Qualifying for Nationals by the skin of my teeth!
Well, on a whim I decided at the last minute (Wednesday night) to go race an Olympic distance tri today in Moses Lake. I actually managed to get the very last registration spot as the race director said it was sold out and then let me know that she had miscounted and had just 1 spot left! This race was the Pacific Northwest Regional Championship which would qualify the top 5 athletes in each age group for the 2008 Age Group National Championships.
My intent for this race was simply to do an Olympic distance race before my upcoming Half Ironman. I’m still very much a newbie to this sport (only 1 other Olympic race last year, and a few sprints), so the more experience the better I figured! I definitely wasn’t expecting to qualify for Nationals, but that’s exactly what I did! Just baaaaarely! I finished 5th in my age group! It was a rather small race but I thought it was pretty competitive since the top times this year completely blew away the times from last year.
Complete race report will come later when the splits are posted, but my time was 2:29:30. I’m totally wiped and am looking forward to some much needed recovery tonight!
Filed under: race reports, triathlon
|
Digg! this story.
|
Leave a Comment
Issaquah Tri Race Report
Had my first triathlon of the season on Saturday and was excited that it marked the start of race season, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was just a “warm-up” race for my Half Ironman that is a month away. No normal nervousness or butterflies the night before and no running through my transitions in my head several times. I was just there to have a fun day….and it was! 
The weather turned out to be just perfect! I was worried it was going to be cold and I would need a jacket on the bike as it was predicted to be 49 degrees and cloudy at the start. The sun managed to come out though just for the race and it was a beautiful morning. I bumped into an old friend I hadn’t seen in about 5 years, so it was good to chat a bit beforehand. He was doing his first tri, and did great! Way to go Ernie!
This particular race has a “self-selected” elite wave that starts before the regular age group waves. There is no qualifying or standards to be in the elite wave, but I think (for women) it is something like if you think you’ll finish under 1:25 or something? I’m not sure. I seriously considered going off with the “elites”, but I am not an “elite”! I felt fairly confident my time would be under 1:25, but the whole “elite” term makes me feel funny and is a bit intimidating….my head won’t allow me me to belong to that group, so I decided to wait for my age group wave that went off at 7:21. This was not the best choice, but more on that later…
Swim: 7:49 (includes run to T1). Just a short 400m out and along the shoreline and back….COUNTER-CLOCKWISE though! Most races seem to go clockwise so this was a bit different. I always breath to my right side which makes sighting the buoys when swimming clockwise easier because they are on my right, but it’s a bit more difficult when they are on my left. Combine that with the fact that I swim crooked and always pull to the right, I knew this would make for an interesting challenge!
I decided to start near the front for the first time ever. I have always been a very weak swimmer, but this year I had actually taken a few group lessons and have been swimming much more than previous races, so I was excited to see what I could do on the swim! I’m usually dreading the swim, but this time it was like “Bring it on! Let’s see what I can do!”
Sure enough, as we rounded the first buoy I found myself drifting too far off to the right and when I looked up to sight I was looking straight at the kayaks marking the outside boundary. OOPS! I quickly turned to get back on course and ended up swimming on top of a few people in doing so. I passed a few more and sighted only a few other white swimcaps in front of me. I was right on their heels and was in the front of the pack! wow! That never happens! I was having a lot of trouble sighting as the front of our wave had now caught up to the back of the wave before us which was the 30-34 men’s age group. They just happened to be wearing the exact same shade of day-glow orange swim caps as the buoys! Every time I looked up to sight all I saw was a sea of day-glow orange and I couldn’t tell which was the buoy! So I just followed the crowd, hoping we were on course. I decided I would just fall in right behind the leaders of my pack and try to draft off them a bit. I had trouble staying on their feet because we were weaving through a bunch of people now from the previous wave. Oh well. I didn’t push it too hard and ended up being 3rd out of the water (44 women in my age group wave). I was psyched! I actually felt like I could have passed the other 2, but I think I still really doubt myself as a swimmer so decided to play it safe instead.
T1: 1:30 - I felt a little spacey in T1 since I hadn’t practiced a transition. Wetsuit came off fast and easy though, socks (yes I’m a slow-poke that uses socks!), bike shoes, helmet, sunglasses….grabbed my bike and stopped to think for a second as I was certain I was forgetting something important….hmm…don’t know. Oh well, let’s ride!
Bike: 44:08 (20.5mph ave) - The bike course was 15 miles out and back…relatively flat, but 1 rolling hill each direction. There was quite a long “no-pass” zone in the beginning and the end of the course which was frustrating because I was now in a mess of slower racers from the waves before me. As soon as I reached an area I could legally pass, “ON YOUR LEFT” became the theme for my ride. I felt like I was flying past people! I looked down at my computer to check on my speed, distance, etc. and realized that there was a problem. Hmm….computer wasn’t quite working properly as I knew I was going somewhere around 20+ mph and it said 8 mph! Ha! Oh well, I guess I just don’t have a computer for this race! The bike leg was good, but I definitely felt like I could have pushed it a bit harder. I was having fun though so it was great! I will keep my comments about all of the blatant illegal drafting I saw to myself. I want to keep this a happy race report!
T2: 1:22 - need to work on T2…although part of my problem was that I was at the end of the transition rack and there was another person’s bag hanging on the rack right next to my space, so I really had trouble re-racking my bike! I couldn’t squeeze it in there with all of my neighbor’s “stuff”! It felt like it took at least a minute to rack it, but I’m sure it was more like 15 -20 sec. Finally got it racked, helmet off, shoes off, running shoes on, grabbed my race belt, hat, and a couple of cherry-flavored shot blox and was off! I’d like to get my T2 to under 1 min. which I think is easily doable.
Run: 21:56 (7:18 min/mile pace). The run went ok. It was mostly on rough, uneven terrain which I don’t like at all. With my peroneal tendon injury this is a bad combo! I did manage to turn my ankle (on my bad foot) somewhere around the halfway point. There were also sprinklers on that we had to run through that made for a muddy wet mess in the first mile! My shoes/socks were soaked from that! Not overly thrilled with this run course, and felt like I held back due to trying to step carefully, but again just like the bike, I found myself passing people and not getting passed so it was good!
Total time: 1:16:46 - 6th place in my Age Group (out of 50) - pretty sure I was the top 3 in my wave, but there were a few women in my age group that went off earlier with the “elites” that had faster times than me.
In hindsight, I really wish I had decided to start off in the “elite” wave because the slower bikers on the course were definitely a hazard for me and I also didn’t feel like I had anyone “pushing” me.
All in all though it was a great race and a lot of FUN! I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start off the season! Thank you to everyone who came out to support the racers through volunteering and cheering us on! It really does help and mean a lot!
Filed under: race reports, triathlon
|
Digg! this story.
|
Leave a Comment
