TandemHearts

Sometimes I really think I must be crazy.  Who else, other than an insane person, would subject themselves to the tortures of a triathlon?  And keep going back for more?

Today’s race did not go quite as I had hoped, but I still had a pretty good time.  The start was delayed by fifty minutes because the lifeguards had to rescue someone from the first wave of swimmers.  I can not imagine how terrifying it must be to think you are drowning and having been a lifeguard, I know how scary it is to actually have to do a rescue.  The woman went off to the hospital in an ambulance and I hope she has a speedy recovery.

Naturally, I am using the delayed start as my excuse for my poor race results.    My swim, of course, was great.  It’s a short swim, only 400 yards or so, and it’s over pretty quickly. Just like Barb’s Race,  my plan was to swim it like a warm up and I stuck to the plan.  I wasn’t wearing my watch, so I don’t know my time.  But it felt good and I was in the top third or so of my wave.

At the first transition  I put on my Garmin GPS watch.  It doesn’t swim, so I had to wait to put it on.  I really wanted to know how long the bike and the run courses are for this race as after I raced it last year, I kind of suspected that they were not quite  as long as advertised.   My results say the bike portion is shorter and the run section is longer than the advertised distances.

I felt a little weird as I got on the bike because I still had water in both my ears, but I didn’t want to take care of it until I had gotten away from the frenzy of the start.  The swim is in an old quarry, so of course you have to first ride up a hill to get out of the quarry.  The hill is really not that bad, but this is a race that has many first timers and many riders with shaky skills.  Thom sits on the hill to take pictures and he says it’s pretty frightening to watch some of the racers get up the hill and coming back down is even worse.  Once off the hill and away from the bulk of the riders, I got the water out of my ears and then worked on settling into a good ride.   I wasn’t wearing a heart rate monitor, so I had to go off perceived exertion.  I don’t think that was such a good idea, because in retrospect, I think I pretty much hammered the entire ten mile course.  It was FUN though!  And I felt really good on the bike.   A nice change from Barb’s Race where my legs felt like lead the whole time.

A couple of minor annoyances: as we made the turn on the out and back section I was catching a slower rider and   I decided I would wait and pass her after the turn.  She got super slow through the turn, didn’t hold her line and then she pulled her foot out of her pedal and slowed even more.  I ended up scrubbing even more speed than I had intended.  I’m not sure what I could have done differently as I don’t think there was enough space to pass her safely before the turn around.  Oh well… that’s racing.  What was even more annoying was the lack of traffic control at an intersection we had to cross.   I ended up sitting at a red light for about 50 seconds in the middle of a pack of women, some of whom did not know how to get their feet back onto their pedals when the light changed.  I know last year there was a cop directing traffic here.  Finally, I found myself behind a few women as we descended down the hill back into the transition area.  This is not a hill that requires braking until you get to the bottom.  It’s not a big hill so you don’t have to worry that you’re going to pick up a lot of speed.  It’s not twisty, so why were they on the brakes at the top?  Who knows?

My run transition was pretty quick.  I had left a Hammer Gel packet open at my spot so I could eat something before the run.  I had expected that there would be volunteers handing out water at the exit to the run course, but there weren’t any this year.  I would have taken the time to get a swig from my water bottle if I had known that as it was beginning to get rather warm.  As it turns out, the first water station was two miles into the 3 mile course.  Not good.  It was at the start of the run that things began to go downhill.  I kind of wanted to hurl, but at the same time I was kind of hungry and I was definitely thirsty.  Pretty soon, everything began to ache, not just my legs, but my shoulders, my hips, my ankles – everything was getting achy, not tired, achy.  In retrospect it was kind of odd and I don’t know what caused it.  I ended up walking huge sections of the course.  I would run until I felt like screaming, then I would walk  a little bit and repeat.  It was nice having the Garmin, because I knew exactly how much ground I had covered.  Every time I started to run I would talk to myself about getting into a nice cadence, that this time everything would feel okay.  It’s amazing how many times you can tell yourself everything will be okay and it isn’t, but you keep on hoping anyway.  Strangely, at about 2.8 miles into the course, with just a half a mile to go, I finally felt good.  I was able to kick it up a notch and had a nice sprint into the finish.  Whatever…

The race was not as well organized this year as it was last year.  I suspect that they did not get enough volunteers as they have in the past.  I like having this race on my calendar because it is a nice course.  It’s a short enough distance that even though I’m back in the classroom I can still train for it.  I like the cause and I like the venue.  It’s close to home and the date does not conflict with the Knoxville Double bike ride that we volunteer for.  If I decide to do it again next year I think I will just plan on being more self sufficient on the run.

Click on the picture above to go to the gallery.

Update:  The results are posted.  I finished 33/126 in my age group, 199/700 overall.    I was 13th in my age group on the swim, 16th on the bike and 80th on the run.    This year’s winning times were approximately 7% slower than last year’s.  My time was 13% slower.  I’m still feeling kind of lethargic today, one day after the race.  I hope I am not coming down with anything.