Sunday, July 11, 2010

Girls Tri Too at Caesar Creek

Last night at 9:30 my husband and two older kids got home from the movie (Despicable Me, they loved it). My husband took one look at the clock and said "Why are you still up?? Go to bed! I went upstairs with the baby to put him to bed, but he turned on the shower. He did need a shower, so I let him get in. Shortly after that, the other two got sent upstairs to "go to bed" but it's never that simple. Needless to say it was well after 10 before I got to go to bed. Then I lay there awake with my mind wandering and listening to my husband talk to his oldest, who's in another state, via computer. I think I finally fell asleep between 12:30 and 1am. Not long after that, my 5yo woke me up climbing into my bed. She gets this weird idea sometimes that she's incapable of sleeping through the night in her own bed even though she's done it plenty of times.

At 4:45am my alarm went off. I hit snooze. Twice before waking up enough to remember why I was getting up so early. Oh yeah, triathlon, and M's supposed to pick me up between 5:30 and 5:45. Oh yeah. So I got ready; M tested that she was running late; she got here around 6, and we drove down to Caesar Creek State Park.

We met up with S, R, and A, checked in and all that stuff. Set up in transition, checked out the lake--the water was fairly warm. Finally around 8 the race started. We went into the water in 1s and 2s, so there was no crowding or getting kicked in the face. The water was only about 4' deep the whole swim (250y).  I was so tired after such little sleep the night before that I had to keep changing strokes. At one point I was passed by a woman walking. Yep, walking the swim part. For some reason, for me, swimming farther than 25m feels never ending. Then when I finally finish the distance and check the time I find out that it wasn't long at all. I walked out of the water in under 8 1/2 minutes! (This time I was keeping my eye on the corner bouys and making sure to stay on course.)  It still took me another couple of minutes to get up the hill to transition--wet sandy feet, rough concrete,   :-(  Threw on some shorts and slip on shoes and headed out. Race results aren't posted yet, but I hit the lap button on my watch as I left transition: lap 1 11:58.

The bike portion started with an uphill. Ugh! right after the swimming. After that hill though it was pretty decent: slightly rollolling hills, out and back. I got passed by an older woman on an old beater of a bike. It only had 1 set of gears. Wow. It seemed like so much downhill on the out portion, that I though coming back would be hard, but it wasn't. The hills weren't that steep. And then of course, at the end was the reverse of that uphill on the way out. M said her little speed/distance gadget clocked her at 23mph! I maxed out my gears and still ended up just coasting down that hill--I was flying! I had to slow down more than I wanted as I approached transition again b/c there was a fairly sharp right turn.

There were lots of bikes already back in trasition by the time I got there. Changed into my running shoes and threw on a shirt and visor and headed out for the run by 34:27. Again with an uphill! But it didn't feel too bad. My heart rate was in the upper 170s and I was quite out of breath so I walked the rest of the 1st mile...or however far it was. My clock read ~12:30min at the turn around and I did NOT feel like I was walking that fast. By this time I was wishing I'd found my Propel powder to put in my water bottle; I was getting tired of plain water. I had a really nice stretch by myself on the way back, narrow dirt/mud trail, lots of shade, quiet. I was doing some running and some walking. There was this one girl (volunteer) out on the trail with a radio and a cowbell. Man, that cowbell was annoying. Got back down to the park area; there was a girl with a plastic clapper thingy (also annoying) but she did point out how much farther there was to go, so I figured I could manage to run all of it. As I started going around the pavilion I saw M, S, A, and R...and their husbands and kids who'd come out to cheer them on...cheering me on, S's husband with the camera, and he went behind the pavilion as I went around it and got more picture(s) as I finished. (That last loop of a race always seems deceptive--oh, just around the pavilion--but not actually close to it, more like twice the distance of around it. Of course, I've only done 3 races.)  24:51 for the 2-mile run. Was it really 2 whole miles???  Total time, give or take a few seconds, 1:11:15. I believe I placed 144th overall (per the score sheet they posted there--still waiting for official results).

1 comment:

  1. Great job! I bet you ladies had a ton of fun! What an accomplishment!!

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