My Year to Tri (Beginner and Intermediate Group) - OPEN (Page 4)

Welcome Sarah!
At least in the North East you can swim in almost any body of water, here in Florida we have to be careful of gators & snakes!

My doctor confirmed planter fasciitis. He gave me a list of streches & exercises that I was mostly doing already. I'm about 3 training weeks and a taper week away from my next race. I've been babying it, for the past 4-5 weeks, keeping it taped most of the day, doing low impact biking/swiming/elliptical. It's feeling better and I'm considering trying running on it next week, maybe 5-10 minutes to start.

Hey friends! I raced the sprint distance at Boulder Sunset Triathlon this weekend and wanted to share my race report with you all!

Boulder Sunset Triathlon
This was supposed to be my Ironman year. Instead it has become my recovery year. I busted my last year posting finishing times that I felt would prove my readiness for 140.6. Instead I ended up with ankle surgery. It wasn’t anything I did wrong, no catastrophic accident, not over-use. Simply an ankle sprain from 1997 that lead to multiple bone spurs that eventually broke off and began creating havoc at the end of last season. So instead of preparing for the longest race of my life this year, I had surgery to remove the offending bone spurs and repair the torn (almost detached) ligament that had allowed them to form. Overall, a minor 12 week setback that will allow me to go forward as a better, stronger athlete. So I scrapped this year’s race plan and opted for a more realistic one, one sprint triathlon in Sept and an Olympic in Oct.
Because of the uncertainty of this year, I opted to train myself instead of working with a coach. This has given me a wonderful opportunity to learn how to structure training plans, learn how the ATP manager on Training Peaks works and overall just learn so much more about myself! Leading up to the Boulder Sunset, I felt my training was great! I was consistently swimming double the race distance in open water with very little anxiety. The bike has always been my strength and I’ve been putting in some strong bike workouts. My running has been slow going, since it’s the hardest on my newly repaired ankle. So I’ve been working my way through a couch to 10k program I found online. By race day, I was already walk/running 4+ miles at a time. I do wish I had programmed a few more brick workouts.

Race Day
It felt so good to be back in transition! Getting set-up, going through the pre-race rituals. Seeing familiar happy, excited faces. Got a group photo with my team. Going down to the swim start felt like a celebration of the time we had all put into getting here.

Swim
The swim started with a beach start. The more aggressive competitors running and jumping at the front. Myself and many others taking our time, wadding in slowly. I don’t do a swim warm-up before a race. I’ve found it creates more anxiety for me. So instead, I treat that first 200 as my warm-up. There was a lot of anxious swimmers in the water. I could see a lot of people breast stroking and back stroking as I slowly made my way by. I felt calm but could not settle into my usual breathing pattern. Not sure if it was the poor air quality or just a little race jitters. Finished the swim better than I expected with a time of 25:41 for a little over 900 meters (including the run up the beach into transition).
T1
I should have peed in my wetsuit, I tried to pee in my wetsuit, but I was unable to pee in my wetsuit. Transition time of 4:06 due to port-o-pottie stop
Bike
Since I’m coaching myself this year, I’ve been doing a lot of research on program building. One of the pieces of advice that really stuck with me was from a pro triathlete who mentioned that speed doesn’t come from having the highest RPE but instead from powerful efficiency. So my main focus on all of my workouts has been on developing powerful efficiency. I’ve been consistently riding 30 – 40 miles so I felt confident going for broke on this course. I haven’t done a sprint triathlon since 2013 and it felt so good to just go all out and push, not worrying about leaving anything in the tank for the higher mileage. I felt amazing! One of the blessings of being a slow swimmer is the adrenaline rush you get from passing everyone on the bike. And I flew! I had the 3rd slowest swim time in my age division but the 6th fastest bike split! 17.2 miles in 55 min. An 18.8mph average. Yeah!!
T2
Could have been faster, but I took my time. Taking in some BCAA’s, finishing my bike bottle of Tailwind and preparing for the slough up onto the dam. Time 3:11
Run
I tried to set out onto the run with no expectation. I’ve only been back to running for 8 weeks. The legs felt sluggish. I went back to my mantra, powerful efficiency, and focused on my posture and driving from the hips up the hill. I was sucking wind!! I felt so slow! At the 1 mile mark I checked my pace. 11:30 per mile! Damn! Not bad at all! I was doing this! I kept cruising along, cheering on friends and teammates. I walked through the aid station, took half a Gu and jogged on, stopped at the same aid station on the way back and took the other half of my Gu. Second mile was 12 min/mile. Not bad at all! Cruised for the last mile, enjoying the day, friends and race atmosphere. Finished with a run time of 34:37 and a total finishing time of 2:02:47. If I had only peed in my wetsuit, I would be been under 2 hours!!
Recovery
The best part about racing short course is you get done so early!! I definitely felt spent but not totally hammered like I do after a 70.3. My appetite came back in about an hour. I was a lot my stiff and muscle sore than I had expected! But looking over my data, I spent a significant part of my race in an anaerobic state so I guess that’s to be expected. I’m resting for the next couple of days and then back at it! Pumpkinman Olympic Tri in Nevada is in 8 weeks and I’m super excited!

Nice! Glad you could adjust your training & expectations to enjoy the sprint.

You'll have to give us a race report for Pumpkinman, my brother lives in Las Vegas and I was looking at it as a destination race in a couple of years.