I wasn’t alone this weekend (not that I ever really am though), as this was truly a family affair! Kirsten joined me in the Olympic, Tyler raced the Sprint Tri and my Dad conquered the Duathlon, while Shane and my Mom cheered us all on.
In all honesty, I barely thought about the race until it hit me on Saturday afternoon - at which point I started to get really nervous and really anxious about it (which, considering I had no real expectations for this race and had planned to treat it more as a hard training day, I thought the amount and level of nerves I was experiencing was a bit odd, but what can you do eh?).
So, let’s see. Like any good triathlon, let’s start with the swim shall we?
My swim was not great. About 5-10 strokes in, my Road ID (which I wear as a medic alert bracelet) got knocked off my wrist. Luckily I saw it flying through the air (and land with a sploosh right in front of me) and was able to grab it and shove it down the front of my wetsuit before it sank to the bottom of dirty old Elk Lake. Unfortunately, the whole event kind of flustered me a bit, as I hadn’t come off my anticoagulants for this race, so I thought it was important that I didn’t go out on the bike without some sort of medic alert on my body. And so, I worried the whole swim that I was going to lose it as I stripped my wetsuit off in T1. Anyway, the few seconds of breast stroking it took to catch it and shove it in my wetsuit, plus my senseless worry, sort of knocked my rhythm out of whack a bit and I just never really felt like I found a good pace or comfortable rhythm after that. Realistically, it wasn’t a terrible swim; I just know I am capable of better.
T1 was a bit slow, mainly because I needed to fish my medic alert out of the chest of my wetsuit (it was still there – yay!) and put it back on my wrist. Other than that though, I managed a relaxed speed and was on my way fairly quickly with a decent ‘flying mount’.
The bike was definitely better than the swim (which doesn’t happen that often for me). After the Victoria Sprint at the end of June, where it felt like my legs were full of cement and hurt like hell, I had kind of decided before this race that my goal for the bike was going to be to focus on my cadence and not try to kill it or muscle up the hills, but just to spin them in hopes of feeling good for the run... and I think I accomplished that.
Admittedly, there were a few moments at the start of the bike where I was asking myself why I didn’t do the sprint and where my quads and hips were hurting pretty good, but once I got into it, I actually enjoyed it. I’ve ridden West Saanich Road enough that it is familiar, but not so much this season that I’m tired of it, so while I knew where I was going and could anticipate some of the ups and downs, it didn’t feel too predictable (if that makes any sort of rambling sense).
Another positive from the bike was my nutrition. I feel like I've been slacking on race nutrition this year, so I was glad I pulled it all together.
T2 was decent. My dismount was pretty good and I felt like I was at the rack pretty quick. I had a weird moment when I first got off the bike where I was quite dizzy and felt really nauseous, but it didn’t last too too long. I put socks on for the run (which I haven’t done in any other race this year) so that definitely slowed me down a little, but otherwise, again, I felt relaxed and quick(ish).
The run was, well, the run. My left calf was up to its usual tricks and was cramping/hurting pretty badly for the first couple km’s, but I guess I knew it was going to go away eventually so I just tried to push through it. I actually felt like I was running really slowly (like painfully slow), but I was kind of at the point mentally where I didn’t really care what my finish time was, I just wanted to finish the race and feel good (both physically and mentally)… so I just kind of plugged along.
I passed a few people and got passed by some as well and surprisingly, I just kind of enjoyed myself – on the run (weird, I know). That said, every time I heard footsteps behind me I expected to see Kirsten go whipping past (which luckily, never happened). When I finally got to the point of about 3 or 4k left I think I picked it up a little and at the end (while it was by no means fast) I was pleasantly surprised that my run time was what it was, as I thought it was going to be much much slower.
So, overall, I’d say it was a good day. I had fun, got a PB (even though that was inevitable considering this was my first Oly), got a surprise 3rd place finish in my age group, and felt really good after the race physically – to the point where I think I probably should have tried to push myself a little harder, haha.
It was also great to see my Dad cross the finish line of his first Duathlon (with a 2nd place AG finish to boot!) - even though I think he's a little crazy for choosing to Run-Bike-Run. Two run legs in one race? No thank you ;)
Most photos courtesy of: Chris Mcdonald at http://www.cjmedia.smugmug.com. One or two courtesy of Mom :)
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