SheROX Naperville Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Big traffic jam on first length, causing us all to get clumped up - kind of wacky, big giant group of swimmers, all doggy-paddling. Not sure why, maybe we just happened to have a lot of swimmers with very similar abilities in our wave.

The swim was pretty crowded for probably at least the first 300 yds, lots of kicking, having people smack your feet, smacking other people's feet, running into and getting run into. It cleared out in a bit though.

Improved time by about a minute from last year.

I need to work on being less cranky in the swim. I think because I'm really comfortable swimming, I get frustrated by other people too easily, and it messes with my focus. This is the part of the race where I really need a good mantra, so I can think about that instead, and remain happy.

Good transition. Ran the entire way up the beach, changed quickly, then ran out. Skipped my wetsuit for the swim, which is good because the run from the beach is so long. Last year my T1 was almost 5 minutes!

Nothing.

The course is great, except for the segment along the four-lane highway - the lane is awful! Big bumps every 20 ft or so - THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! as you go down the road. I was hoping they'd have repaved that road since last year, but since they didn't, I'm glad I put on a more comfortable saddle, just in case, instead of the hard racing saddle I've been riding. As it was, those THUMP!s were merely jarring instead of painful.

And, I killed it on the bike! This was the first race where I tried to go harder on the bike than usual, because I honestly didn't really care about my finish time, so it was a good experiment to see if I went harder, would I blow up on the run? I wasn't sprinting or anything, I was just going slightly harder. Very pleased with it, as I averaged almost 2 mph faster than my races last weekend (with comparable conditions), gauging my speed strictly by perceived effort rather than HRM or speedometer, and it had virtually no effect on my run. Good aero as well, including going through turns on the aerobars instead of chickening out and moving to the drops like I have been. Still have to ride in the drops or on the hoods to drink though, which brings us to...

I bobbled a water bottle and dropped it, not too long after I started the second loop, so I pulled over and ran back to grab it, then re-mounted and got back up to speed. (Miraculously I remembered to shift into my small ring, so after I re-mounted I didn't immediately start out mashing trying to get back up to speed -- that was cool.) It was a pretty fast retrieval, so I don't think it cost me more than 45 secs or maybe a minute, but still. But it was nice that several riders asked if I was OK while I was stopped/remounting.

Improved by like 8 minutes from last year.

Not bobble my water bottle! Honestly, since that's the first time I've ever dropped it (even in training) it kind of scared me off from drinking much for the rest of the loop. Not a good idea - by the time I finished the bike it was pushing 90°F!

Another good transition, except for the part where I put my number belt on with the bib on my left side, and when I reached down later to pull it more centered, I pulled the belt-holder thing through the corner hole in the bib, so for almost the entire race, my bib was fluttering from a single corner!

Improved my time from almost 6 (!!!!) minutes last year. Seriously. I forgot to untie my shoes in transition setup, so when I got to T2 I took off my bike shoes and tried to shove my foot in my shoes, then sort of hopped around, plaintively asking the cosmos, "why doesn't my foot work?" So, clearly, remembering to undo your shoes is a winning strategy here.

Nothing. Maybe punch emergency backup holes in all my bibs going forward, haha.

Fewer encouraging remarks from other runners this year. Maybe that means I look less hopeless. :-) I actually passed a couple of runners. I tried to say encouraging things as I passed them. Trouble is, my brain is basically shut down by that point of the race so about all I could think of to say was "you're doing great!" Some people are creative... me, not so much.

One odd note - every time I got something to drink, I got side stitches. It was weird. I ran through them, but it was just strange.

Lots of spectators out on the run, including people with sprinklers and coolers of ice -- yay! Thank you, Napervillians. And the race provided cold wet towels around Mile 2ish which was much appreciated, especially since that was a long, shade-free stretch.

One nice benefit of this being not my first race of the season is being able to tell myself, "I know you feel like you're going super slow, but you're not. This is just like last week. You feel like you're going super slow because you're tired, and because you were going much faster on your bike. You're going your usual running speed. Everything is just fine." I still felt super slow, but it was not stressful.

Improved my time about 5 minutes here, from 41:00, a 13:11 pace, last year.

Brainstorm encouraging things to say ahead of time, and add them to my visualization so I actually remember them when needed!

Walked around and drank Gatorade. Foam rolled at the Luna booth (so nice!). Walked the course back a little ways to find some friends and cheer the other runners while waiting for a friend to finish.


I don't think I was held back today.


I think that this is an extremely well produced race. Everything went off very smoothly. Also, it was good that they were prepared with wet towels both on the run course and after the race, so they were totally prepared to handle the weather conditions. I also saw a biker down on the run course, with a mechanical problem, and on my first loop she had one volunteer helping her, but on my second she had two! Nice to see them out there helping get her back on the road.

Pretty happy that I improved on my time from last year (2:01:30) by just a hair under 20 minutes... though there has been a lot of training between now and then, so those 20 minutes were hard earned! Don't think I'll show that kind of improvement again next year, though, since I figured out how shoes untie and all. :-)

I did decide not to use any nutrition products today -- so other than a banana pre-race, rather than a Gu or whatever, I ate nothing until after the race. The only other source of calories was about two little cups of Gatorade on the run. I had plain water in my bike water bottles, but I took a SaltStick before the race. I think this nutrition plan worked out well for me, and I feel good about not taking in calories that I wouldn't have exploited, since I'm not a high performance athlete.