Texas State Tri 2016 race report.
Holy crap, I did a triathlon! The last triathlon I raced was Ultraman in 2014 (and the last "traditional" one-day, swim-bike-run triathlon I did was earlier that year at HITS Marble Falls). Even more impressive was Matt, whose last triathlon was Ironman Florida in November of 2013! So maybe we were sorta due for one.
My next "big" event is Collegiate Peaks 25 miler in early May, but we convinced Kate to do her first triathlon this year, so we've been splitting our training between trail running and tri training. We really wanted to go out and do her first tri with her, but we'll be driving to Colorado when she's doing The Rookie, so we decided to pick another early season triathlon to use our freshly trained triathlon muscles. And really the only closeish sprint choice was Texas State Tri, so that was an easy decision.
I came into this tri with an interesting combination of underpreparedness and overpreparedness. It's a 500m swim, and I'd been doing around 2500yard training swims, a 12 mile bike and I'd been doing 30-60 miles, and a 5k run and I'd been doing 10-20 mile runs. So I was pretty confident I could handle the distances, at least. But I'd been pretty lax in the mental preparations. No transition practice. No open water swimming. A couple bricks, but no real 'putting it all together' workouts.
So my mental game wasn't really on point; I hadn't really wrapped my head around the fact that I was going to do a triathlon, and suffer through three sports in one day. And then the weather started working against us. Early in the week, the forecast called for rain Saturday and Sunday. As the week went on, the forecast shifted to move the rain, and now thunderstorms, later, now to Sunday and Monday. With heavy rains and possible flooding. The MS150 actually canceled their day 2 ride on Sunday, because it looked so ominous. Several things canceled. It looked pretty likely that Texas State Tri would be canceled. But the race director said he was going to do everything he could to make sure it was held, and as of Saturday night, with a tremendously colorful radar off to our west, he stood firm to his commitment to have the race if at all possible.
We woke up Sunday morning, and the 4am update from the RD said that he still intended to have it, and he'd make the final decision at 7am. Meanwhile, transition opened at 7am, so we would have to drive an hour to San Marcos in order to then find out whether we were just going to turn around and immediately drive back home having done no race.
We huddled up, me, Matt and Karen (via facebook). Matt was pretty convinced the whole thing was going to be canceled, given how the radar looked. Karen and Ryan were pretty sure that even if it was held, it wouldn't be worth the safety risk, especially in light of her big race (Ironman Texas) being so soon. Karen decided she was going to stay home and do her long run on her own. I was pretty on the fence.. I didn't really want to drive all the way there for nothing, when we could just go back to bed. And I really didn't relish the idea even of just doing a 5k run in the boggy marsh that the course would become if it rained hard. (If it rained to make the streets unsafe, it would have turned to swim-run. If it stormed such that the water was unsafe, it would become just a 5k run.) I decided to leave it up to Matt, and was fairly surprised when he, despite thinking the whole thing would be canceled, said, "Let's go get our damn tshirt."
We already had everything all packed up anyway, so why not? We jumped in the car and headed to San Marcos, and got there really quickly with basically no weather on the way. We were a little early, and so we sat in the parking lot from 6:20 until just after 7, with me reloading the Texas State Tri facebook page every 5 minutes, waiting for an update. And finally, just after 7, the RD posted "Race is GREEN LIGHT!" And so evidently we were doing a triathlon. Shit.
We hustled our way over to packet pickup (which was a bit of a logistical mess) and then into transition. I had somehow remembered everything I needed, even after an extended break, and quickly got set up. I opted to leave my bike shoes off the bike, because it had been so long since I'd practiced a shoeless mount, I figured my first race back, possibly in the pouring rain, might not be the time to revisit that.
I snapped a photo for Kate, in case she wanted a transition example
We wandered over to the swim start, listened to the pre-race announcements, and then started to line up for the swim start. It was a time trial start, and we were supposed to line up by race number (which would put us around our age group competitors), and go in that order. But that was a pipe dream which I don't think anyone made an effort to realize. We just wandered up in the order we were clustered in, and went when we got there.
Matt had gotten up 10 or so people ahead of me, so I watched him take off as I chatted with former TXFE teammate Chris, adjusting my goggles about 200 times. I decided to dive in (you could either dive or jump and just start swimming), so I made my goggles really, really tight to reduce the odds I'd lose them when I dove. (I haven't practiced a dive in.. a year?) And then the person in front of me walked up to the water's edge, jumped in, and it was my turn.
Swim 500 meters
As I stepped to the edge, the timing guy scanned the chip on my ankle and said go. I dove in, and didn't slip or embarrass myself in any way! I did get a little leakage in my goggles, but only on the left goggle, and I can't see out of my left eye anyway, so.. score! Not gonna be a problem.
I started swimming, trying to figure out what sort of effort I could and should put forth for a 500m swim. I briefly took note of the fact that it was sorta chilly, but I knew it was roughly 72 degrees, and I was happy with my decision not to wear a wetsuit. It might have cut a few seconds off my total swim time, but (a) I haven't put a wetsuit on in a long time, and I don't relish the idea of doing so currently, and (b) it would take me those same amount of seconds to pry it back off my body in transition. So no wetsuit. And within 10 strokes, the water felt amazing and perfect.
The visibility was great. I love swimming in Aquarena Springs, which you can only do during the triathlon, I think. I somehow remembered how sighting works, and managed to not swim toward the shore TOO many times. Mostly stuck to the buoy line, straight down the center. Point to point swim, with a couple giant buoys and then a triangular turn buoy.
Pretty much completely uneventful swim. As I neared the triangular turn buoy, I sighted and saw a familiar arm/stroke. I'd managed to catch up to Matt, and I silently rejoiced that I would manage to beat him in ONE discipline today. I passed him on his left, but stayed close, hoping he would see me and jump on my feet for a draft.
Then around the turn buoy and back to shore, navigating my way around a couple flaily people, and swimming until my hands touched the sand.
T1
I'm counting this as the start of T1, though it looks in the results like the timing mat wasn't until the actual transition area, which was on the other side of a painful gravel path run. So I split my watch at the water's edge, to make sure I knew my swim time, but official times show swim+run to transition, then T1 as only the time spent in the transition area. Aaanyway.
My feet were tender, having spent no time building up barefoot callouses this season, so I minced my way down the path, going "Ow. Ow. Ow. This hurts." to the spectators and other athletes.
Got to transition, which was thankfully asphalt and easier to run on, and managed to find my bike with no problem. Whew.
Slid on my bike shoes, put on my helmet, decided to wear my sunglasses even though it was overcast and dreary (still not raining, though!), and swung my bike down. Ran my bike through transition and to the mount line.
Bike 12(ish) miles
I clipped in without incident, and headed out on the road. Well, briefly on the road. One of the big controversies of this race was that construction closed down some of the normal roads, so we were having to ride through an offroad gravel path. Not like a groomed gravel path, like a hike and bike trail, but with big chunks of rocks, some embedded and some loose. I'd seen the RD's video he posted of pre-riding it, but we had chosen not to come look at it before the race started. It was.. doable. I made it through just fine, going very slowly. They'd made this a no-passing zone, and told people to walk it if they felt unsafe at all. I rode behind two other guys, and we all made it through just fine, with one guy passing me partway through. I made some remark about passing during the no-passing zone, and he acted surprised to hear it was a no-passing zone. If only there had been 5 emails, 3 facebook posts and several pre-race announcements about this no-passing zone. Sigh.
But I made it through unscathed, if incredibly slowly, and was back out on the open road. Where Chris and then Matt immediately passed me like I was riding backward.
Which I sorta felt like I was doing, a little. I've been riding, and ridden much longer rides, but it's all been at la-la-la-fun pace. I've done nearly no intervals or paced work, even on the trainer. So it was a bit of a rude awakening, asking my body to push on the bike. My legs, especially my quads, were seriously questioning what I thought I was doing, and how I thought I was going to use these same legs to run off the bike later. But I kept pushing as hard as I felt I could.
I think I'd ridden the rest of this course the last time I did the race. I read my previous race report, and I agree with everything I said there. At first I was thinking, "I said last time that there were a lot of cars and it felt a little unsafe, but I'm not feeling that this time." Then we turned again, and it was the exact same thing. Cars turning onto the road out of side roads, not really looking first or seeming to particularly care. People passing close. Cars pulling between cyclists and then getting stuck there, forcing the bikes behind them to slow way down so they didn't crash into their bumper. It wasn't horrible, but I felt like I had to by hypervigilant the entire time. And spent a lot of time not in my aero bars as a result.
But it was fine. Hilly. Mostly rolling, then two big hills right before the turnaround. Which were fuuuun to ride back down after the turnaround.
Other than being super cautious on the right hand turns, since the roads were so wet, it was a pretty uneventful ride. I realized that I'd forgotten to put a gu with my transition stuff to shove in my pocket, and I'd taken off my bento box, so I had no nutrition. This really shouldn't have been a problem.. I had breakfast at 5:30ish, I had most of a thing of Cliffblocks at 7ish, and then a gu at 8:00ish for an 8:30 race start. But I started to feel hungry on the bike, and I wasn't sure what that meant for the still-to-come 5k run. Then I realized that I didn't even think I was hungry, I was just intensely THIRSTY. I'm pretty bad about drinking on the bike.. I don't ever drink enough (Matt scolds me regularly). But I was halfway through a 12 mile bike, and I had drained more than half my bottle. (That's a lot for me.) And I was still so thirsty. So I kept telling myself, "Thirsty is not hungry, don't convince yourself you have a calorie deficit and resulting energy lack just because you're thirsty. You've had PLENTY of calories."
And then I was back to the horrible gravel section again! They'd made a huge deal on the way out, volunteers lining the path and yelling to slow down and hold a straight line and be careful. On the way back in, those same volunteers were mostly still there, but also mostly completely silent. I felt like I needed to be reminded again to be careful and slow down. As I hit a sandy patch I'd completely not noticed on the way out, and almost fell over. (Sand is my bike nemesis.)
But! I made it through again unscathed, and back on the road toward transition. I realized as I turned the corner that, even though I'd elected to forego a shoeless mount, there was no reason I couldn't do a shoeless dismount. I don't really have to practice those to be comfortable, and it'd save me a couple seconds in transition. But I'd have to get right on that, because I was practically at transition, and the road was lined with spectators cheering and potentially watching me fail to remove my shoes in a timely fashion. Somehow I managed to pull it (them) off, though, in plenty of time, and zoomed up to the dismount line and hopped off neatly. Yay!
T2
I managed to find my transition spot with only one false start, parked my bike, removed my helmet, and frowned at my feet. I'd been torn on whether to wear socks or not for the run, and this was the moment of truth. I'd put a bandaid over this callous/blister/bunion thing that's been happening on my left foot, but it had mostly come off by the end of the bike, and there was no reattaching it. (The bandaid.) Since I almost never run in bare feet, I don't have those callouses built up, and since I've never, ever run barefoot in Hokas, I figured I'd be nice to my body and wear socks this time. So I crammed my silty, wet, gross feet into socks somehow, put on and tied my shoes (what kinda crappy triathlete TIES their shoes in transition?!), grabbed my race belt and hustled out of transition as I put it on.
Run 3.1 miles
My legs felt better than I expected. Which was good, because the rest of my body felt much worse. It was HUMID. It was still overcast, but still not raining. But it sure felt like it was 200% humidity, and no wind. Or maybe wind at our backs, but you couldn't feel it.
We ran over the bridge and into the grass, and I passed a couple folks saying I was ready for the deluge to hit us NOW. Which was not true, because there were a lot of people still out on the bike, and I didn't want it to rain on them. But it sure would have felt better to run if it were raining.
The grassy part wasn't great fun, but then we turned onto a sidewalk, which was better. I was waiting for my watch to tell me I'd gone a mile, because I really wanted to know I was at least 1/3 of the way through this painful run. I was trying to run at a pace that was hard but that I could sustain, and the humidity was making it really hard to find that pace.
Then I hit mile 1, chugged some water from the aid station, and turned the corner. And looked up. And up and up and up. At this horrible hill.
I put my head down and started up, but my legs felt like I was running through molasses. I was trying to keep my feet quick and light, and I was just TRUDGING. I knew this hill was no joke, but it was still a little dismaying how badly I wanted to walk. The humidity made the air so hard to breathe, and I was feeling just a tiny bit light headed, and I knew walking would solve all my problems and make the world perfect again. But I didn't let myself. Kept running. "Running." And then as it started to level out a bit, we turned another corner and it KEPT GOING UP. Really?! But this part wasn't quite as steep, so I just kept shuffling my way up and up. And up. And then FINALLY it leveled out flat again. I passed a guy and said I sure hoped we were in for some impressive downhill at some point to make up for that.
We continued on through a neighborhood, and then the mile 2 aid station was at the entrance to a wooded trail. I had seen pictures of a gravel trail, and was dreading it a little bit, knowing that I run slower on trail, and fearing that torrential rain would turn it into a mudpit. But the rain was still holding off, so I chugged another cup of water and hit the trail.
And it was WONDERFUL. The uphill we'd done during those two steep hills in mile 2 was all undone over the course of mile 3, slowly and gradually. It was a beautiful trail, runnable, slightly downhill, tree-covered, and just a joy. I tore through, passing a couple guys, and then eventually sadly emerging back onto the road again. But almost done! I recognized the area we'd been dumped into as the end of the bike course, as well, and the finish line was just around the corner.
Happy to be near the finish line.
I had come up on the heels of a girl I'd been catching up to on the trail, and she heard me right behind her and took off. I wanted to yell to her that I wasn't in her age group, so she didn't need to hold me off, but I figured she'd be happier the faster she finished, so just let my presence push her to the finish line. 'Cause even picking it up as much as I could, I couldn't hang anywhere near her when she took off.
So I just pushed as much as I could, enjoying the cheers from the spectators, and charged across the finish line, a triathlete once more!
Post-race celebration with Mark, Fish and Matt! Shaven-headed TxFe bookends.
Results
My official results say:
Total: 1:22:52
Swim: 10:25 (2:05/100M)
T1: 0:51
Bike: 44:51 (16:03 MPH)
T2: 1:14
Run: 25:29 (8:12 Min/Mile)
Let's just assume all of that is true, because it's official.
But in reality, my swim without some transition added in was ~9:07, (1:40/100yds), which is way more in line with what I felt I was swimming. They said the bike was a little long, because they moved the turnaround further out for safety, so my bike computer's estimated 16.6mph is possibly a little more accurate. And my watch doesn't think I ran 3.1 miles, so I'm not sure if that 8:12/mile is accurate, but with the tree cover, my Garmin probably wasn't accurate either, so.. again, let's just go with the official results. I like the part where it tells me I ran 8:12s!
The important thing is that we all did the same course, and somehow I managed to come in first in my age group! Well, that's not strictly true. Fish won my age group, but Fish also won overall woman, beating me, every other woman, and most of the men. So she was taken out of the age group standings, and I was moved up to 1st. And I was NOT the only one in my age group! (Full disclosure, there were 7. Which isn't many, but is WAY more than 1.) (And I was 17th of 205 women.)
I'm such a midget in all these photos with other people.
So yay! I had a really good time, the weather held out the entire time (even for our long drive home, I won my age group, Matt got second in his, and I'm excited about triathlons again. I'd say that's a solid first triathlon in a year and a half!
We partook heavily of their post-race sandwich spread.
Next up is Collegiate Peaks trail run, but hopefully more triathlons later in the summer!
My next "big" event is Collegiate Peaks 25 miler in early May, but we convinced Kate to do her first triathlon this year, so we've been splitting our training between trail running and tri training. We really wanted to go out and do her first tri with her, but we'll be driving to Colorado when she's doing The Rookie, so we decided to pick another early season triathlon to use our freshly trained triathlon muscles. And really the only closeish sprint choice was Texas State Tri, so that was an easy decision.
I came into this tri with an interesting combination of underpreparedness and overpreparedness. It's a 500m swim, and I'd been doing around 2500yard training swims, a 12 mile bike and I'd been doing 30-60 miles, and a 5k run and I'd been doing 10-20 mile runs. So I was pretty confident I could handle the distances, at least. But I'd been pretty lax in the mental preparations. No transition practice. No open water swimming. A couple bricks, but no real 'putting it all together' workouts.
So my mental game wasn't really on point; I hadn't really wrapped my head around the fact that I was going to do a triathlon, and suffer through three sports in one day. And then the weather started working against us. Early in the week, the forecast called for rain Saturday and Sunday. As the week went on, the forecast shifted to move the rain, and now thunderstorms, later, now to Sunday and Monday. With heavy rains and possible flooding. The MS150 actually canceled their day 2 ride on Sunday, because it looked so ominous. Several things canceled. It looked pretty likely that Texas State Tri would be canceled. But the race director said he was going to do everything he could to make sure it was held, and as of Saturday night, with a tremendously colorful radar off to our west, he stood firm to his commitment to have the race if at all possible.
We woke up Sunday morning, and the 4am update from the RD said that he still intended to have it, and he'd make the final decision at 7am. Meanwhile, transition opened at 7am, so we would have to drive an hour to San Marcos in order to then find out whether we were just going to turn around and immediately drive back home having done no race.
We huddled up, me, Matt and Karen (via facebook). Matt was pretty convinced the whole thing was going to be canceled, given how the radar looked. Karen and Ryan were pretty sure that even if it was held, it wouldn't be worth the safety risk, especially in light of her big race (Ironman Texas) being so soon. Karen decided she was going to stay home and do her long run on her own. I was pretty on the fence.. I didn't really want to drive all the way there for nothing, when we could just go back to bed. And I really didn't relish the idea even of just doing a 5k run in the boggy marsh that the course would become if it rained hard. (If it rained to make the streets unsafe, it would have turned to swim-run. If it stormed such that the water was unsafe, it would become just a 5k run.) I decided to leave it up to Matt, and was fairly surprised when he, despite thinking the whole thing would be canceled, said, "Let's go get our damn tshirt."
We already had everything all packed up anyway, so why not? We jumped in the car and headed to San Marcos, and got there really quickly with basically no weather on the way. We were a little early, and so we sat in the parking lot from 6:20 until just after 7, with me reloading the Texas State Tri facebook page every 5 minutes, waiting for an update. And finally, just after 7, the RD posted "Race is GREEN LIGHT!" And so evidently we were doing a triathlon. Shit.
We hustled our way over to packet pickup (which was a bit of a logistical mess) and then into transition. I had somehow remembered everything I needed, even after an extended break, and quickly got set up. I opted to leave my bike shoes off the bike, because it had been so long since I'd practiced a shoeless mount, I figured my first race back, possibly in the pouring rain, might not be the time to revisit that.
I snapped a photo for Kate, in case she wanted a transition example
We wandered over to the swim start, listened to the pre-race announcements, and then started to line up for the swim start. It was a time trial start, and we were supposed to line up by race number (which would put us around our age group competitors), and go in that order. But that was a pipe dream which I don't think anyone made an effort to realize. We just wandered up in the order we were clustered in, and went when we got there.
Matt had gotten up 10 or so people ahead of me, so I watched him take off as I chatted with former TXFE teammate Chris, adjusting my goggles about 200 times. I decided to dive in (you could either dive or jump and just start swimming), so I made my goggles really, really tight to reduce the odds I'd lose them when I dove. (I haven't practiced a dive in.. a year?) And then the person in front of me walked up to the water's edge, jumped in, and it was my turn.
Swim 500 meters
As I stepped to the edge, the timing guy scanned the chip on my ankle and said go. I dove in, and didn't slip or embarrass myself in any way! I did get a little leakage in my goggles, but only on the left goggle, and I can't see out of my left eye anyway, so.. score! Not gonna be a problem.
I started swimming, trying to figure out what sort of effort I could and should put forth for a 500m swim. I briefly took note of the fact that it was sorta chilly, but I knew it was roughly 72 degrees, and I was happy with my decision not to wear a wetsuit. It might have cut a few seconds off my total swim time, but (a) I haven't put a wetsuit on in a long time, and I don't relish the idea of doing so currently, and (b) it would take me those same amount of seconds to pry it back off my body in transition. So no wetsuit. And within 10 strokes, the water felt amazing and perfect.
The visibility was great. I love swimming in Aquarena Springs, which you can only do during the triathlon, I think. I somehow remembered how sighting works, and managed to not swim toward the shore TOO many times. Mostly stuck to the buoy line, straight down the center. Point to point swim, with a couple giant buoys and then a triangular turn buoy.
Pretty much completely uneventful swim. As I neared the triangular turn buoy, I sighted and saw a familiar arm/stroke. I'd managed to catch up to Matt, and I silently rejoiced that I would manage to beat him in ONE discipline today. I passed him on his left, but stayed close, hoping he would see me and jump on my feet for a draft.
Then around the turn buoy and back to shore, navigating my way around a couple flaily people, and swimming until my hands touched the sand.
T1
I'm counting this as the start of T1, though it looks in the results like the timing mat wasn't until the actual transition area, which was on the other side of a painful gravel path run. So I split my watch at the water's edge, to make sure I knew my swim time, but official times show swim+run to transition, then T1 as only the time spent in the transition area. Aaanyway.
My feet were tender, having spent no time building up barefoot callouses this season, so I minced my way down the path, going "Ow. Ow. Ow. This hurts." to the spectators and other athletes.
Got to transition, which was thankfully asphalt and easier to run on, and managed to find my bike with no problem. Whew.
Slid on my bike shoes, put on my helmet, decided to wear my sunglasses even though it was overcast and dreary (still not raining, though!), and swung my bike down. Ran my bike through transition and to the mount line.
Bike 12(ish) miles
I clipped in without incident, and headed out on the road. Well, briefly on the road. One of the big controversies of this race was that construction closed down some of the normal roads, so we were having to ride through an offroad gravel path. Not like a groomed gravel path, like a hike and bike trail, but with big chunks of rocks, some embedded and some loose. I'd seen the RD's video he posted of pre-riding it, but we had chosen not to come look at it before the race started. It was.. doable. I made it through just fine, going very slowly. They'd made this a no-passing zone, and told people to walk it if they felt unsafe at all. I rode behind two other guys, and we all made it through just fine, with one guy passing me partway through. I made some remark about passing during the no-passing zone, and he acted surprised to hear it was a no-passing zone. If only there had been 5 emails, 3 facebook posts and several pre-race announcements about this no-passing zone. Sigh.
But I made it through unscathed, if incredibly slowly, and was back out on the open road. Where Chris and then Matt immediately passed me like I was riding backward.
Which I sorta felt like I was doing, a little. I've been riding, and ridden much longer rides, but it's all been at la-la-la-fun pace. I've done nearly no intervals or paced work, even on the trainer. So it was a bit of a rude awakening, asking my body to push on the bike. My legs, especially my quads, were seriously questioning what I thought I was doing, and how I thought I was going to use these same legs to run off the bike later. But I kept pushing as hard as I felt I could.
I think I'd ridden the rest of this course the last time I did the race. I read my previous race report, and I agree with everything I said there. At first I was thinking, "I said last time that there were a lot of cars and it felt a little unsafe, but I'm not feeling that this time." Then we turned again, and it was the exact same thing. Cars turning onto the road out of side roads, not really looking first or seeming to particularly care. People passing close. Cars pulling between cyclists and then getting stuck there, forcing the bikes behind them to slow way down so they didn't crash into their bumper. It wasn't horrible, but I felt like I had to by hypervigilant the entire time. And spent a lot of time not in my aero bars as a result.
But it was fine. Hilly. Mostly rolling, then two big hills right before the turnaround. Which were fuuuun to ride back down after the turnaround.
Other than being super cautious on the right hand turns, since the roads were so wet, it was a pretty uneventful ride. I realized that I'd forgotten to put a gu with my transition stuff to shove in my pocket, and I'd taken off my bento box, so I had no nutrition. This really shouldn't have been a problem.. I had breakfast at 5:30ish, I had most of a thing of Cliffblocks at 7ish, and then a gu at 8:00ish for an 8:30 race start. But I started to feel hungry on the bike, and I wasn't sure what that meant for the still-to-come 5k run. Then I realized that I didn't even think I was hungry, I was just intensely THIRSTY. I'm pretty bad about drinking on the bike.. I don't ever drink enough (Matt scolds me regularly). But I was halfway through a 12 mile bike, and I had drained more than half my bottle. (That's a lot for me.) And I was still so thirsty. So I kept telling myself, "Thirsty is not hungry, don't convince yourself you have a calorie deficit and resulting energy lack just because you're thirsty. You've had PLENTY of calories."
And then I was back to the horrible gravel section again! They'd made a huge deal on the way out, volunteers lining the path and yelling to slow down and hold a straight line and be careful. On the way back in, those same volunteers were mostly still there, but also mostly completely silent. I felt like I needed to be reminded again to be careful and slow down. As I hit a sandy patch I'd completely not noticed on the way out, and almost fell over. (Sand is my bike nemesis.)
But! I made it through again unscathed, and back on the road toward transition. I realized as I turned the corner that, even though I'd elected to forego a shoeless mount, there was no reason I couldn't do a shoeless dismount. I don't really have to practice those to be comfortable, and it'd save me a couple seconds in transition. But I'd have to get right on that, because I was practically at transition, and the road was lined with spectators cheering and potentially watching me fail to remove my shoes in a timely fashion. Somehow I managed to pull it (them) off, though, in plenty of time, and zoomed up to the dismount line and hopped off neatly. Yay!
T2
I managed to find my transition spot with only one false start, parked my bike, removed my helmet, and frowned at my feet. I'd been torn on whether to wear socks or not for the run, and this was the moment of truth. I'd put a bandaid over this callous/blister/bunion thing that's been happening on my left foot, but it had mostly come off by the end of the bike, and there was no reattaching it. (The bandaid.) Since I almost never run in bare feet, I don't have those callouses built up, and since I've never, ever run barefoot in Hokas, I figured I'd be nice to my body and wear socks this time. So I crammed my silty, wet, gross feet into socks somehow, put on and tied my shoes (what kinda crappy triathlete TIES their shoes in transition?!), grabbed my race belt and hustled out of transition as I put it on.
Run 3.1 miles
My legs felt better than I expected. Which was good, because the rest of my body felt much worse. It was HUMID. It was still overcast, but still not raining. But it sure felt like it was 200% humidity, and no wind. Or maybe wind at our backs, but you couldn't feel it.
We ran over the bridge and into the grass, and I passed a couple folks saying I was ready for the deluge to hit us NOW. Which was not true, because there were a lot of people still out on the bike, and I didn't want it to rain on them. But it sure would have felt better to run if it were raining.
The grassy part wasn't great fun, but then we turned onto a sidewalk, which was better. I was waiting for my watch to tell me I'd gone a mile, because I really wanted to know I was at least 1/3 of the way through this painful run. I was trying to run at a pace that was hard but that I could sustain, and the humidity was making it really hard to find that pace.
Then I hit mile 1, chugged some water from the aid station, and turned the corner. And looked up. And up and up and up. At this horrible hill.
I put my head down and started up, but my legs felt like I was running through molasses. I was trying to keep my feet quick and light, and I was just TRUDGING. I knew this hill was no joke, but it was still a little dismaying how badly I wanted to walk. The humidity made the air so hard to breathe, and I was feeling just a tiny bit light headed, and I knew walking would solve all my problems and make the world perfect again. But I didn't let myself. Kept running. "Running." And then as it started to level out a bit, we turned another corner and it KEPT GOING UP. Really?! But this part wasn't quite as steep, so I just kept shuffling my way up and up. And up. And then FINALLY it leveled out flat again. I passed a guy and said I sure hoped we were in for some impressive downhill at some point to make up for that.
We continued on through a neighborhood, and then the mile 2 aid station was at the entrance to a wooded trail. I had seen pictures of a gravel trail, and was dreading it a little bit, knowing that I run slower on trail, and fearing that torrential rain would turn it into a mudpit. But the rain was still holding off, so I chugged another cup of water and hit the trail.
And it was WONDERFUL. The uphill we'd done during those two steep hills in mile 2 was all undone over the course of mile 3, slowly and gradually. It was a beautiful trail, runnable, slightly downhill, tree-covered, and just a joy. I tore through, passing a couple guys, and then eventually sadly emerging back onto the road again. But almost done! I recognized the area we'd been dumped into as the end of the bike course, as well, and the finish line was just around the corner.
Happy to be near the finish line.
I had come up on the heels of a girl I'd been catching up to on the trail, and she heard me right behind her and took off. I wanted to yell to her that I wasn't in her age group, so she didn't need to hold me off, but I figured she'd be happier the faster she finished, so just let my presence push her to the finish line. 'Cause even picking it up as much as I could, I couldn't hang anywhere near her when she took off.
So I just pushed as much as I could, enjoying the cheers from the spectators, and charged across the finish line, a triathlete once more!
Post-race celebration with Mark, Fish and Matt! Shaven-headed TxFe bookends.
Results
My official results say:
Total: 1:22:52
Swim: 10:25 (2:05/100M)
T1: 0:51
Bike: 44:51 (16:03 MPH)
T2: 1:14
Run: 25:29 (8:12 Min/Mile)
Let's just assume all of that is true, because it's official.
But in reality, my swim without some transition added in was ~9:07, (1:40/100yds), which is way more in line with what I felt I was swimming. They said the bike was a little long, because they moved the turnaround further out for safety, so my bike computer's estimated 16.6mph is possibly a little more accurate. And my watch doesn't think I ran 3.1 miles, so I'm not sure if that 8:12/mile is accurate, but with the tree cover, my Garmin probably wasn't accurate either, so.. again, let's just go with the official results. I like the part where it tells me I ran 8:12s!
The important thing is that we all did the same course, and somehow I managed to come in first in my age group! Well, that's not strictly true. Fish won my age group, but Fish also won overall woman, beating me, every other woman, and most of the men. So she was taken out of the age group standings, and I was moved up to 1st. And I was NOT the only one in my age group! (Full disclosure, there were 7. Which isn't many, but is WAY more than 1.) (And I was 17th of 205 women.)
I'm such a midget in all these photos with other people.
So yay! I had a really good time, the weather held out the entire time (even for our long drive home, I won my age group, Matt got second in his, and I'm excited about triathlons again. I'd say that's a solid first triathlon in a year and a half!
We partook heavily of their post-race sandwich spread.
Next up is Collegiate Peaks trail run, but hopefully more triathlons later in the summer!