Spirit of Racine Half Ironman Triathlon - Aquabike

Warmed up in the water prior and felt not very nervous since we were laughing at how the men were standing up during their race because the water was so shallow...
The wave was all females 35+ and Athenas and was huge...it was a roughstart since everyone was rounding that first buoy together so it was gridlock! Hard to get away from everyone!! This was a tough rough start...no one kicked me so that was good.

start in front and sprint away hard to get out and ease up to get hr back down again...will do that at Pleasant Prairie. Will do 10 X 100 sprints to get used to this concept following each 100 by a 50 easy .

The start of the bike was hard since there was so many people trying to clip in at the same time. Almost had someone run into me.

Overall women for Aquabike I was 3rd. Last year I finished the bike in 2:48 i think...I wanted 2:43 this year. Was very very happy with 2:38!
This was definately a ride that showed me I can push on the bike. Although I should have drank more this is what I ate:
400 cals of Hammer gel
100 cals of Power gels with caffine
150 cals of gatorade
100 cals of Heed
Total cals: 750 and I should have had 240 cals per hour (did great with that)
Sprinted the hills that were steep so as not to loose speed. Otherwise keep it in a low gear the entire ride but maintained a cadence of at least 70-80 so I wasn't mashing gears and wasting energy. If I felt my cadence slowing I would get out of the saddle to try to get back up the cadence but sometimes I had to downshift and just have a faster turnover. Tried to stay loose upper body but that was tough when my legs were screaming. Focused on pulling up, check the garmin for speed and tried to never let it drop below 17 on a hill and 23 on the flat...if I was coming off a hill I would drop a gear and peddle hard to maintain that speed until I couldn't stand it any longer...then recover and drink. All my stategizing kept my mind busy and made the ouch go away for a while. Almost felt like this was my 56 mile time trial ;-) SO MUCH FUN!


Drink more and not the heed....stomach didn't like it.

What is a warm down? lol


? maybe I didn't drink enough...who knows


Looking forward to next year...and running it next year!