Storms were moving out when I woke at 5am. I took my time getting dressed and had a light breakfast. I was set to leave at 5:30am but my truck wouldn't start so I resorted to plan-B and moved my borrowed bike and bags to the car and pulled out of the driveway a few minutes later.
The drizzle stopped just as I pulled into the grassy field to park a little after 6am. It was a chilly morning but I left the wetsuit in the car figuring there was little chance of the lake being 78 degrees or less in August.
My race number was 26 so I was allowed on the rack closest to the exit. This race is a staggered start so one person starts every 3 seconds instead of a mass start. The start order is by swim time ranking with the fastest going first, I would be the 26th to start.
Just as they were calling the pre-race meeting it was announced that the water temp was exactly 78 so I quickly rode back to the car and grabbed my wetsuit and headed for the pre-race meeting. I've been in enough of this windy director's races to know that the meeting will last at least 15 minutes. As Clay thanked many sponsors I wiggled into the wetsuit and immediately started sweating. At 7:45 we all hug the woman standing next to us and lined up for the start.
My swim felt pretty good and I passed about a dozen or so women on the way. I got out and saw my watch said 6:55. Holy Cow that was a really fast swim!! I ran up the hill passing another on the way. Once in transition I slowed to a fast walk so I wouldn't be breathing too hard on the start of the bike.
I was lucky enough to borrow the bike I'm considering buying from Epic Bikes: Specialized Ruby Expert 56cm. I took it out for a short 4 mile ride on Thursday and it rode smooth and quick. This bike is similar in quality to my current bike (carbon fiber frame and ultegra components), however it is 16 years newer and sized perfectly to me.
Back to the race ... the bike leg is an out & back and 10 miles in length with the first & last half mile on the road leading out of the park through Paradise, MO. As usual, some really fast biker women passed me in the first mile and I knew these were the die hard triathletes. I was feeling pretty good but unfortunately, the borrowed bike didn't have a computer so I couldn't tell how I was doing pace wise. As I passed mile marker 3 I tried to calculate my pace based on the elapsed time and I concluded I was doing okay. After the turn-around between miles 6-8 I saw most of my friends riding the opposite direction (remember I had a head start being #26). As I entered the park in Paradise, MO I noticed my time was nearing last year's time so I picked kicked in and sprinted the last 1/2 mile. My final bike time was 1 minute slower than last year. A bit disappointing but I blame it on not knowing how fast I was /wasn't going.
In transition I switched shoes, had a quick drink of water and took off running. I was still making good time from that killer swim leg. After about a half mile I pooped out and couldn't keep my heart rate down. This problem started about 10 days earlier and without explanation. I didn't have a monitor on but I'm sure it was over 180. I ran the rest of the 2.6 miles by jogging one minute then walking 3o seconds, then jogging 1 minute again, etc. Needless to say my run time was awful.
My final time was just one minute slower than last year. It is almost a month later and I still haven't figured out what is wron
g with my heart rate. On a better note, only 4 other women swam faster than me. Two were on a team, and thus were finished after the swim and didn't have to save anything. The other two were 20-24 yrs old, so I'm impressed with this 43 yr old body of mine. The fastest swimmer was only 2o seconds faster than me and she won a Garmin fitness watch for being the best. If only would have known I would have gone 21 seconds faster!!!This is me with the race director, Clay Myers-Bowman.
This is my buddy Christine celebrating a little too much with mimosas at the finish line festival!!!
I'm looking forward to the 5th annual Win for KC Tri in 2010!!
1 comment:
That was really fun to read, Lori. Good job. Sorry you didn't win the watch! As for the heart rate, it's interesting that you don't have that problem in the water or on the bike. Makes me think it's a stamina issue. By that I don't necessarily mean that you haven't trained enough (as I don't know how you trained) but it could be that you're not taking enough goo and gatorade along the bike course (or just not enough food to begin with - personally, I always have a large breakfast, especially before an endurance race, as you'll have enough time for it to not affect your actual race. You might experiment with this.
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