The purpose of this race was to put the mind and body through the rigors of racing, and to hopefully make any early season race mistakes here rather than at Wildflower. And sure enough, I made mistakes even before the race like forgetting my race belt, forgetting to get bodymarked, and forgetting my bike tool box with essentials like electrical tape and valve extenders.The swim: 22:29
I took too long putting on my wetsuit and I got down to the water too late for a warm-up. The first 10 minutes of the swim was spent trying to flush out the burn in my arms, and I slowly watched my teammates (a.k.a. my draft) pull away. I felt better and stronger as the swim progressed and yes, I utilized the wide pull, and it felt good. Believe it or not, I struggle with wetsuit swims, mostly because I can't "feel" the water. Also, I use my kick a lot when I swim in the pool, and the wetsuit limits my kicking. But the name of the game is triathlon, so I best learn to become one with a wetsuit, and I will, it just usually takes me 1 to 2 swims to get it down.
The bike: 1:06:38
I am most happy with my bike leg on the day, and it's the only discipline that lived up to my expectation. The effort felt honest and strong. I really focused on pacing properly with the goal to ride the bike leg as strong as I could without the effort taking away from my run. The funniest part of the bike was when I was about to turn it on and really make my move only to find that T2 was just down the road and I was done with the bike, too funny. Mental note: know the bike course.
The run: 40:30
The effort and racing was good, the time not so much. I passed the people I needed to pass and I diminished the amount of people who passed me. Unfortunately, the people I needed to pass weren't running so fast and that left me with a false feeling that I was running fast. Though I like to run off feel, I want to use my watch more as confirmation or motivation. The one thought that kept creeping into my head was "this hurts" and my response every time was, "racing hurts, move on." I like that.
The result: 2:11:39 [14th overall, 1st age-group]
The racing was successful, I did what I needed to do to get the age-group W. The time was not as successful. Ideally, on this day, I would have been a minute faster in both the swim and the run. I need to keep looking for speed. Onward and upward.
