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 Swim
Comments: It was a beautiful day out about 80 degrees and the water was fairly warm at about 72. It turns out I might have not even needed that wetsuit, but I need to get used to swimming in one anyway plus it helps with floatation, so it's not such a bad thing. The swim was all along the breakwall on Lake Michigan. It was kinda neat because unlike other swims the spectators can follow you along your swim and cheer you on. Plus I suck at sighting and this helped me a great deal. I didn't wave nearly as much as I did last time (but still can't swim straight!) The swim was going fairly well for me. It seemed really long though and I was looking forward to it ending. The Clydesdale wave of men was behind us and it was interesting being overtaken by 200+ pounds of muscle. Every once in awhile I'd pop my head up to sight and I'd hear gerri and Greg Wooing for me. That was nice and amused me because I could tell they were timing it so my head would be out of water. I was really happy when the end finally came. I was certainly slow, but Greg and Gerri said there were other people from my wave still behind me. Lots of the waves behind me passed me up though. So my swim ended up being 43:47 but I think that also includes the run from the swim exit to the transition entrance, which is is about as far of a distance as you'll ever find in a triathlon and I was on the far end of the massive transition area. So who knows what time I actually got out of the water, because I forgot to set my watch. I was plenty happy with this time considering open water isn't my friend. What would you do differently?: Better Siting  Transition 1
Comments: Transition went smoothly. I threw off my Wetsuit and Tossed on my bike shoes, socks, and Chicago Tri Club Bike Jersey and race belt.. Tossed a Gu in the pocket, put on my helmet and sunglasses and jogged my way out. Not bad  Bike
Comments: The bike was fast and felt like it went by quickly. The road was in awful condition there were craters and pot holes and you had to be really careful when passing because not only were there still cars on the outside lane on lake shore drive, but in-between the 2 lanes they had blocked off for us the road was split and the gap was several inches wide. My poor little bike tires are only like an inch wide! So you had to time your passes waiting for sections where the road wasn't broken up or where they had patched the worst bits. Even though I was going about the same speed as my last tri a lot more people were passing me, but only about half of the people which made me happy. I knew there would be a lot more faster people then there were at my last one so I was prepare for that. It actually made for a nicer bike ride because I felt the road wasn't as crowded. This bike ride included a loop from Chicago Ave to Foster Ave that I had to do twice. I managed to down 1 Gu packet about 1/2 thru and about 3/4 of my water/gatorade mix. My bike split was only a hair slower then my last tri. This was due to the wind which was fairly constant and being slightly more tired after the longer swim. 1 hour 20 minutes didn't seem like all that long. Maybe because when I ride I ride for 2-2:30 most days. What would you do differently?: Slow down just slightly and more liquid nutrition Transition 2
Comments: Back to transition where I remembered to take off my helmet, :) Threw off the bike shoes slipped into my running shoes and took a quick drink and off I ran. What would you do differently?: n/a  Run
Comments: Ran.... SLOW. Oh heck I was apparently already too tired to run at my normal pace. I waved to Gerri and Greg and trotted off at about a Turtle like 4.5 miles per hour. EVERYONE passed me. Seriously. I think I passed about 6 people the whole time. I sucked the run, but the important part is I was still running. I only stopped to walk 3 times for only 1 minute each time. (Mile 3, Mile 4, And Mile 5) So while I'm not thrilled with my pace I'm very very proud I kept running and did the best I could. It was really cool though because I had my chicago tri club jersey on I had lots of people yelling out for me "CTC!" and a few people even calling my # out. It was nice because I don't really know any of them, but they were very supportive. I was getting a bit over heated so I was sure to drink at every aide station and threw some water over my head. So and hour and 20 minutes later after I had started the run (which to be honest at that point felt like FOREVER) I finally crossed the finishing line. WOOT! I was handed my finishers metal, the called my name as I crossed, I was handed the most GLORIOUS ICEY COLD TOWEL. I finished WOOOooooooo! What would you do differently?: Run faster Post race
Warm down: n/a What limited your ability to perform faster: More weight loss. Event comments: It was a great day. I was a LOT more tired then I was after my Sprint, but I did well. Stats aren't anything to write home about, but for ME I think they are awesome. I was hoping to finish in under 4:00 and secretly hoping for 3:45 so 3:33 is sweet by me. It feels great to have worked so hard for this all year long. I've come such a long way. I LOVED this race it's huge and crowded but the energy is fantastic. Last updated: 2008-03-21 12:00 AM
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United States
Capri Events
80F / 27C
Sunny
Overall Rank = 3481/6567
Age Group = Athena U40 180+
Age Group Rank = 7/11
The weekend started out on Friday with me waiting around for my wetsuit to arrive. It got here safe and sound so I headed off to test the wetsuit out and make sure it fit okay and everything so I went for a quick 30 minute swim in the Lake. After that I headed off to the Expo. This expo was HUGE compared to the one for the Danskin. Probably about 8-10 times larger. It was in three different conference rooms. I picked up my packet and race shirt/bag and walked around for awhile. I could have had dinner with all the samples of power bars and gels and gus and drinks. Anything you can think of sport related there seemed to be samples of. They also had just about everything and anything you'd ever want to buy there too from wetsuits to bikes to clothing. All I ended up getting was some body glide and a new pair of goggles (mask style) since the small race ones I've been using either hurt my face or leak,
Saturday I mostly wanted to rest but I went out to the lake for a very short swim to test my new googles and make sure that they didn't leak. Then I spent most of the day packing my bag. I went to bed at 10pm but didn't fall asleep until somewhere around 12 or 1am.
Wake up time: 3:15 am. I was going to take the El Downtown and let Greg sleep, but he decided to drive me and sleep in the car. Transition opened at 4:15am and I wanted to get there early as to get a good spot since I was going to have to find my bike in the middle of 8,000 other bikes. I did get there plenty early, but my rack ended up being in the middle of other racks so even though I was 3 bikes from the end I wasn't as close to the bike out as I wanted to be, but it still ended up being not such a bad spot to locate.
I set up transition and walked over to swim start. By then it was about 5am. The waves started at 6am. I sat on the break wall and watched the Sprint people swim until about 7:15. After that the International Wave started going, and I meet up with Greg and Gerri. I only got to see them for about 5 minutes before my wave had to line up for my 8:01 start time. I was in wave 26 of about 52 I think.
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