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June 16, 2008
the gory (but awesome) details
Here is the long report on yesterday's race. I will warn you it might go into excruciating detail, and you may learn the true extent of my obsessive attention to detail at times!
Overall: It turns out I was fifth in my age group, not fourth. Oh well! I think I could definitely have beaten the fourth girl, I was under a minute back. However in a way it is better to be fifth than fourth - one place off the podium is kind of brutal. My official time was 1:25:58. Which does not sound awesome, but keep in mind that this is an atypical sprint distance - the bike is 17.3 or so miles whereas the 'standard' sprint bike distance is 12 miles. In obsessing over my standings and where I could beat more chicks to get on the podium next year, the answers are basically swim, swim, transition, swim, transition. I had really solid transition times for a middle of the pack triathlete, but now that I am trying to become an awesome age group triathlete they need some work. Now here are all the details.
Swim - 14:15 (this includes running up the beach for about 45 seconds)
This time exceeded all my expectations, but it is also pretty slow if I want to get on the podium. I would say 10 women in my age group beat my swim time. I thought I would do 15:00 just in the water, however, so 90 seconds faster than my goal is nothing to sneeze at. I did not panic which is awesome, even though I started out around the middle of the pack and was in a ton of traffic at first. I felt strong and I do think I can go faster next time, although I also felt really nauseous when I got out of the water. This was a clockwise swim which is the worse side for me (I strongly prefer breathing to the left), but it didn't bother me.
T1 - 1:29
This was definitely not an awesome transition. I dropped my bike (and scratched up one of the hoods, wah!!!!), and I was kind of out of it from the swim. I would love to get my times into the low 1:00 range - the fastest time I saw was 1:03. This just comes down to practice.
Bike - 46:49 (22.0 MPH)
My goal on the bike was 22 MPH, and I just made it. In fact I think I was very close to averaging 22.1, which would have been cool - a girl who did the bike 3 seconds faster had an average showing 22.1. I felt strong on the bike and I passed a TON of people (I started in the fifth wave so there were lots and lots of people to pass, which was both motivating and annoying. It was cool passing people, and not getting passed (I did not get passed by a single person on the bike), but it was also annoying because I was constantly passing someone and I do think it slowed me down a bit, especially when I would come up behind someone on a turn. One guy in particular was just rolling along all the way to the left when I was coming up on a turn and I basically had to scream at him to get him to move out of the way. He could have (and in my opinion should have) gotten a penalty for this. Just like I could have gotten a penalty had I passed him on the right. I do not know why people do this. It is dangerous, as well as just being rude and an example of very poor sportsmanship. Anyway, the bike was awesome. I absolutely love my bike and given the number of men on fancy tri bikes that I passed, I do not think I need to purchase a tri bike any time soon. It was a bit more windy on the course than I would have liked, but the wind was at my back at the end which was pretty cool. I felt very strong throughout, and I think although I can improve on the bike, what I'm doing now is working. I had the second fastest bike split (by three seconds) of all the women in my age group.
T2 - 0:59
This was a pretty solid transition time although one of the girls in my age group did it in 30 seconds. I really do not know how that is even possible - maybe she can get her feet out of her shoes while she's still on the bike. That would be a good way for me to crash.
Run - 22:29 (7:15/mile)
Although this is not a smoking fast run time, it is surprisingly not far off from the fastest time in the age group which was only 21:38 (6:59 pace). However, given my running background I do think I can improve. I should be able to run around 7:00 pace, realistically, especially since when I finished I didn't feel all that bad. However, I was only passed by one person (a super fast 21 year old who was third overall I believe), and I did pass one girl in my age group, which was sweet. I felt good although I was wishing I had drank a bit more water on the bike. There were a ton of spectators on the run (including my awesome parents, who got up at 4:30 am to come watch the race and take some pictures that I am going to attempt to post tonight/tomorrow), so that inspired me to kick it in pretty hard in the last .2 miles or so. Which is great because that's probably what got me under 1:26!!
So that is the really long and obsessive race report. I ran an easy 7 miles this morning and felt great - it is back to the grindstone now so I can hopefully improve on my age group performance (or at least maintain in a more competitive field) in the Boulder Peak Tri. This will be important as it's the age group nationals qualifier, and I really want to compete there! Anyway thank you to all of my readers for your support. If you have gotten this far, you deserve an award yourself!
Posted by barb at June 16, 2008 8:37 AM
Comments
GREAT job Barb!!! I am so pleased for you because you competed so well and exceeded all your goals! Great way to start the season. It will only get better from here. Transitions and racing sharpness are really difficult the first race but by the end of the season will feel easy as pie! Happy recovery!
Posted by: Beth at June 16, 2008 11:49 AM