Massachusetts State Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

Sprint waves led then the Olympic distance waves followed. Our swim felt long, and with dim sunlight through overcast skies, it was a little hard to stay on-course, but I did OK. Just felt slow compared to other women in my wave, and didn't like getting passed towards the end by some blue caps in the next wave of swimmers, but hey, what can I do? I'm not a super-fast fishy.

Maybe not use cycling gloves and the time it takes to put them onto wet hands.

Mile 1 felt long, Mile 2 worse -- long steady hill, and it would be repeated at mile 12 on the second loop. This course had some odd dog-legs including a half-mile decent to a U-turn, which is followed by (of course) the same half-mile uphill. I suffered through it with two teammates, J & S, leap-frogging with me (drafting penalties were avoided at all costs!) and occasionally taunting me up the hills.

Teammate says after creeping up past me "I just passed the best looking pace booty on the course!" Of course I reply, "Sorry I'm just dragging a bit -- see you at the top of the hill, but don't wait on me" So I catch him mid-climb, out of the saddle, swinging the bike side-to-side. We descend together, but then another cyclist forces us to mid-road and I shout "On your Left, please stay Right". My teammate's like "whoa!, OK!" and clears the left side for me, so I blow past both. That felt good!

Then one guy from a competing team tried a pick-up line on me as I passed him on a downhill, and so I laughed but told him I'd buy him the beer later for being such a sweetie. He said I'd have to try "harder than that" (23 mph after a downhill to a rising short climb) to beat him. I think he caught up to me again on lap 2. But alas, no post-race beer (bummer!), poor guy.

Overall it was fun to go fast on the descents, but I felt like I was dogging it up the hills just a little. It was tough to keep cadence above 60 rpms and mph at 10+. Not an easy course.

Try to maintain more speed going into the climbs, stand more out of the saddle if that will keep my legs from fatiguing so much, and stretch the hammies more -- they were really tight and unhappy on the first loop.

Temps were good and I felt fine with just a little gatorade at first, then water later. I loved the out-and-back course which had me in sight of the returning, first finishers on my mile 1, their mile 5-6. It also kept me seeing and shouting for faster teammates as they finished from earlier waves or just with faster times.

I felt good though, so I ran pretty hard for the miles 2-5 and caught 2 teammates and training buddies. When this happens, I always have to ask == do I want to pass or do I want to chat? Today I was all about the passing...no time for chatting or relaxing. And when I passed my "pace booty" friend from the bike I had to latch onto another for the run. There she was ahead, miss J, with her 50-yo self setting a nice 8:30 min pace. I tried so hard to catch her, I'm sure it made my last mile my fastest. But she's fast and she prevailed. Beat me by about 40 seconds, and I congratulated her heartily at the line after my feel-good sprint.

Hit the finish line at full speed, then fall into my sweeties arms for a very sweaty kiss. I stretched some but mostly looked for food, which was scarce -- the sprinters finished early and ate most all of it! A few apple slices and oranges remained along with a few RedBull sugarfrees. Not the best, but OK. It was enough to keep me content with my teammates while we waited for the awards. We kept our MA State Champs status for a fifth consecutive year, yay!


This is always the hardest question for me...swim faster, swim more, bike faster, bike more, and run faster, run more are always my answers. I think my training is solid but could always be "faster and more".

I did run my own race and was amazed that I got a 1st Athena win out of it, which is a very nice surprise, especially since I was 7 minutes behind exiting the swim. I must be doing a few things right on the bike and run to make up almost 4 minutes on each! Plus I got my avg bike speed up to 18.5 mph which I think is a new PR pace for me on this distance.


Nice job, Max Performance Racing!