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September 30, 2009
BOUS Race Report
Warning - this might be long.
I arrived in San Diego early afternoon on Friday and met my mom (who had flown in from South Carolina) at baggage claim. Did you know there are 2 different terminals at the San Diego Airport? Yeah, either did I. Luckily my mom figured things out AND we found each other AND my bags/bike arrived AND everything was in one piece. This was starting out well.
After some major lines at the car rental (it never seems easy to rent a car) we were finally on our way to Encinitas to see Marit and eat Noodles! WOO-HOO!
My mom was a saint and endured close to 3 hours of triathlon talk at Noodles. I think she only dozed off once. :) It was great seeing Marit again though and getting caught up. Blogs/FB/emails, etc... are all nice and a great way to communicate but nothing beats actually talking to someone face to face and hearing their voice and seeing the expressions on their face, etc...
SO! Next my mom and I drove up the coast and then just a little inland to Mission Viejo, CA where the Best of the US Amateur National Championship was to take place Sunday in conjunction with the long-standing Orange County International Triathlon.
Driving into Orange County I was immediately smitten. It's so beautiful! The wide bike lanes and the smooth roads - love at first sight! And the terrain! One sort of downside to (the majority of) the east coast is it's all FLAT. Flat as a pancake. To me, ocean has always = flat. But the west coast is quite the opposite. So yes, I was in love. And there was sun. So much warmth and sun.
Later that night we picked up O from the John Wayne Airport (I was looking for an anteater in Irvine but no luck) and finally went to bed exhausted.
SATURDAY! We did the usual swim/bike/run, check out the course (in driving the bike course I saw more people out on bikes in a 10 minute span than I've seen riding in the last 4 months in Pittsburgh alone - NOT an exaggeration!), pick up my packet and attend the BOUS pre-race meeting. I never like meetings but this is a fun one because you get to see everyone! Probably the best part of the BOUS race is the friends you make. The race is so small (at the very most it would be 50 men and 50 women but many states don't have representation so it's more like 30 and 30) that you really get to meet every single person you are racing against. It was like homecoming! I got to see some old friends and make new ones (and Maggs was REALLY tall, way taller than I imagined! :)
The whole crew after the race meeting on Saturday.
Sunday finally arrived and it was race time! I love racing and I get very excited to race but I also get nervous (as I would assume most do!). I seem to get especially nervous for this race because EVERYONE is good. And the race is small. And there is nowhere to hide. And Jerry (creator of BOUS along with his wife Trudy) makes a big deal about the race! Which makes it fun! And exciting! And nerve-racking! :)
As far as goals were concerned - last year I finished 8th in this race and I was THRILLED. The top 10 get awards so that was my big goal last year. And to get 8th it was a fight to the very end. I remember last year after the race thinking "I can finish in the top 5 here - I know I can" and so at the beginning of 2009 when I was writing out all my goals for the season, first qualifying for BOUS again and then finishing "top 5" at the championship race was what I aimed for. BUT then, as the summer progressed, and I started to see all the people who had qualifed across the country, many of whom I had never beaten before or had only barely beaten here or there...well, I was starting to wonder if I could even finish in the top 10 again! And to top it off there were several women in the race that are VERY good at one sport in particular (ie: Kimberly can run a 34 minute 10K and Alice has been swimming in the 18s all year long, etc...)...see, this is why this race makes me so nervous. :)
Still though, I know all you can do is race your own race and race hard and see where you stack up. So that's what I did.
The swim was NOT wetsuit legal. The water was very warm and calm and so clean and clear! The lake was beautiful. They start the men and women together (which makes it a bit crazy because everyone is a really good swimmer!). Thank God for Clay from New Mexico because while we were all standing there waiting for the gun to go off I was so nervous but he kept on cracking jokes and I wanted to hug him and thank him for calming my nerves.
I'm in there somewhere REALLY wanting to get started.
They held us in that little pen for a while and then right before the gun was to go off we were allowed to run up to the water's edge. My least favorite type of start - dry land entry wherein people like me who don't know how to do dolphin dives and have an affinity for tripping while running through water, suffer greatly. :)
Photo courtesy of Rich Cruse.
And we were off! I made it through the start okay and then I just swam really hard. Pretty much the entire time I swam on someone's feet so I did very little sighting. The course was a simple rectangle but I did notice we were swimming wide towards the end so I kept trying to move over to line up with the last bouy. The person to the right of me was not quite getting the message. Oh how I love open water swimming. :)
Upon exiting the water and running up the boat ramp I looked at my watch. 20:23.
WHAT?! 20:23?! Well either I just had the swim of my life or that was a short course! :)
Onto the bike my goal was simply to ride hard. I knew this bike course was made for me. It was hard. Very tough. Hilly! Just like what I ride on at home but with much smoother roads. :) The bike course was my favorite part of the race. It was so beautiful. Essentially we rode out for 12 miles and then back, up and over and down the other side. Not HUGE hills where you were out of your saddle and going 4 mph but longer, gradual hills. I was either going 12 mph or 35 mph. :)
Another Rich Cruse photo.
Oscar had told me leaving T1 that I was in 8th place. That was thrilling in and of itself because in this caliber of race I am NEVER that close to the top out of the swim. But still I knew I had my work cut out for me because guess what, these girls are really good bikers and runners too!
Within the first 5 miles I moved myself up to 5th. And then...nothing. I could only see one person ahead of me for a very, very long way and it was a guy. One thing can be said about this course - it was pretty darn fair and there were no drafting concerns! So I kept riding, riding, riding. Pushing. Drinking. Thinking "man, does it feel like there is a heat lamp on my back!". And looking. I kept looking and wondering where everyone was! At the turnaround though I started to get to see some stuff going on. First of all, I saw that Brian, my PA counterpart was leading the race. CRAP! I better get a move on because if he wins the race I don't want to be the one keeping us from winning the team competition!
On the way back I was certainly starting to feel the effort of a hard swim, pushing hard on the bike and climbing a lot within the first 10 miles. But just about when I needed a wake up call, one happened in the form of a guy passing me from behind. Okay - time to get moving! With about 5-6 miles to go on the bike a group of people finally came into sight and one of them was a woman! Chris, from NC. WOO-HOO! Let's go after it!
I eventually passed Chris (on yet another uphill) but we essentially came into T2 together so I didn't really "pass" her.
And now it was time to run.
I haven't been running well all summer so I really wanted to nail this run. I knew the course was going to be hard (and indeed it was) but the first 2.5 miles are a very gentle downgrade so I told myself to take it out really hard. Coming out of T2 I saw Oscar again (and T1 and T2 aren't in the same place so you can only imagine how much running around he did!) and he told me I was in 4th and that Alice (from NJ) was 1 minute ahead. Okay, let's go and try to find Alice!
First mile 6:10. Second mile 6:20. I felt good and I was pushing. And then - the hills.
The rest of the run was just painful. Some of it was on a very soft wood-chip type of trail (= SLOW). There were really big hills. There were also big downhills. OUCH.
I did finally pass Alice going up the first big hill but not before the flash known as Kimberly (from WA) passed me so quick I almost didn't see her! So in the span of a minute I moved into 5th but then back into 4th place.
And from there it was "just hang on". Around the 4.5 mile marker I saw O again and he told me I was okay from behind. I knew I just needed to finish strong. From then on I truly just enjoyed the race, the day, the fact that I was going to exceed my expectations greatly. I tried to soak it all in. The final 1K of the run is all downhill so you finish feeling good. You run down through all the state flags at the end where all the fans are cheering and I could hear Jerry yelling my name over the microphone. What a fantastic experience! And I thought "this is why I do it". Or at least part of the reason why. For all the pain and all the nerves and the pressure - it's all made worthwhile by this one moment right now. No, I wasn't winning the race. And in fact the winner had beaten me by close to 6 minutes. But 4th place was like winning for me. Getting out of the water in under 21 minutes (with no wetsuit) when I used to swim 25 or 26 minutes (not too long ago) was like winning for me. Making O and my mom proud really was like winning for me.
And that was that!
After the race I couldn't wait to find Alice (swimmer extraordinnaire, very, very nice person and oh, she just happens to be finishing up her PhD at Columbia also :) to see if she thought the swim was short. :) I have a single track mind. :) I knew she would have a good gauge on what she thought she could swim and what she did. I, on the other hand, am so clueless about swimming. I think one reason why I really struggle in the open water is because I have no feeling for pace like in the pool. I am definitely a watch person - I ALWAYS wear my watch in races and coming from a running background, I'm used to that feedback of "you're going way to hard, slow down" or "you better get your butt in gear because you are just dwadling". ANYWAY - Alice told me that she has been swimming well lately and that she thought it was very reasonable that she would swim in the 18s (which she did). She also said it helps her when we start with the men because then she actually has someone to swim with (ha! :). So she judged it to be a pretty fair swim (with excellent conditions that made it fast) and that if it was short, it was only short by a hair.
Now - she may have just been saying that to make me happy but I'm RUNNING with it. I'm claiming that under 21 (actually, the official time is 21:07 after the run up to the timing mat) swim and calling it my own! :) Up until this point I had never swam under 22 minutes! (I did in NYC last year and Philly this year but both with strong river currents). Yippppeeeee!! And why did I swim well? Well, I have been training well in the pool but that doesn't necessarily correlate to fast swimming for me in open water. I know I swam well on Sunday because I did very little sighting and I was on someone's feet for about 90% of the race. Oh, drafting really does work. :)
Anyway - after the race we raced back to the hotel, showered, packed up our stuff and headed back for the awards. I knew the team award (they add the male and female times together for each state and then give awards to the top 5 teams) was going to be close with Wisconsin! Brian, my partner, had indeed won the race (by almost 3 minutes!) and the Mark, the Wisconsin male was 3rd. Cindi, the AWESOME Wisconsin female had finished 3rd right ahead of me place-wise but she had beaten me by about 2.5-3 minutes. Oh - this was going to be close!! Unfortunately they got us by 23 seconds. DARN IT! As Cindi told me - every second counts! :) But I'm proud of Brian and I for representing PA well. Last year Rick and I were 3rd, this year Brian and I were 2nd - looks like we only have one place to go! :)
Top 10 (minus I think 7th and 10th place) women.
My mom and I after the race. She is such a trooper!
After the awards mom, O and I headed back down towards San Diego where we were spending the night (since we were all flying out of SD early Monday morning). We ate at Noodles AGAIN (with Marit and Nathaniel!) and got to see the seals at La Jolla (I love those little (big) guys!) and O got to have Jamba Juice for the first time. And I took my ice bath and showered and stretched and collapsed in my bed around 9 pm.
Now I am back home trying to catch up on work and life! But I am super-excited for training for the next couple weeks. I am so sad the season is almost over but I am going to savor the hard training in October, the big taper in November and then my final race of the season - Clearwater. At least I don't have to worry about hills for a while. :)
HUGE thanks to everyone for their good luck wishes and nice comments after the race and of course to my mom and O for being the best support crew a girl could ask for! As we get to know more and more people O is becoming quite well known for his cheering. If he knows your name, he will cheer for you and he is ALL OVER THE COURSE so you will see him many times. And he offers good advice - not just the "you are almost there" type of cheering. :) I'm thinking of renting him out. But then again I'm too greedy and I want him all for myself!
Congrats to everyone who raced this past weekend!
PS Results of the (female) race here. Article about the race here.
Posted by beth at September 30, 2009 9:47 AM
Comments
That is long. Lets just both pretend I read it all :)
Posted by: Deirdre at September 30, 2009 12:19 PM
Fantastic job, Beth!!! What a wonderful race report. I'm so glad you had fun and hit your goals!
Posted by: Molly at September 30, 2009 12:39 PM
I was waiting for this! Such a good race report and great pictures Beth! 4th is truely exceptional! Congrats on a wonderful race!!
Posted by: Kim at September 30, 2009 2:02 PM
WOOHOO! Congratulations Beth!! It sounds like you had a great race and I'm glad that these days O gets to fly out to see you rather than drive 10 hours :) YOur mom is the best too!!
And yes, I (and my bf) were searching for someone with a Garmin after a 5K we KNEW was too short but we didn't know by how much. It was a lawyers' race though, not your usual running crowd, and we never found out!
Conrats again on your improvements from last year and your quick swim!
Posted by: Audrey at September 30, 2009 2:15 PM
Great job, Beth! I bet it was fun to have a BOUS sandwich'ed in btwn the Noodles + Marit visit:) hee hee.
You are so good at race reports I felt like i was there. Rest up and one more to go!
Posted by: Julia at September 30, 2009 2:53 PM
Great race!
I hear you on the running thing. Still searching for some of my own snap. (sigh) Love the bike foto!
Posted by: Trigirlpink at September 30, 2009 4:43 PM
BETH! You did a great great job at BOUS! It is a super competitive race and you did it again and 4th is amazing! YOUR RR was fun and it was fun to see Chris W, Cyndi and others in the pics too! CONGRATS!!!!!!
Posted by: Jen Harrison at September 30, 2009 5:38 PM
That is such a fantastic result! 4th is awesome at BOUS - and it's so fun to travel far and really do well, isn't it?
And I'm totally going to throw Oscar under the bus here, but I definitely DO NOT remember him cheering for me at Philly! :P
Posted by: Bri Gaal at September 30, 2009 6:14 PM
First, glad I could cheer people on out of T1 and T2. I get bored just standing in one place, so why not run one or two (or five) miles to kill the time and get to strategic cheering locations.
Second, I should have cheered Cindi B less so Beth could have made up that 23 seconds. Something like, "You've got it wrapped up, Cindi. Shut it down and save it for Kona." would have worked. :)
Third, to Bri: Maybe you were just locked in and not hearing voices. I'm pretty sure I cheered coming out of T1, but I don't know that I saw you on the bike. On the run I cheered for you a little bit near the end, but quickly shifted my attention to the competitor who pays the bills around here. :)
Posted by: O at September 30, 2009 7:08 PM
Congrats - what an awesome race - and you accomplished your goal!!
Posted by: Charisa at September 30, 2009 7:21 PM
Oh yeah, and fourth: I'm glad you put in the disclaimer about the course being just like the roads around here. The topography may have been similar, but the roads in CA were so smooth and they have bike lanes that are almost as wide as car lanes!!!
Posted by: O at September 30, 2009 7:54 PM
Wow! Congratulations Beth! PA is so lucky (BLESSED!) to have you represent them (us)! Great Job!
Posted by: Wendy at September 30, 2009 8:58 PM
Great race and race report Beth! You're just gonna have to get used to the idea of being one of the good swimmers now!
Posted by: maija at September 30, 2009 10:20 PM
Great report Beth. Awesome race. Well done. Will you be in Oceanside in March? I need O to cheer for me ;)
Posted by: Angelina at October 1, 2009 5:49 AM
awesome awesome awesome race beth! congratulations on 4th!
Posted by: Kim Kaltreider at October 1, 2009 11:50 AM
Woo hoooo!!! Nice job Beth - congratulations AGAIN! You have worked so hard with everything, especially your swim - and it is TOTALLY paying off! WOW WOW WOW!!! Keep that intensity, that fight - you are going to do SUPER in Clearwater. It was great seeing all of you guys (and meeting your Mom) again. Thanks for making the trip back up to Encinitas!
Oh - can I rent the both of you for Kona? That would be very helpful! :)
Posted by: marit c-l at October 1, 2009 1:06 PM
You are AWESOME! I thoroughly enjoyed this race report. What an honor to participate in such an event, I bet, and you did a fantastic job! Yes, 1st team next year and top three for you. :)
Posted by: Ulyana at October 1, 2009 4:55 PM
Great job on the race! I can't believe the way you have been tearing up the race course all year. All that hard work paying off but perhaps also the amazing O cheering you on? I would like to pay to have him show up at my race!
Posted by: Jennifer Cunnane at October 1, 2009 9:35 PM
I know this is a past post, but congrats on the race. The RR was a great read. I swam with Alice in HS, known her for a long time, and randomly run into her when she comes back to Bucks County or at other races. I was always inspired by her hard work and dedication and so glad to hear she is doing so well at another sport. She was and is the hardest working person I know.
Posted by: allyson jann at October 9, 2009 7:58 PM