RAINY, WET, CHILLY!
Pre-Race
Pat and I got to the race about 6:30 a.m. It was raining, a little windy, and quite chilly. We sat in the car for a few minutes while I tried to figure out if I even wanted to do the race. The weather at that moment was really messing with me and I really considered not starting the race. I even said that out loud to Pat (although I have to say, even though I was thinking it, deep down I knew I was going to do it). Pat immediately jumped in with the pep talk – he is really awesome that way. But, I wasn’t quite ready to accept the pep talk – I was complaining about how the wet conditions were going to affect my bike time (safety first when roads are wet, and I always go a little slower). Again Pat jumped in and told me that “Today isn’t going to be about time, just go out there and have fun”. SIGH… Ok, maybe I should go set up my transition area. Amazingly, that’s all it took! As soon as I got my stuff set up, I really came around, started enjoying the weather, smiling, hopping around and basically had a complete mood shift. :) YAY! It was going to be a fun day!
Swim – 33:02
Yep, it’s still raining but, the water temperature was warmer than the air temperature so I wasn’t cold at all during the swim. I had a problem with my googles though, they were leaking… UGH! They weren’t leaking during my warmup but, as soon as we started the race they leaked. I stopped for a second to suction them onto my face but, they continued to leak. I didn’t stop again to work on them, just kept swimming and every time I turned my head to breathe the water sloshed into my eyes - not fun and kind of distracting. I panicked when we started swimming because of the goggle problem, started breathing way to hard/fast and before I was done with the first loop(it’s a 2 lap course) I was feeling tired. I knew I had to stop thinking about the goggles and just try to focus on my swim. I did recover but, because of my problems in the first part of the swim. my time was a bit slower than I had hoped for.
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| Finishing the swim - RAINING! |
T1 (Swim to Bike) – 1:51
My wetsuit got stuck on my timing chip and it took longer than it should to get out of my wetsuit. Other than that, uneventful except for the pouring rain!
Bike – 1:15:55
It was wet, it was cold! I opted not to put on my coat in T1 (I tried but, I was so wet and the coat was wet I couldn’t get it on so I gave up and decided to go without). My hands got really cold during the ride which made it hard to shift. I couldn’t get a grip on the shifters so there were times when I needed easier or harder gears and couldn’t get to them. Also my legs got so cold it felt like I wasn’t even moving so I kept checking my speed and cadence to make sure they were actually moving! :) I had hoped to practice getting my food out of my food bag and eating it while on the bike and I couldn’t do that either. My hands were not working. I didn’t need to eat for energy, the main purpose was to practice grabbing it, unwrapping it, and eating it while moving. I need to do this for the CDA IM so I like to take every opportunity I can to practice that. Not a big deal for this race to not have the food though, so I wasn’t worrying about the fact that I wasn't getting calories. Overall though, it was a really good bike ride considering the conditions. It was 5 minutes faster than last year with average speed 19.6 MPH! WHOO! Rainy, wet conditions??? What was I worried about??? :)
T2 (Bike to Run) – 1:58
This was difficult. Hands were numb and I couldn’t feel my feet. I had to sit down and use both hands to get each sock and each shoe on, and it seemed to take forever. I couldn’t even get the socks on right, they were all wrinkled and I finally just gave up and figured they would work themselves into the right position as I ran. Next I had to ask a volunteer to unbuckle my helmet because I just couldn’t get my fingers to do it.
Run – 55:30
I couldn’t feel my feet for the first 2.5 miles and my legs were still cold so I really couldn’t tell how I was running or where my feet were landing. I kept looking at my watch to make sure my cadence and pace were where they should be because I just couldn’t judge it. After 2.5 miles, the feeling started coming back in my feet and as I got more feeling I realized I had little pebbles in both shoes but, I didn’t want to stop and empty them so I just tried to move them around into more comfortable spots. The rest of the run was really good. I started warming up and actually ended up pouring water on my head at 2 of the water stops to cool back down (guess my body had gotten used to the cold and it wanted to stay that way!). HA! :)
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Overall it was a really good day! 5 minutes better than last year and a new PR! Pat is the statistician in our family and he was looking at my Spring Meadow results for the last 3 years. Below are my results since 2014 when I first started doing triathlons. Everything has improved! It’s so exciting to see so much improvement!
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Swim
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T1
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Bike
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T2
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Run
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Total
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2014
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42:54
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3:35
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1:22:36 18.0 MPH
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1:59
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1:04:54
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3:16:00
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2015
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33:27
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2:09
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1:19:56 18.7 MPH
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1:18
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56:29
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2:53:20
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2016
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33:02
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1:51
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1:15:55 19.6 MPH
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1:58
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55:30
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2:48:18
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