Water was 62 degrees. It looked like green skim milk. NO visability what so ever. They made us hang out in the water longer than necesasry. I line up in front, about 3 people off the inside start bouy. I should have been in the back, but decided that I didn't wat people kicking my face as we started. I would rather they swam over me from the back. It worked out. The super fast people just went right past me and I hung out with the BOP swimmers. I could tell I wasn't last, so that was good. On the way back from the turn around a girl was to my right and we were swimming together stroke for stroke. I just wanted keep up with her. As we approached the floating stage that was our exit point, there was a bit of a log jam. The bottom rungs of the ladders were at water level, so you really had to hoyst yourself up out of the water. We had to push a big girl up the ladder to help facilitae our getting out. I climbed out right next to my new friend from PHX who was doing the sprint.

I think I did ok for me at least. I didn't stop, I sighted well, I kept going even though some water was in my goggles and burning my eyes.

The Oly racks were WAY at the far end of transition. Got my wetsuit off OK, then started putting on all the bike crap. Putting on my gloves was new as I don't wear them for sprints, however I was glad I had them on this course!!! Bike mount was about 10 feet away. Due to congestion, I stood and mounted my bike rather than doing a running mount.

Get out of my wet suit a little faster. Suck on my heals a bit.

I have NO idea why I thought this was going to be a nice flat, fast course....but it was NOT!!! OMG!!! Hills, hills and more hills! Also, when the race started it was 70 degrees. By the time I finished it was 93. After I climbed out of transition up a killer hill to the looping course, and turned to go down the first down hill, I thought to myslef "OK..this is not a sprint...I think you are going to have to pace yourself." But then I realized that I really don't know how to do that. I just know how to GO until I can GO no more. So that's what I did. Even though the bike course was 4 loops of killer hills, I was able to really take advantage of the down hills, and I felt strong for the most part. I noted on 4 times of climbing this one particular long hill that I was able to maintain 9ish mph each time, so at least I wasn't slowing down.
Ok.....about the 10yr old doing the race. It was bad enough that probably half of the Sprint competitors were doing a Tri for the first time, and were not the most savy bike riders, but the 10 yrd old made what could have been a fatal split second decision. On the first major down hill she was gaining too much speed, and instead of controling her speed with her brakes, she just jumped off her bike, and in the process threw her bike out into the course. The woman behind her crashed as she hit the bike. I saw the mangled bike on my left and was looking for the rider just as I heard this frantic "OMG I just about died and my life flashed before my eyes" type of hyper freak out crying on my right. (I would have been doing the same.) My stop speed was almost 37 MPH, so who knows how fast she was going when she hit that girls bike. I am all for young competitors getting out there, but they need to have the training and mental capacity to make those split second decisions safely for all of those racing.

Umm...more hill training I guess. I'm not afraid of the hills...bring em on....I just had it in my head that my first Oly would be nice and flat and be a good bench mark for me to have an idea of what my time would be.
I drank 2 bottles of water on the bike, and ate probably 6 sports beans, and 2 electrolyte pills. Didn't eat the Twinkie!! There really wasn't a nice flat area where I could enjoy it, and with the heat, the cream would have probably ran out of it. On another course I would have eaten it!

Some super team tri chick racked her bike in my spot. Nice. So I scrambled to find another without taking someone else's spot.
I could NOT get my running shoes on! I have speed laces, and I think my feet were swollen or something. Took me too long to get my feet in.

Have to figure out why I could not get my shoes on!

I ran with my hydration belt (I don't like to depend on aide stations for my water!) I only had 2 bottles filled with water, and had my SPF 15 chapstick in the pocket. Thank goodness for that!!! My knee was not happy by this point, and progressivly got worse. It would really hurt when I would try to drop back into more of a Chi running position, so I had to stay more up right and as straight legged as I could. On one little 15 ft stretch of an uphill I and another woman walked. This actually hurt worse, so I just started jogging again. The aide stations had wet washcloths and they were great! I wrang them out a bit and put them behind my neck. It was in the 90's at this point with a high sun. It was HOT. I only had to stop at one aide station to fill up one of my bottles. I talked and ran for a while with a super fit woman and doing this helped keep my pace up for a bit. With about 1.5 miles to go I let her go ahead. My knee was screaming at this point, but I was so close!! I finally made it to the finish line and was happy with my time, until I found out that every distance was short.

Not have a bum knee!

Tried not to pass out as I was very hot! My HR would not come down so I got out of the sun and went to the cool bathroom and just sat. My tri suit was absolutely soaked and sweat just kept dripping off my hair onto my shoulders as I sat there. Finally my HR came down and I felt a little cooler, so I managed my way back to the crowd.


Well, given the condition of my knee, and the gnarly course, I feel I did well. The heat and the knee really got to me on the run. I just did what I could do, as always.


Ok...here's the thing about this race. It was not as organized as I expected or would have hoped. They managed to pull it all off, but everything was done at the last minute. The silver lining is that next year, it will be an IronGirl Triathlon with 2000 women rather than 500. With IronGirl taking the helm, I know that next year's race will be much better, and they said the bike course would be different. We would ride out to Lake Mead and back, and it would not be as hard. The venue was absolutely beautiful!