• I had a great time.
• Race went well:
• My swim went really well; I was fast and I beat the pants of many of the men in my wave and was 9th out of 68 women in my age group.
• My bike was pathetic. Don’t look at the race results online. This was the first time on my new Tri bike and I rode pretty conservatively as I’m still in the formative stages of our relationship. For having a really cool fancy Tri bike I should be riding a lot faster!
• My T3 transition was awesome. 53 seconds. For those who don’t know what that is, you’ll have to read the long version.
• My run was good (for me). Don’t look at these results online either because if you are a runner, you wouldn’t use the word “good” and run in the same sentence after you saw my pace.
...End of ADHD version...
...Begin longer version for those with longer attention spans or not enough to do...
Steve signed me up for the Boulder Triathlon series (Sprint, Olympic and ½ Ironman distances) in January when it sounded like a really good idea and I had plenty of time to train and get ready. Here it is June 20th and the first triathlon is already here. I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but no matter how much I train I always uncover those things that I haven’t done enough of and think I’m not ready. I didn’t run enough! I didn’t do enough bricks! Oh no – I haven’t done hill training in weeks! Nevertheless, time marches on and they didn’t ask me if they should move the race date out because I wasn’t trained enough.
Steve had the weekend off, and wasn’t racing, so he was support crew. Thank you Steve, for getting all my gear ready, telling me what time to get up, making my Gatorade and taking care of all the details and getting to the race 3.5 hours before it started (everyone should know I was complaining about how early we got to the race). We had a great day Saturday taking our time leaving home and getting to Boulder for packet pickup. We stood in line for a million hours to get my packet and once we had that acquired headed to our hotel. I had big plans for a nap and Steve had big plans for a long bike ride. I settled in for a long winter’s nap and Steve took off. Who didn’t let the other guests know I was napping? Must they YELL in the hallways? I drift off and am awakened by Steve knocking on the door I had security latched. He was a mile into his ride when he got a flat. He picked up his wallet to buy more tubes and headed back out and I jammed my ipod headphone in my ears in the hopes of drifting off into a blissful sleep. I had forgotten that blissful sleep and hotel don’t go together. I did have some relaxing and restful quiet time though. Once Steve got back we headed to Pearl Street Mall in Boulder to meet friends from the Pike’s Peak Tri Club for dinner. What a great place! Street vendors, street performers and an eclectic combination of people. We met up with the gang and headed to the Cheesecake Factory to fuel up.
4:45am: Steve’s alarm goes off and it’s up and running. Bikes in the car, sunscreen on, fruit smoothie for breakfast and off to Boulder Reservoir. Steve’s #1 triathlon rule is you MUST arrive at the transition area first to “get a good spot”. When you are competing for a spot to the World Championships, I can understand that. Me? 15 minutes more sleep would be good! Thanks to Steve though, we are never rushing around before a race and today, we parked in the FIRST row! I got my body marking (for those not familiar with triathlon, this isn’t some kind of tattoo ritual, but rather they way they identify the athletes. They write your race number and age on your arms and legs. Should you be unlucky enough to drown in the swim portion of the triathlon, they have a way to identify your body. It also comes in handy when you are cycling and running; you can look at the person who just passed you, identify their age on their left calf and determine if they are in your age group. If so, you better pick it up! If they are 20 years younger than you, you can feel better about yourself when you are passed.)
After body marking, I have practically the whole day to rest in the car because Steve got me there so early. I don’t start my race until 8:20. Triathlon lesson #2: they start the athletes in “waves” by age group so all the athletes don’t start the swim at the same time. This race had 1600 athletes; can you imagine 1600 athletes all starting the swim at the same time? The lifeguards would earn their pay if that happened!
I ate another breakfast in the car while waiting patiently for my wave to start – yogurt and my homemade granola. Tasted good at the time, and again several times during the race. Yogurt may be a good idea, but the granola didn’t seem to work. Plug in the ipod and damage my eardrums listening to my music to get the energy flowing. Soon enough, it’s time to head to the swim start. The wetsuit donning process takes a long time; I think it would be easier to just paint it on. “It’s supposed to be tight” Steve keeps repeating. After stuffing myself into wetsuit, I waddle to my fellow Wave 11 athletes and make the typical pre-race small talk. We move along the beach and pretty soon we’re in the water waiting for the horn signaling our race start.
If you haven’t done a triathlon, I’ll try to paint a picture of what it’s like to do the swim in the reservoir with hundreds of your closest friends. At the announcer’s signal, the athletes walk down the beach and get in the water and approach the start line. The fast swimmers get in front and you all tread water until the horn goes off. I got up towards the front in this race and found myself among the men in my wave; the horn signals and the next 100 – 200 yards are spent trying to get a swimming rhythm. I put my head in the water and can only see a few feet in front of me – the water is murky and there are no black lane lines at the bottom to guide me. I immediately run into the swimmers in front of me, and have to pick my head up while swimming to see how I can get around them. There are about 5 across so I opt to squeeze in between a couple of them; why lose a couple valuable seconds? Feet and arms are everywhere as I swam through them. I get going again and get into a rhythm of swimming a few strokes, picking my head up to spot the buoy (does anyone remember doing Tarzan swimming in swim practice? It comes in handy in a Triathlon). It’s a 750 m swim and the course is marked with buoys. I pick my head up to spot where my next buoy is and look directly into the sun rising over the reservoir. Seeing spots from looking directly into the sun, but not finding the buoy, I look for other swimmers ahead of me and swim towards them. Without lane markers on the bottom of the pool and the churning water, I don’t swim in a straight line but swim to the right, so I have to pick my head up every 4-6 strokes to see if I’m headed towards the buoy or towards the kayaker stationed on the course to keep us from drifting off course. Once in a while, I swim along another swimmer and let them to do the spotting. Before long, I’m at the turnaround buoy and so are about 20 others and someone swims over me and I cut someone else off. Heading back to shore isn’t as bad because when you look up to spot, you’re not glaring into the sun. Swim Time: 14:36
Here is what the swim start looks like:
As I get out of the water I look for Steve and can’t find him among all the other fans cheering for me (or are they cheering for the athletes next to me?) I take off my cap and goggles and fiddle with my wetsuit zipper trying to get it undone. As I stumble towards the 1st Transition (called T1) and get the top half of my wetsuit down and run to my bike. The transition area is where you transition from one event to the next. T1 is transition from swim to bike. All the bikes are in rows and my gear is carefully arranged by my bike for a quick transition. I remembered where my bike was (thanks to Steve for getting us there 10 hours before race start, my bike is on the end of a row) and strip off my wetsuit the rest of the way, barely avoiding falling over as I get my legs out of the wetsuit. I put on my sunglasses, helmet and try to drink my Bing energy drink and end up spilling it all over the front of me. On go the socks, bike shoes and gloves. Grab the bike and run out of T1. T1 Time: 2:27.
The bike was good. This is only the 3rd time I’ve ridden my new Cervelo and we are still in the very early stages of our relationship, so I will use that as my excuse for my slow cycling. My fancy Tri bike far exceeds my ability but I love the bike! I promise to train so my ability matches my bike’s capability. The course is beautiful and it’s great to be out there with all the other triathletes. I passed a few people (fortunately some athletes ride mountain bikes in this race affording me the opportunity to pass someone) and got passed. 17 miles later I’m back at the transition area (aptly called T2). I spot Steve among all my other fans as he takes photos of me coming in. I dismount, run to my row again, throw off my helmet, gloves and trade biking shoes for running shoes and take off again. T2: 53 seconds.
Running after riding a bike never feels good! That first mile is like running with lead in my legs and it takes a while to get in the groove. I fiddle with my Garmin watch for a few minutes and can’t get it to switch over to the “run” mode. I fall into a good pace and repeat over and over “Pain is temporary, pride is permanent”. For me a 5k run hurts as much as a 13 mile run! I keep up the pace I wanted and reach the finish line and get my medal, wet towel and find Steve.
Run Time: 29:24
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