Yet Another Race Report!

[colby]

Today I raced the Valley Girl Triathlon, which is a 1/3 mi swim, 12 mi bike, and 3 mi run basically in my back yard. So, like Alex, I packed all my stuff into a bag and biked it down from my house.

This being two weeks from Ironman, I was a little concerned with my hips which are still a little stiff, and my right shoulder which still feels tired. My goal was to just go faster than last year - since I couldn't race Athena anymore, I wanted to start moving up my actual age group. My secondary goal was to run in my five fingers.

The first time you race a sprint after Ironman is always weird, my transitions are always messed up and you have to really fight the urge to drop back to "forever pace" from "hauling pace" more customary for this distance. I wore my sleeveless wetsuit (I love you sleeveless suit!) and my one-piece tri suit. Just planned on taking in gels on the bike (once when I get on, once before I get off), and carried a water bottle rather than dealing with the aero bottle.

They hand out chips the morning of the race, which just makes for another line, but it's how they do things. My husband was on kayak duty, so he went down to the boat launch with his kayak at 6:30 and I was at transition shortly thereafter via bike. I randomly placed my bike on the inside end of a rack, this race has a max of about 500 people and a LOT of them are 30-34. I put my helmet on my bike (it fell off, sigh) and laid out my towel, bike shoes, and my five fingers sprints. Did a lot of standing in the shade. I put my sunblock on BEFORE I left the house even though they tell you not to, and covered my arms well, though I missed the backs of my shoulders/neck where my suit stretches and I think the SPF 55 is not enough.

I put on my wetsuit, got in the water, it was nice. Always cold when you first get in, but really comfortable. There is only one wave ahead of mine, at 7:45, so I didn't really warm up, just swam a few strokes and went over to get in line. I lined up approximately middle behind a couple of people, and basically immediately swam over most of them. (Sorry ladies!) I knew it would be more competitive than the Athenas, and sure enough there were about 5 people ahead of me out of the water, despite dropping almost two full minutes off my swim.

T1 was weird... I have not stripped my wetsuit off quickly in months, and I should have practiced it. Lost a few seconds there. My bike helmet was on the ground, so I lost a couple seconds tracking down my sunglasses (which were inside). All in all, I felt pretty good, and nobody was close behind me.

Onto the bike, I played rabbit with a girl at first, who then got tired of me and sped off. Another girl went ahead of me around mile 4, but by mile 10, I had caught back up, she looked spent. It's basically flat with a couple of hills, but there were definitely headwinds for about half the ride. I forgot to clear my heart monitor but I used it to measure my heart rate even if it couldn't save data, and I just tried to maintain a reasonably high heart rate near my LTHR, with enough space to eat twice on a couple of select downhills (I am pretty familiar with the course, even though this is only the second year they've done it).

T2 was less weird, but I was expecting an experiment putting on my five fingers, and I got it. I'll get used to it. I wiped a little sand off my feet and wiggled my toes in but had to manually adjust them into their pockets. The girl that was behind me caught up in transition and JUST got out before me. There were 5 bikes on the rack already, so that made me 7th.

On to the run, and my goal was again to maintain a consistent hard effort heart rate, and splash water into and onto myself. I am pretty sure the only way I can get faster is to go back to speed workouts and acclimating to the 5k races. Also, finish recovering. I was amazed to have no hip or shoulder pain the whole race, so I just kept hauling as fast as I could. There is a longish climb from the bottom of mile 2 to almost the finish. I tried to rubber band to the girl who passed me, but couldn't catch her without pushing what felt like too hard. I started to gain ground uphill, but as soon as we both caught sight of the finish, that was it. Apparently that was also it for a woman behind me, who caught me with 2 seconds to finish, putting me into 8th. Honestly I heard her coming and let her go, I already knew I wasn't into 5th (they award 5 deep) so I thought I'd let her have the moment - she had a custom made t-shirt on that I saw other women with, so this obviously meant more to her than to me. The girl who stayed ahead of me on the run stopped me after the race and complimented my speed on the bike - said she was struggling keeping up with me. She had also finished Ironman 2 weeks ago, she finished at 14:00 - I had a 15 minute faster bike split and close to the same swim but she was able to run the run.

The woman who won finished in basically 1:00 and had placed 4th in the Ironman 2 weeks ago. The 1st place girl in my age group came in 2nd overall. My age group is apparently competitive.

1/3 mi swim: 0:10:53
12 mi bike: 0:36:07 (19.9mph)
3 mi run: 0:26:06 (8:42 min/mi)
finish time 1:17:24 (8th of 68 age group, 24 of 438 overall)

Last year:
1/3 mi swim: 0:12:43
12 mi (same course) bike: 0:37:16 (19.3mph)
3 mi run: 0:29:20 (9:47 min/mi)
finish time: 1:23:39 (would have been 19th/80 AG, 3rd Athena, 79 of 492 overall)

For my next sprint, transitions and the run should be easier as I will be more recovered and in that "mode" of operation. I really want to get as far under 25 minutes as I can. Considering I ran a half marathon at this pace.... I should be able to run 5k - even in a triathlon - faster. Also, I need to put sunblock on my feet if I wear the Five Fingers, and use the SPF 70 on my arms. Right now I have a connect the dots sunburn - a bike tan from Ironman and shoulder burn from this race. In all fairness, it was probably AFTER the race, as I waited for my husband to finish kayak duty, awards, and the raffle.

My hips and glutes are back to being sore, so I'm going to put on my recovery tights tonight. I only got a little blister on the top of one toe - the knuckle - on one of my feet, but NO marks on the bottom and no worse "blistering" (not really blisters at that distance, more like "wet skin that rubs and comes loose") than I'd get in regular shoes because my feet didn't quite dry out on the bike and the sand in my shoes.

Pictures aren't up yet, and since we were both in the race (he didn't get out of the water until well after I was finished), all we have pictures of are the water - ironically he took a picture of the beach from the water and I took a picture of the beach from land.