I ran around like a madwoman packing last night. Since it has been 10 months since my last triathlon, I almost felt like I was starting from scratch again. I was terrified I'd leave something important at home, like my bike.
I was also feeling horribly unprepared. I haven't trained nearly enough lately as it's been challenging to fit into my schedule. I really do like the late-night swim workouts as it's really nice to have "me" time at the end of the day, but there's only a couple of nights a week that works for my family and the days that it does, "stuff" has been coming up lately.
I used to not work out/blame not working out if I couldn't go at night. Since some of the reasons I couldn't work out were actually valid, I had to start finding other ways to train. Some of them were utter failures, like the day I decided to try and get in a swim while my daughter was at preschool. Know what? That's exactly when they do the hour-long water aerobics class at my gym. I may try that another day, but I really needed lap time, so I bailed, went home, and walked her home from school.
I've spent time on my bike trainer and tried riding outside with my daughter in the trailer.
Can we just say right now, that I am the Queen of Flats? Out of four possible tires (two on the bike and two on the trailer), guess how many flats I got on that trip?
Four.
Seriously, this is ridiculous. And it did nothing to inspire confidence that I could make it through a triathlon without a bike issue.
Anyway, I got about two hours sleep because the dog needed out and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I just shut off my alarm at 4:59 and got up. Had breakfast, loaded my bike in the car, and took off.
I did not like how tired I was on the drive. I was worried not that I wouldn't make it through the event, but that I would be too tired to drive myself home. I made it there fine, checked in, got bodymarked, and set up my transition space. Realized I forgot flip flops to go from the swim to transition, but couldn't do much about it then and decided I'd just let my feet freeze on the walk since it wasn't too far.
I was all proud of myself that I had packed everything so well (except the flip flops), put things in a locker for post-event shower and change, and walked back out to transition to finalize and double-check.
I then shed my socks and shoes and lined them up. Barefoot, I headed into the pool, nearly an hour early. Plenty of time to relax, warm up, and be ready to go.
Except...hmmm...something didn't look right. All the athletes in there were men. I went and checked the lanes and starts. Apparently, despite that this was the women's pool last year, it was the men's pool this year. So I headed out to find the women's pool. My feet were utterly freezing by time I'd walked almost all the way there. I headed back to my transition space, picked up my running shoes and socks, put them on and decided I'd sacrifice the time it took to put them on in the interest of having feet that were not numb for the bike ride.
Oh. Did I forget to mention that it was 35 degrees outside?
The swim started well, but I felt soooo sloooow. I don't know if it was because I felt like I was trying to keep up with my lane mates or because I'm not used to swimming in the morning. I ended up doing the last couple of laps in backstroke.
I did finish in about 12 minutes. Unfortunately, since I had to put on my shoes, get out of the building and go about 25 yards before I crossed the transition mat, this is not what my official race time reflects. Thank goodness I was just racing myself and no one else.
As I was walking the *very long* (I estimate about .2 miles) distance to the transition area, I saw a childhood friend that I haven't seen in years, who was volunteering at the race. Then a little while later, I realized i'd dropped one of my bike gloves and had to run back to get it. The running did not go well as I was still a bit wobbly from the swim.
Transition went okay, but I have to say that I really don't care for my bike shoes. They're kinda narrow (and they were the widest ones I could find when I bought them) and they are actually kinda hard to get onto my feet. To top it off, my socks were all soggy since I put them on straight out of the pool and was dripping all over the place.
The bike portion went (by my standards) really well. The racers were fairly well spaced out from the swim. I have to say though, that last year I was passed. And passed. And passed. And passed I don't know how many times because I had a broken rear derailleur. It was awful and frustrating. This year, I was only passed by 4 women. But I passed 3! I got passed by a number of men as well, but again, *nothing* like last year.
I didn't even have any problems with my bike.
My toes were freezing though by the end as even though the temperature had risen to maybe 40 degrees, there was a touch of wind breezing through the vents in my shoes and turning my toes into icicles.
I got off the bike before transition and urgh. I love my bike, I love the saddle because it doesn't hurt my um, undercarraige while I'm riding, but it does press right on the origins of my adductor muscles. Meaning that when I get off the bike, those stabilizing muscles for walking are...less than stable.
I waddled in to transition, both because I don't move swiftly walking in my bike shoes and because my muscles were still adjusting. I took my time in transition because I was trying to get my muscles to chill out.
Now, last year when I did this race, I jogged the 5K. And it was the first 5K I'd ever done in my life, so I was pretty proud of myself.
Unfortunately, my back still hadn't recovered from the morning of crawling and while my back is better enough that I was doing a triathlon, it was not well enough to run.
Yeah, those women I passed when I was on the bike? One of them passed me on the run three times.
Again, good thing I'm only racing myself. I got most of the weirdness I was feeling in my adductor muscles worked out on the walk, but the pain was just too much every time I tried to run.
I didn't have any family with me at this event, but the cool part was that my childhood friend had come to the finish line and high-fived me as I crossed.
I just went straight to the locker room, showered, changed, then packed up and drove home, where I promptly went to sleep.
My husband and I had *good* tickets to a game tonight, and although I felt recovered enough to be at a game, we usually have to park about a 15-minute walk from the game and I just wasn't sure I was up for it.
So final "official" results for today vs. last year:
| Segment | This year | Last year |
| Swim (500 yds, indoor) | 13:26 | 12:58 |
| Transition 1 | 7:27 | 3:15 |
| Bike | 53:03 | 1:15:54 |
| Transition 2 | 3:59 | 2:58 |
| Run (5K) | 52:45 | 48:33 |
| Overall | 2:10:42 | 2:23:39 |
I'm not honestly thrilled with my performance and even though I didn't know my times as I left the race, I realized a huge thing as I was driving home.
This was the first race I've done without pain medication. On a related note, it's also the first race I've done that I didn't have a migraine afterward.
If nothing else, that is a huge accomplishment.
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