Black Squirrel Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

The official results list the distance as 1000 yards, however based on last year's time and the RD announcing it at the awards ceremony, the swim was short. I estimate 800 yards but it could have been shorter

Without warning there was a loud sound [don't remember if it was a bell, a whistle, a horn, a shot, etc] and we all started running into the water. It was very confusing! I hit my start button and started running. As we were standing around waiting to start I got near the group of people who had wetsuits on because I hoped they'd be a little faster and I could just draft off them. My goal was to sprint the first 150-200 and try to hang onto the fasties through the rest of the swim. That worked out pretty well. Whenever I didn't see bubbles or feel feet I would sight and find someone else. I also didn't feel as zig-zaggy as I did at the State Games so that gave me some confidence. At about the 300 mark I went to breathe and caught a splash of water. Wretched a little bit but didn't vomit. Then about three strokes later - same thing! So that knotted my stomach up for about 300 more yards or so. Kept on peoples' feet and actually put my elbow into someone's face or head. Looked over the next few breaths and he appeared to be fine so I just kept the hammer down. There's a long entry into the lake [the lake's deepest point is only 9 feet] so I swam until I felt sand and kept swimming a few more strokes. Still, coming out of the water was annoying and felt like it was taking forever. Looked down at watch and saw the split of my life - 0:00:00! Turns out when I hit start it didn't register for some reason so I had to wait for the official results to know my time. My goggles ended up sealing perfectly too, which was awesome!

Nothing. This was my best tri swim ever.

That's weird that they show my T1 as 1:56 when I have the split from the timing mat at the entrance of the transition area and the mat at the exit as 1:17. ??? Oh well, it's in the books. Thought this was a good T1 but apparently not. I've had better, anyway. Felt great through this one compared to dizzy/lightheaded through others. Maybe I should have gone faster on the swim? :)

Next tri I WILL have my new cycling shoes to go with my pedals and cleats and my T1 times will be much faster. [my bike times too - hopefully :)]

The official results list the distance as 18.29 which was the same as the 2007 distance, however the course was changed in 2008. After mapping the route on BT I came up with 19.79mi.

Came out feeling good on the bike. The loop around the lake was pretty uneventful. Right out of T1 I passed 2 people who were taking their sweet time getting on their bikes [just run and jump, people!] They passed me a few minutes later and one of them started drafting off the other. I ended up catching them and drafting as well. There was nothing in the race information that says it wasn't draft legal so I went ahead and took advantage of that! Made my way onto the trail and after 15 minutes I took a gel and some water. Caught up to Ali [aliclimb] way sooner than I thought - she's been focusing on running lately so I can't really toot my horn here! Made it to the turn-around and hadn't seen Jeremy yet. After maybe 3/4 mile I saw him in a peloton of probably 9 people or so. I felt really amped after the turn-around and started picking up the pace. Passed 3 or 4 people and was feeling very strong. Then disaster struck.

It was a stupid mistake, really. The trail dipped under a road and came back up, then made a slight right bend. I charged down the hill like I always do [might as well use my weight to my advantage, right?!] and ran up on these two guys. One of them was caught behind a slower cyclist and I was going to follow him around the front guy but there wasn't going to be enough room to pass so I hung back until there was a gap in the oncoming traffic [this is the problem with a bike course being an out-and-back on a trail]. As the gap came I started to push. I figured I'd stand up to get more power down to the pedals - noob mistake. My bike promptly tipped over and I began to skid across the path. [is it weird that my arm started to tingle as I'm writing this?] I thought I had made it all the way across so that nobody would whack me coming the opposite direction - turns out I was wrong. A guy ran over my bike and went end-over-end. Right before he came down hard on his shoulder/back his face had a shocked/disfigured expression on it. I thought he was pissed. I was riding in a group ride one time and one of the guys who was with us went down like that and ended up cracking and bruising ribs, so I went over to the guy to check and see if he was okay. I picked his bike up and moved it out of the path so nobody else would get injured, then I grabbed his hand to help him up. I asked, "Do you want to come up or just sit there for a minute?" He elected to sit. While he did that I checked out his bike - the aero bars were offset a little bit and the chain had come off the front ring, but otherwise it appeared to be okay. I put the chain back on as he was getting up and one of the volunteers asked if we wanted her to call someone. I said I was fine and I was going to finish but he really didn't say much.

After I got his chain back on I grabbed my bike and left. Surprisingly everything was straight, nothing rubbed, clicked, ground, or anything. Tried to get back into the aero position and felt this pain in my left arm. Look down and there's a huge lump about 4 inches long, 1-¹/₂" wide that was sticking out maybe a half to three quarters of an inch or so, covered in blood. That'll hurt tomorrow! So I got into a modified aero position that didn't put pressure on that part of my arm and rode the rest of the way like that. It was almost surreal - there were people both ahead of me and behind me before the wreck, but afterward there was nobody. And I mean NOBODY. At points I could see about ³/₄ mile ahead of me and nobody was there, as well as about ¹/₂ mile behind me. My mind started playing tricks on me, thoughts like "maybe everyone else already went by" or "maybe you didn't read the course map right and it's actually a loop, not an out-and-back." It was eerie and lonely.

Took another gel with about a mile left to go on the bike. Actually it was only half a gel - didn't feel like eating the other half for some reason. I made up my nutrition plan at about 9:00 the night before, so I wasn't too worried about not eating it all. Sipped some water and really cruised in to T2. Avg'd about 16-17 that last mile or so and three or four people finally caught up to me and passed me right before T2.

Not wreck! D'oh! I should have just grabbed the drops and surged ahead; looking at the results it looks like I could have grabbed another 10+ spots in my bike rank if I had not crashed and kept the speed I was at. My nutrition was fine [frozen water bottle thawed by bike time + 2 gels], my pace and cadence were fine as well. I was surprised how good I felt, especially during the loop around the lake. I was averaging 21 mph and was still not labored in my breathing and didn't have that thick chest feeling like I do when my heart rate is up. I still give this a "good" rating.

D'oh! 4th fastest T2!!! I'm slipping! Top times were :09, :10, and :20. I have no clue what those first two people did! Maybe they had personal bike catchers?

This will be my last lightning-fast T2 as I will have bike pedals and shoes installed for my next tri. In all likelihood, in order to maintain a swift transition time, I will get some elastic laces for my running shoes so it's rack bike/helmet off/shoes on/GO!

This is the only part of the event which was accurately measured. I did not do well on this run. I don't do well on any runs, tri or otherwise, but this one was especially poor. I was hoping to go under 1 hour, but that did not happen. I attribute this to two things: 1) my second toe on my right foot was "sprained" - that's what Trainer Dave said anyway as he was cleaning me up after the event, and 2) Inadequate training in the weeks preceding the event. I should have gone out for one or two long-ish brick sessions. Maybe 1 hr bike and 20-30 min. run. I don't think my body was as ready as it should have been for the 2+ hours of biking and running. I'm sure the bike wreck didn't help as it kinda shook me up and I was bleeding some, but I'll leave that up to the experts to decide.

They added 2 aid stations this year which was great! Problem was that they had them at miles 2, 3, and 4. I think they would have served us better at 1, 3, and 5, but that's just one guy's opinion. Jeremy caught me not long before the first aid station and we chatted for about 1-2 min. Turns out he made a wrong turn somewhere and went about a half mile or more out of the way before he got back on the right track. Whoops! Guess that probably evens us out on our bike splits with my wreck. I was hoping to have a 4 min. lead on him going into the run and he was hoping to beat me to T2 so I guess in a sense I "won" that, but he completely SMASHED me in the run, which I knew he would :)

Ran through the first aid station, walked through the second and third, then walked two more times between the third aid station and the finish. I told myself that at 55 minutes, no matter where I was, I was going to grab another gear and try to hold it to the finish. At 55 minutes I did that, and at 55:10 I said "ah forget it." Whenever someone would go by me I'd check to see what AG they were in to see if I should try to hang with them or not :) Silly, I know, but I was just holding on during the last part of the run to not get passed by anyone in my AG. In the finishing chute a guy blew by me and wasn't in my AG so I waved my arm like "Bah, let him go ahead" and got a chuckle out of the crowd. Jeremy gave me five as I went by and then I heard someone say "AAH - blood everywhere!" Wasn't sure if that was someone from our [BT] crew or someone else genuinely disgusted with me, but it didn't bother me any.

I think I've said this a few times now, but I'll say it again in case someone can learn from my mistake:

DON'T INCREASE MY MILEAGE TOO QUICKLY AND GET PLANTAR FASCIITIS! AAGH!

This year has been one punch in the gut after another because of limited ability to run. I will now unveil my new BT log caption of 2009-

2009 - The Year of the Run

I'm going to spend the next few months resting and recovering, really limiting anything I do with my foot so I can beat this thing ONCE and FOR ALL. Then in 2009 I'm going to run my face off, only this time I'm going to be SMART about it, replacing shoes when they need it, icing, stretching, increasing mileage VERY gradually, and hopefully having a much more successful triathlon and running season in '09.

Walked straight through the finisher chute and didn't search anybody out like I usually do - I went straight for the food. I was thirsty and maybe a little hungry, but really just overall depleted. Ate two or three orange slices as Ali made her way over to see how I was doing. Chatted with her and my mom popped up. Then before we knew it Brynn was there. There was a guy there snapping photos - he probably took 10 or more of me until I finally asked "What's this guy doing taking pictures of only me?" He said "I'm waiting for you to take a drink so I can get a picture of your arm" so I said, "Oh in that case-" and took a nice long chug with my huge arm "bleh" all up in his viewfinder. He asked me for my name and I asked if he was with the newspaper. Turns out he was so I made sure he got the spelling correct. The Daily Nonpareil will always be etched in my mind as The Daily Mistake - they can't edit to save their lives. He said he didn't choose what pics got to go in the paper and my mom said that nothing had shown up about the event as of yet.

After I felt like a normal person again I went over to Trainer Dave [he was the athletic trainer at the high school I went to and is just a really cool and nice guy]. He cleaned me up and covered up my boo boos. The guy who had half of his *** hanging out of his pants and a butt-cheek that I would not pay anybody to sit on today mentioned that I should look and see what my hip and thigh looked like under my tri shorts. I had purposely avoided doing so because I knew what lay underneath was not going to be pretty. And it wasn't. More rash [this one more like a carpet burn than road rash, likely due to the tri shorts] and a huge lump. Great, now Dave gets to put even more stuff on me! Bleh. Stood around through the awards ceremony in hopes that BABes 2 would get a medal for their first-place performance in the Womens' team division [that I just saw listed on the brochure, by the way] but they only gave out the award for first place overall team.


Already been through that.


Giving this one a 3. Things I'm going to suggest:

1) correct t-shirt size in packets
2) CHISEL-TIP markers, none of that needle tip crap. That stuff hurts!
3) countdown to swim start
4) bike course re-route [which they are planning on changing anyway]
5) run water station re-distribution, miles 1-3-5 vs. 2-3-4.