End of the Season?

I participated in my last triathlon of my first season yesterday...maybe. But i'll get to that later in the post. Here is how the weekend went:

Pre-race Day

After leaving a pathetic phillies loss to pick up the team tent at another members house in Philly, I didn't get a good night's sleep Friday night because I was stressing over all the things I had to do before I would leave to get to the pre-race registration the next day before it closed.

After getting stuck behind the slowest drivers ever on my way into the city to pick up my teammate Mare and then getting stuck in two traffic jams on 95 South, we made it to North East Maryland by 5:30 pm. It was about 95 degrees and the humidity made the air feel as thick as broth.

So the two of us begin assemble the tent, which required more strength and brute force than you could imagine. I was the brute force with the hammer as Mare braced herself to be the immobilizer of the stake I was hammering, all the while praying her hands would come out in one piece.





Finally, after 30 minutes or so of struggling with little release pins and positioning the legs so the tent looked centered, our masterpiece was up.


We were staying in a hotel in Elkton, MD, about 8 miles away and as we tried to reverse the directions I had printed out from the hotel to the race site (the initial plan was to check in, then head to the race site, but traffic altered that plan due to time constraints), we ended up heading the wrong direction. When we finally figured it out, our hotel, Amerisuites, was nowhere to be found. I had made this reservation about 3 weeks ago so I couldn't imagine what was going on - I gave them a call. Turns out they were the Hawthorne suites that we had just driven by - they had changed their name since I had made the reservation.

After checking in we headed to downtown Elkton (Very scary place to be in at night - like a ghost town) for some dinner at a place called Howard's House - being in Maryland by the bay, of course their specialty is crabs, which Mare and I don't eat. After eating our sandwiches, we went back to the hotel to call it a night.

Race Day

I didn't really hear the alarm go off, it became part of my dream. So Mare had to wake me up. I didn't feel like I had gotten much sleep again - it took me awhile to get comfortable in the hotel bed. So we got our stuff together and made our way to the race site.

Can you tell I have sleepy eyes? This is me in the transition area, setting up at the crack of dawn.


Before the race, I got to catch up with a few of my new teammates that I had already met as well as meet a few others. The water was 81 degrees, so no wetsuit again for the swim portion of the tri. My goal for this race was to improve quite a bit on my time compared to my only other and my first Olympic Tri two months ago. My coach wanted me to really focus and push on the swim portion, because i've made a drastic improvement in that area the past few months. I wanted to see what I could do as well, but the wetsuit makes your time so much faster - so already I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Heading to the dock for the swim start


We jumped in and were treading water for about 5 minutes before we started our wave. This time, I remembered to set my watch to be able to time and pace myself throughout the race. They sounded the horn and off we went. A really rought start for me again. The first buoy was probably about 200 yards into the course, and it wasn't until this point that I actually put my face in the water. I was having my breath control issues again. This was going to kill my time. I started to settle into my stroke but never really found my rhythm, distrupting my stroke every 4 strokes to sight. The field was pretty spread out so I didn't have many problems with people swimming into people. By the time I got out of the almost mile long swim, I already felt beat up - as you can see by this picture. It took me 33 minutes to finish and honestly, if I performed the way that I do in my swim class and workouts, it should have been closer to 25.



The transition area was a bit more of a distance from the swim finish than what I was used to, but I still hurried through it was a steady effort. Out of transition, I jumped on my bike and headed out and almost immediately, I started to feel the elevation changes on the bike course. The course description called for "rolling hills" but to someone like me who is still a novice and doesn't practice much on hills might as well consider these things mountains. I stupidly didn't switch to my small chain ring for the first few hills and that really wore out my legs. I tried to get as much speed as possible on the downhills to make up time and pick up momentum for the next climbs and a few of them seemed to be successful. This just taught me there's still much for me to learn in regards to my cycling.

I somehow messed up my watch settings coming out of T1 and had stopped the clock, so I had no idea how much time had elapsed on the bike and I also had the incorrect settings on my bike computer so I didn't know how much distance I had traveled. At one point, I asked one of the rangers blocking an intersection on the course if he knew what mile we were at. He said we were about halfway through. I felt so defeated at that point - I was worn, the hills had totally kicked my ass at that point and he was telling me I had another 12 miles to go (I knew the biggest and longest climb was coming up at mile 18). Fortunately, another woman riding near me said her GPS was telling her we had gone over 16 miles at that point - we had about 7 to go. That made me feel better. I felt like I had been out there forever.

I was so happy to come back into the transition area. With my swim wave starting 15 minutes after the first wave, not swimming to my potential, and having the bike course kick my ass the way that it did, most people were already on the run, as you can see with all the bikes already racked as I was coming into T2:




This is a quick and easy transition to make - only a 10K run ahead of me. I was a little nervous to see how my legs would hold up - they haven't been doing so great on my runs lately. The sun wasn't out, it was hazy and cloudy, but the humidity had definately kicked in. The run was an out and back along a highway with "rolling hills" yet again. The first 2 miles I battled my aching shin splints again. I did have to take a walk break up one of the hills. But having some teammates as volunteers along the course really helped to keep me going. I ran past the four other women on my team that were competing today (they were all heading in as I was heading out) - they all acknowledged me - gave me a high five. Every little bit helps. As I was at my last quarter mile mark, Mare offered to run me in, but I said it was ok - I was going to finish this. I picked up the pace a bit, but didn't have anything left in me to sprint to the finish.

I looked at the finishing clock - compared to the first Olympic tri I had done in Philly, I cut 20 minutes off my time. Granted, my time was horrible for the Philly Tri - I just wanted to get my first one under my belt. But this course was so much tougher for me, so at least it shows me that i'm making progress. And the experience of participating in this as part of a team really made it a much more rewarding experience. Quite a few of them did very well, winning awards. And it was nice to kick back and chat with them post race as well:





So, I was happy to end the season having done 2 sprint and 2 Olympic triathlons and that my performance at each subsequent Tri showed that I was making progress. I was now planning on focusing on my fall running season with the PDR half-marathon in 3 weeks and the NYC marathon this November. That may be changing, however, for a number of reasons.

The team has two more races as part of a club series in which they are in the lead for at the moment. They get a point for each finisher (more for those that place in different categories) so my participating in one of them could actually help the team. Also, my run training has been somewhat halted. My coach has taken off the long runs in the upcoming weeks because i'm teetering on the edge of reinjuring myself. I'm starting to get very nervous that i'm not going to be prepared come race day for the marathon. My coach seems to differ in opinion, he has altered my schedule in a way that takes off some of the miles but is still conditioning my body to handle the endurance and some of the pounding of it. I don't know - I have until October 31st to defer my entry to next years Marathon and i'm going to see how my legs respond to the half marathon in three weeks as well as the plan my coach has to get me to the start on November 4th. My racing schedule may or may not be changing for the fall....

so stay tuned!!