RR. The long version

I finally have some time while I am procrastinating from going to the Y to swim, and blogging sounds so much more fun. It is a recovery week and the swim today is 2K. It doesn't really seem worth it to me to drive an hour in traffic and an hour home to get all chloriney and then have to take another shower before dinner. So here goes.

Pre-race - for one of the first times ever I had very little nerves. I am never scared to race, but I always get that pre-race nervous feeling. This day, not at all. I guess I am saving them all for May. I did have a long wait once transition was set up at 6:30, and ended up getting sick about 4 times. I think Chris and I caught something because we were both trading off turns in the bathroom. But after an Immodium I was ok.

The swim - the only other half ironmans I have done are a one wave start or two (one men and one women), so I was not prepared for what was to come. I was in wave 21 out of 22 waves. Yes you read that right. The organizers decided all the men should start first and then the women should go after and 35-39 women were right before the 40-44 age group. I dont know who decided on this seeding, but the last two waves to start were 35-39 and 40-44. IMO both very fast groups. So a note to the organizers, maybe next year we can have a different order? The race kicked off at 7, and we were promptly led into the water at 8:50. The wind had kiked up and the water was choppy, so I was excited becuase it was a great race for swimmers. We took off and I was in the front group with two other girls. After about 300m we started hitting the carnage from the groups in front of us. I tried to swim over them, but it became difficult and I thought it was slowing us down. So I made my first mistake of the day and swam out about 10 meters to get out of the way, which also put me out there to navigate the waves by myself. In hindsite, this was a bad move because the other two girls I was with finished 1 and 2 less than a minute in front of me. I was hoping for a sub-30, and was disappointed in my time, but after the results came out, I realized that noone in my AG finished sub 30 and there were even several pros out there who didnt break 30, so I think the course was just pretty rough.

T1 - Not bad, but I set up my transition like Chloe does, so I was good to go. In and out.

Bike - I knew this would be rough, but I didnt really know just how rough. We had a 28 out and back course along the beach and it was changing cross winds the whole way. I am not going to even go into some of the slow speeds I saw on my computer, but I knew this would be a challenge, and it was. Even so, I was bummed about my time, but I talked to my coach after and she echoed the sentiment that it was a freaking hard course, so I felt better. I did learn that I could get in enough calories and that my body only wants liquid form (bottle with 100cal of gatorade, 100 of carbopro, and 2 salt tabs every 45 mins). I tried my PBJ sandwich and it didnt want to go down. So liquids it is for IMTX. This led to mistake #2. I stopped 3 times to go to the bathroom from all the liquids. I need to learn to just pee on the bike and it would have saved me about 7 or 8 minutes. I get stage fright and just cant go. Plus I was worried the wind would blow it all over everyone and I didnt want to get yelled at! Since we were almost the last wave i wasnt passed by as many people as I normally am, and I was passing tons of guys, however the 40-44 yr old women were killing it. I was so impressed. These ladies that looked 20 were flying by me and when I read their calf I saw their ages were over 40. Holy huge shout out to them. I hope I can look like that and race like that when I am their age!

T2 - Another mistake. I have no idea what I was doing for close to 5 minutes in there. I honestly cant remember. Maybe I saw someone I knew and decided to chat? who knows, but it was slow as crap. Usually this Transition is my fast one.

Run - I felt great heading out on the run, and stuck to my plan of one cliff shot block every mile with water and then coke if i felt like it. Around mile 2 I started to cramp in my stomach and calf and thought it was time for a salt tab. I reached in my pocket and realized I had forgotten them. Really? 5 mins in transition and I still forgot things? So I made a note to grab pretzels at the stations. In order for me to be able to eat without puking or having GI distress, I have to take it in while walking, so I told myself I would walk every aid station and run 8::40-8:50 pace in between. This was going really well and I was feeling good once I got in a little salt. The course was a 4 loop course and I was able to really see where we were on the course and see Chris a few times. It wasnt until the last loop that I realized I had run out of shot blocks (I had 18 with me in case I dropped some). I then realized that there were about 6 aid stations each loop. I am not great in math, but even I can count that 6 aid in a roughly 3+ mile loop does not equal 1 aid station each mile. No wonder it was so easy! I was only running about half a mile before walking, which really slowed down my run time. I really should pay attention to this sort of thing in the future. That or listen to the alarm that goes off on my garmin each mile.

I was hoping for a much faster time, but I made mistakes that were just dumb. And the run was a pure training for IM to make sure I got my nutrition down. If I werent training for that, I would not have walked the aid stations and probably would have only taken in water, coke and pretzels. I would have felt like crap at the finish line, but finished a little better. Hopefully next year I can do that.

Overall it was a really fun race with a lot of familiar faces. I had a blast doing it and never once thought about quitting triathlon all together. Now it is recover, train and taper for the big one on May 21! Happy training everyone!