Subaru US Women's Triathlon Series - Naperville - TriathlonSprint

My best swim ever. By a huge margin, actually! Started outside towards the front and while I never had clear water, I just kept swimming. I sighted well (though not too much sighting is required here) and didn't let all the body contact bother me -- in my head, the fact that there were so many people around me just meant that I was still with my own wave! Which was very exciting for me. :)

As a former (!!) bad swimmer, this great swim buoyed me (heh) for the rest of the race (which didn't go nearly as well). One of my racing goals had been to hit a faster than 2:00/100m pace, and I cleared that by quite a bit. 1.5 minutes faster than my fastest time here, almost 2 minutes faster than last year.

Coming out of the water, I looked at my watch and was completely stoked to see SUCH a low time. I went in knowing I could do it, but with low expectations: no panic, strong stroke, under-control breathing. Hit on all these and came out of the water in good fashion.

Oh - and one of the other BEST things about this swim? When I came out of the water, there were my parents cheering for me!! While they support all my craziness, they have little to no interest in actually WATCHING me indulge in all this, so it meant a lot that they got up early to come out and see me race.

At this race? Not a damn thing.

There is a long-ass run from the swim to the transition area (about 300m, so I hear) and then I was at the very far end of the transition area (by bike in and out, but as far away as possible from the swim in and run out). I don't think I could have done this transition a whole lot faster than I did, without substantially changing how I do things.

At some point, I have to take the jump and race sockless -- that'll cut some time off this transition. I also need to master the flying mount, because I lose time running slowly with my bike shoes on.

The bike was disappointing. I had really hoped to go sub-40 (though when I was thinking that, I didn't realize the course was longer this year) -- or at least average over 20mph. I hit the first loop exactly how I wanted to and didn't feel like I was pushing too hard. Got my gel in first thing, and was drinking every 5 minutes, but it didn't take too long before it felt like the gatorade was in my throat, practically, so I switched to just water. The second lap, I saw Ellen starting her first lap, chatted with her for a few seconds and then took off. And then sometime after that, I totally lost focus and slowed down -- just tired, and it got windy and not so good. Then - Ellen caught up with me again, kind of snapped me out of the mental demons I was battling, and got me going again. But - the damage was done by that time.

Not sure. I'm sure the delayed start impacted me here -- not enough calories to be racing that hard (I know you're supposed to be able to do a sprint on essentially no nutrition, but I'm not one of those people). But in the end, I just lost focus. Let my fatigue get in the way of pushing hard. Lesson learned.

Again - not too much I would do differently here. When I racked my bike, my back tire was resting on one of my running shoes, but that cost me maybe 5 seconds. Did better at putting on my running shoes, and just grabbing the hat and race belt and putting them on while moving.

Nada.

This run absolutely sucked. I had no legs under me from the very beginning -- had a hard time pushing through. My first mile was really slow -- 8:50 -- and even though I felt like I had really picked up the pace, my second mile was only marginally better at 8:37. Took a gel first thing, and that was good, but I didn't have nearly enough to drink on the course, I don't think. From the outset, I was struggling -- my shoulder hurt (I don't know - when I run hard and am tired, I get a really bad pain in my shoulder/neck... probably too tense, even though I was very aware of relaxing and keeping my shoulders down) and I'm sure my HR was z4/z5. The third mile was fast -- 7:22 -- which makes me believe that it HAS to be short, because there's just no way I was going that fast. Didn't even have much of a kick for the last .1, which means that at least I left it all out on the course.

Again, not sure. Was it nutrition? The heat? Pushing too hard on the bike? This run has always been good to me, so I just really don't know what happened.

Saw my parents on the final stretch, and then located them at the finish area. Because I went out first, I was able to wait and see everyone else finish. YAY! First Jen came in, and then Ellen... we stood around talking to Jon and my parents and then made our way to find some lunch.


Race delay. Not sure what else. Perhaps it just wasn't my day out there... but, overall, my swim and transitions were spot on.


I LOVE this race. Great first race of the season since it's local and all women and FLAT. It's a GREAT race for first-timers, too. About my only complaint (and the only reason I won't give it a "5") is that there's always a huge line to get back into transition to get bikes. Seems that they should be able to make that better. But - we still have to consider that they're letting us back in and there are still people racing! so - I guess they're trying not to flood the transition area with people who might get in the way.