Cold, Windy, and Wet, three very accurate descriptor words.
5th Place Age Group finish, 16th Overall Female, and 4th fastest women’s run time.
I’ve done a lot of “deep thinking” since the race and just trying to figure out why I am left with such feelings of being “empty” after a race. This certainly wasn’t an “A” race on the schedule, I’ve been sick and on “rest” for the better part of 2011, and I still did relatively well. So what the heck is the problem? The honest answer is “I don’t know”, and the reality is I would probably still be disappointed in myself even if I randomly showed up to the Boston Marathon today in hopes to run and win and then didn’t!!!! (note to any newbie readers that I’ve never ran a marathon before, but I do enter every race/competition with the bizarre mentality that I’m going to win the whole thing, men and pros included!). So I think this is just a slow and humbling process. Granted I hope I never loose my crazy enthusiastic race spirit and urge to race hard in hopes to do my best, I just hope that someday I won’t take it so personal that I didn’t beat The Boss! :)
Anyways, now would be a good time to note I don’t have any pictures. Sorry. The Boss has been working all weekend and I couldn’t snag the few pics that he took either. So, I’ll keep it short and sweet for you.
First of all, I NEED to say a giant thank you and hello to all of the folks this weekend who said hi in person or on the course. I cannot tell you how many people called out “Bertie” or “Go Bobs”. I also over heard a female runner telling her other female running friend that “that’s the girl who made that triathlon cake”!! So that was definitely a great feeling to have people say hi or cheer, so Thanks again!
The Swim: I have to ask this one question (because I honestly don’t know the answer) “How freaking hard is it to measure a swim course to accuracy?” Seriously, am I being a brat here? I live in a house with the Garmin “GPS” device master and I think I have learned a thing or two about GPS over the last few years…could we at least get the course somewhere within a 500yrd accuracy? Or for the love of Joe, if we are going to screw up the distance measured for the swim could we at least make it “SHORT”?? All I can say is that “race enthusiasm” I spoke of earlier pretty much dies upon arrival to my T1 rack and I hear a friend call out that it was 30 minutes in the water!! HOLY COW (well, okay, I said worse than that) what were you doing out there? Of course you never tell yourself “it’s okay, the course was long” instead I say “wow, you blew it”. With pre-race hopes of getting out of the water around 24 minutes, hearing my time was 30 was definitely a blow to the sails. Now off to the bike.
The Bike: With the winds predicted to be upwards of 20+MPH and cold temps I had pretty much everything in transition ready to make a game time decision. But when I pulled off the wetsuit it didn’t feel that cold. I did swim with my arm warmers and calf compression sleeves under my wetsuit. I figured I was going to get soaked anyways, at least swimming with them did two things for me 1) saved T1 time, 2) pre-heated them for the cold rain about to ensue. In the end I didn’t find the bike that cold. Windy- YES, cold-NO. What I didn’t have in the transition area that would have been a better option for me would have been my regular training wheels. Instead I biked with my Zipps; yup just a little extra sails on the bike for the wind to catch and throw little ol’ me across the road. So to sum up the bike, it was super wet making the road super slick, and it was super windy making it even more unpredictable. With gusts of wind coming from who knows what direction next, I was pretty conservative on the bike, there were many times during each loop that I would hit a less protected portion of the road and the wind would literally move me from the far right hand side of the lane to the yellow line within a pedal stroke. With most efforts focusing on staying vertical and in the correct lane, aero position was off the table and speed took a bit of a sacrifice. The bike took about 5 minutes longer than either of my bike times on this course from last years races, of course I was not pleased.
Helpful words from:
My Coach- “don’t be too hard on yourself about the bike. Hindsight, you should have put rocks in your pockets”, also, “it’s better that you sacrificed 3-4 minutes of your bike being cautious than to have sacrificed 3-4 weeks of training for Bosie 70.3 because you were recovering from a crash”.
The Boss- “I’m kind of glad you took it easy on the bike. I don’t really want our wedding pictures to feature you with stiches and road rash on your face.” Thanks Boss, your love is undeniable :)
The Run: Other than the fact that I had to run my brand new pretty sneakers through the mud, I was very pleased with my run. I was very close to going sub 7min/mile with a 7:05 pace. Mentally and physically the run felt great. It was nice to finish on a high note.
That’s all I have for the Race Report. But I would recommend heading over to a good friend’s blog, I’m hoping she is going to post her race report since she had a very interesting swim and bike portion of the race!
More treats for later the week!
7 comments:
We all have to fight that sort of negative thinking pretty hard! You know the drill - truly you can't let hearing your swim time affect your morale, everyone else will have been similarly affected by course measurement; and it sounds like you did a very good job staying safe on the bike course, I thoroughly agree with the notion that losing a couple minutes is much wiser than losing weeks of training to a broken bone! Glad the run let you end on a happier note.
ha, thanks for the shout out! I just posted my race report.
Well the good news is that it can only go up from here! (I hope..)
Nicely done! I can relate to your story on so many levels, especially the natural instinct to compare yourself to The Boss! I have to fight that same instinct against my husband. It nags and it nags, but he always says (rightly) "It sucks, I know, but you can't compare yourself to men." It was smart to go easy on the bike and come home in one piece!
Great job fighting through those conditions and still putting up a solid performance. And seriously - why can't the swim course ever be short??? The course of my dreams, that is.
A long swim would drive me nuts. Especially a 500 m long swim. I add enough distance to the swim on my own, thank you very much!
does it matter if everyone else has to swim the same distance?
It was great to finally meet you! All things considered - it was a pretty terrible day for racing and anyone who toughed it out deserves credit. Just use that mental toughness you gained in this race for Boise and things will work out when it matters.
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