First I'd like to say thanks to everyone who wished me good luck. It really helps.
This was only my second olympic length tri since I had hurt my calf after the first one last season and didn't do any more races.
The race took place out at Lake Mead. My SO and I drove down from NorCal on Friday and we stayed with a cousin of mine in Vegas for the weekend. On Sunday we got up VERY early and drove the 45 minutes to the lake. The weather report had been for overcast and wind. I hadn't expected it to get windy until later in the day. But it was BLOWING when we got there at 6am.
They had a very organized bike rack setup. You racked by your race number. The ends of the racks had the numbers taped on them: 100-125, 126-150, etc. Unfortunately, the racks were a bit short, so the bikes were very tight. In the few races I've done I've found that finding your transition spot is the most cutthroat part of the race. This removed some of that.
I got my stuff set up and my SO and I took a walk around to scope things out. We were heading down to the water when I noticed that there weren't any bouys. Sure enough, about 6:30 they announced that the swim had been cancelled due to the winds.
They spent the next 1/2 hour figuring out how they were going to start the race. They finally sent #s 200-325, a mix of sprint and olympic racers, to the front to start. They had originally said they were going to start groups every 2 minutes, but when I got to the front, they were just waving people to start. So the mounting area was a bit confusing.
The bike course profile had shown it to be pretty hilly, with 2 8% climbs. Since I'd only been on the road 3 times, with all of the rest of my time on a trainer, I'd been extremely nervous about the bike leg. My time with Coach Troy paid off, though, and I felt pretty good about the hills. It was the wind that took me out. There were places that I had to pedal while going downhill in order to keep moving. The last big hill came at about mile 22 and was, of course, into the wind. But that meant the last 3 miles was downhill with the wind. Wheeee!
I felt pretty good starting the run. About 90% of the run is on dirt roads or trails, with much less than a mile on pavement. If I'd known that, I'd have worn my trail shoes instead of the road shoes. The dirt roads were well packed and fairly smooth, but the trails were sandy and rocky and had some very iffy footing in places. I was going along OK... slowly and cautiously, but OK until about 1/2 mile from the finish. I hit a rock that moved and turned my ankle. I gave a hop and a screech, which about scared the shorts off of a woman running right in front of me, but I managed to stay upright and to keep running. I even was able to kick it in at the end.
Total time: 2:37. That's about 20 minutes slower than I'd hoped, especially in the run, but it was a very tough race. So I'm happy.
