly, and I shoved and kicked and fought my way to a patch of clear water just to find my goggles weren’t sealed super well and I had a decent amount of water in the left one.

I had a lot of words going through my head at that point and none of them were nice.  It was pretty high-combat.  On the way back to the beach I finally got my stride, but was dreading that stupid beach run.  It was about 100m across a pebbly, rocky beach, and I decided to brave it barefoot (that was me putting on my big girl panties this race).  I swam until I touched rocks with my hands, got up and out and started the run.  Oddly enough, it wasn’t that bad!  I went fast enough to pass people, but people passed me too.  I ran into the water, stepped on a jagged rock, said “OW FUDGE” (…but not exactly that) loud enough I think some people giggled, and I dived in again for lap 2.

This one was great.  I was regularly passing caps in waves before me, the water had thinned out because the sprint waves hadn’t started yet, and I just generally felt calm, peaceful, productive, and fast in the water.  I think I came out wearing some weeds but otherwise emerged pretty happy with my effort.  Definitely better than expected, and ABSOLUTELY better than I expected about 100m in.

Swim Time: 23:47 for 1000m with 100m beach run.

T1:

My sandals were nowhere to be found, so this was another moment of my big girl panties on display here, as I ran to T1 just fine in bare feet.  Note to self – I’m much less tenderfooted during a race than I expect with the adrenaline going.  All went as expected, and it was REALLY REALLY nice to not have to worry about putting on the camelback because I had my new speedfill bottle waiting on the bike!

T1 Time: 2:43 (10 seconds faster than Pflugerville – yay!)

Bike:

Got out on the bike, had troubles clipping in like a noob, and found my bike in trainer gear (all the way hardest it can go) going up an incline.  Ooops.  Noob, noob, noob mistake.  After costing myself about a minute being dumb, I got going and drank and ate.  I looked at time of day and it was two minutes earlier than expected.  Splendid.  Legs felt good, I felt speedy, and though the zipp wheelie boys with 10k$ bikes were blowing by me, I was passing people too.

Figured out early on my garmin was off again (it must not like tracking distance at Pflug), and just turned it back to HR and time of day screen and worked on ticking off the miles as quickly as possible.  I stayed in aero a LOT (the bottle helped), and climbed the modest hills pretty well, mostly, and I kept pretty close to my goal of 18mph.  I completed the first lap of 12.9 miles in about 42-ish mins and figured if I could hold on and do another 42-3 I’d hit an hour 25 which would blow my anticipated pace out of the water, and I usually get better on lap 2 so I started that one really excited.

Everything was going well and then… I hit a wall of wind on the south section of the course (the longest straightaway, of course).  It was BRUTAL.  There was enough wind to notice the first lap and have to fight a little harder, but it REALLY picked up on lap 2.  I kept losing time and losing time and then all of a sudden, I was coming in and it was later than I wanted.  I lost all that time I banked on the swim and more.  I had another noob moment dismounting my bike on the wrong side, but got it together quickly and over the line and into transition.

Bike Time: 1:31:06 (17.0 mph.  Not what I wanted, but pretty decent considering the wind…)

T2:

Went as expected.  Last time it wasn’t hot enough to need a handheld though, and this time it was, so I dealt with that.

T2 time: 1:29 (Pflug was 1:19 – so there’s that 10 seconds I gained on T1 – lost here tinkering with my handheld.  So, total t1 and t2 time – exactly the same as Pflug 2 months ago… hah!)

Run:

On the bike, as I kept losing seconds, I reminded myself I still had a shot at a sub-3, but I would have to push the run as hard as I could.  That wind dissipated, the clouds burned off, and it was just me vs THAT RUN.  The feels like was already in the 90s, and this course has ZERO shade.  I had yet to see either Joel or Brian the whole race, but on the first stretch, Brian blew right past me.  In a different universe, I would have tried to hang on and go with him, but he’s definitely a faster runner than I any day of the week and it was early, so I kept clicking along.

I stayed on time of day because I knew it was hot enough that pace would make me mad.  My handheld melted, I saw Joel, I passed Joel, I hung on, and kept clipping away around 11 min miles.  Something happened though, once I passed the finish line for the second lap, I broke.  It was SO HOT and I wasn’t quite doing what I needed to do to hit my sub 3 (I needed to be more like 10:20s), and I could barely keep pace, let alone speed it up.  I told myself to get it together, but it didn’t work.  I then decided that if I didn’t feel better by the bridge, I was going to walk to rest and regroup.

Dumbest decision ever, because OF COURSE I wasn’t going to feel better, so I “broke the seal”.  I walked.  And from there, all I could manage was powerwalking to a point, then running.  Drinking at aide stations until I felt nauseous, running until I felt overwhelmed and light headed.  Powerwalking, then running.  I couldn’t find a sustainable pace at all.  Joel passed me again clipping along sloooooowly, and I may have given up and just walked the darn thing in except I decided that he wasn’t going to finish before me.  So I’d run to catch him, then walk.  Run, then walk.

The last aide station had ICE (glorious ice) and I drank a bunch and it lowered my core temp enough to give me some oomph, I walked until my tummy settled, and then I ran the last half-ish mile.  I blew by Zliten, I passed other people, and kept going, and suddenly there was the finish line.

Run: 1:12:20 (12:03 pace – UGH JUST UGH)

Total Time: 3:11:28

Post race:

Once I was through it and they gave me water and I turned around and Joel was there right behind me and I said “lake” and he said “med tent” (just for ice) and we did those respective things.  We sat in the lake with Brian and his mom, we ate pizza, and we kinda just ranted about the heat.  As per usual, I won the swim,  Joel won the bike, Brian won the run.  Brian finished about 6 mins before me, and I finished 6 mins before Joel.

I wish I had more on that run.  61 mins for the 5.8 miles I tracked is TOTALLY doable for me in a race situation, and that would have gotten me in at 3 hours.  66 mins which should be a WALK IN THE PARK for me would have beat B.  Instead, I just gave up and thank goodness Zliten was there to be my rabbit this time or I might have done worse.

All in all, not my finest race, but I’m very happy with parts of it!

(3120)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.