login
 Swim
Comments: Right before the swim start I was calming down a lady beside me who was doing her first triathlon and was petrified of deep water - she knew that she would be fine, but said that it really helped to talk with someone before getting into the water. It actually helped me as well, as hearing the things I was telling her, also helped to calm me dow... oh damn, there's the horn - run!!! I made my way through most of my own wave, I think pretty much all of the wave in front of me, as well as caught some of the wave in front of them. The worst part was getting kicked (I should have started either closer to the front, or farther to the outside) and then having to try and navigate around everyone. Not wanting to swim over people, I was constantly changing directions to avoid others. My sighting was fairly good, as was my breathing, but having to constantly pop up from either getting kicked or from avoiding people took a lot more time than I would have liked. What would you do differently?: Start closer to the front or to the side.  Transition 1
Comments: Stupid wetsuit got totally stuck not only around my heels, but also around my wrist due to my watch, which I completely forgot to start the timer on. Yeah, it was one of those kind of days. What would you do differently?: Cut my wetsuit off? I dunno, just try to go faster.  Bike
Comments: This was the most disappointing segment for me. Being the very last group to start the race, there were a TON of people already on the course and so it was like playing Frogger (remember that game??) for the entire bike leg. It just felt like I never really got to get into a groove, but it was still a lot of fun. There were some amazing cyclists out there, and I got passed more times than I care to admit as if I were just standing still. Clearly I have a lot of work to do - they were absolutely awesome! What would you do differently?: I don't know that there was much more that I could do, I enjoyed it, and it was fun! Transition 2
Comments: I can only really put 'bad' for the first 2 as I don't do that. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with a transition time of a minute and a half. :) What would you do differently?: Not much!  Run
Comments: We ALL know that running and I have a mutual hate going on. Seriously, I hate running and it hates me right back. I started out of T2 and surprisingly felt pretty good, which NEVER happens for me. Ever. My big goal was to finish, but as I kept shuffling along, and make no mistake I don't run - I shuffle, I started to have this wacky idea that I might just pull this off without having to stop and gasp for breath at some point! I did get water just before the turn around, and gave some encouragement to a lady that looked like she was suffering, and then just kept on truckin'. What would you do differently?: Not a whole lot - running sucks and it always will for me, but I finished the whole thing without stopping, which might just be the first time that I've done that in a triathlon race of any distance, so I'm kinda stoked about that! Post race
Warm down: After crossing the finish line with a smile on my face and finding Tony, we got water, Gatorade, a banana and got the hell outta there! Next stop was Ikea in Schaumburg just for some added torture before dinner at Crowny and Mrs. Crowny's place :) What limited your ability to perform faster: Plain and simple, I suck at running. I loved this race, and I'm already looking forward to doing it again. Event comments: This really was a fantastic race! I think next year I'd rather do the Olympic distance as things were just too crowded both on the swim and the bike to really get going. Other than that - it was fabulous! Even more fabulous was getting to meet some other BT'ers that I hadn't been able to meet before. Crowny, you do some good grillin'! :) Last updated: 2012-06-25 12:00 AM
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
View profile
Add to friends
Go to training log
Go to race log
Send a message
View album
CONNECT WITH FACEBOOK
United States
RecPlex
Sunny
Overall Rank = 146/400+
Age Group = 35-39
Age Group Rank = 4/31
We got into Racine (where we were staying) sometime around 5:30pm or so and headed over to Scooter's house to unpack, relax for a bit and then head out for dinner. My first experience ever at the Olive Garden, and OMG - I couldn't finish my dinner as I pretty much stuffed my face with bread sticks all night. I don't care what anyone says, I now heart the OG! I realized just after we loaded up the bikes for the trip that I still had my trainer tire on George and was fully planning on fixing that after dinner, but then there was the breadstick food coma that completely took over and there was just no hope. As I knew we were going to be getting up at 4:30 in the morning to get out butts over to check in and such... I was just going to find out if the trainer tire was tough enough to handle a mere 20km outside. Hopefully this wouldn't prove to be a disastrous decision!
The morning came entirely too early and I'm not sure that I got any sleep at all. Oh well, as transition closed as of 6:30, we had to get our butts in gear!
Hmmm... I'm not really sure that there was any. We got to the race site for 5:40, got the bikes racked, I got in the line for the port-a-potty and danced to the music with another lady in front of me, so I guess dancing was the warm up? There was also the scramble into the wet suit as the announcer was then telling everyone that anyone left in transition (that's where the port-a-potty was!) was going to get disqualified. Well, that was the quickest ninja-pewp that I've ever taken, and as an added bonus, there were only about 3 sheets of toilet paper left. All kinds of awesomeness right before the race! Ohhhhh, but wait. It actually WASN'T just before the race as my wave didn't actually start until 7:36 and not 6:36 as I had thought. Well... that kind of changed things. Now I'm also realizing that I hadn't had ANYTHING to eat yet for breakfast. So my warm up now included hunting down an elusive bagel, some water, and walking around in the bottom half of my wetsuit.
Eventually, as it gets to the very last wave (mine) I've been fed, watered, have all necessary items for not drowning (namely wetsuit), and had a second ninja pewp. Gimme a break, it was the first time I'd been in any triathlon race since July last year!