The race experience was much different than last year’s.  The race included three waves this year; sprint, olympic and beginner (in that order).  Last year was only a sprint distance, which meant small waves of 15 – 20 people as compared to this year with all 89 sprint racers starting at once.  This made the swim start a lot more chaotic, which in turn made me lose cool.  I was only able to free about ¾ of the way since I relied on my breast-stroke when I lost my cool.

            Due to illness I was not able to train as I would have liked to from mid June till late July.  As luck would have it, I spent a good deal of the night before the race getting sick because I overlooked the fact that mash potatoes are made with milk.   However, come race morning I felt confident about my abilities.  Unfortunately that confidence was a little misplaced as I was about to learn another valuable lesson; a bagel and banana are NOT sufficient for a pre-race breakfast.  I hit the ground running to T-1 after the swim and was doing an excellent job biking (thanks Pete for inadvertently showing me how to draft!!!).  So well I actually started receiving comments from racers on fancy tri bikes about how fast I was able to push my little mountain bike that could.  I took a swig water of at what felt like mile 3 and immediately after I swallowed felt like I was going to get sick.  Rather than end up with dehydration I continued to take swigs of water every so often.  By the time I made it to T-2 I felt like I was going to get sick.  I spent the run adjusting my pace in order to not get sick.  I don’t plan on ever getting a DNF and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be because I couldn’t pace myself during a 3 mile run.  I finished and realized how much good carb loading for a week before hand had done for me.  Last year I could hardly move after the race, this year I made sure to eat (grapes, chicken salad sandwich and a banana) and hydrate (Gatorade and water) and was more than ready to head down to Jackson Falls for a few days of sport climbing.  Oh yeah, I was able to improve on my swim time by 1:30 and bike time by 0:57 Here are my times:

 

Swim

11:10

T-1

1:40

Bike

41:48

T-2

0:18

Run

25:20

Total

1:20:16

Division

4/5

Sex Place

38/63

Overall

47/89