Tri-mazing!!!!

Cortland Tri for the United Way Race Report

800 yard swim/14.8mile bike/5K run

Swim: 15:49

T1: 1:48

Bike: 54:53

T2: 00:27

Run: 27:14

1:40:11

What a Fabulous race! I had SO much fun AND I rocked it!!!!! All of it!

This is my 4th triathlon & usually I come out of the swim feeling pretty good but then it all turns to crap after this when all I hear for the entire bike leg is 'to your left' and end up at the back of the pack.  It was sad & I always felt demoralized.

Saturday it was a whole different ballgame....

with HID...he rocked it too @ 1:21:40

This summer I turned to cross-training because my foot has been giving me a bit of trouble and my husband suggested that cross training for triathlon would help make me stronger overall.  Not having a good record with sticking with cross training, I found a relatively local triathlon that was still open for entry (all the big ones were full, but I like a smaller race anyway so this was a perfect fit).  So since the beginning of August, I have been adding in swimming and biking to my weekly workouts.  We were up at 4:30AM for the almost 2 hour drive to the race.  It was a cool morning & I have to say I was pretty worried that I was going to freeze my you-know-what off in the water (I don't have a wetsuit)!  We arrived at Dwyer Park at Little York Lake in plenty of time for packet pickup.  Everything about this race was well organized & efficient.  Volunteers were everywhere and they were all in great spirits.  We got a nice tech shirt, collected our race numbers and chips, set up transition & then just hung out until the race started.  HID was in the 1st wave & I was in the 3rd.  Air temp was in the 50's but the water was 68 degrees so it actually felt pretty warm! Waves were 5 minutes apart and I was stunned to see the leader come out of the water at just over 9 minutes...just before my wave started! Simply amazing swimming! Soon the horn blew for my wave and we were off. I lined up at the front because I have always had a decent swim so I figured I'd just go for broke and battle it out up front.  It was an out and back loop and I was in a clump of about 5 women and it was pretty tight. I had to watch out for kicking legs but found an easy rhythm pretty quickly.  The water was calm and I even passed a  few guys in the second wave, finishing the swim in 15:49! My only complaint about the race is that I had absolutely no idea what my time was at the splits.  Coming out of the water, I figured I was doing about what I usually do, but there wasn't a clock that I could see so really didn't know how much time had passed.  I got to transition, quickly threw on my jersey & shoes, grabbed a drink and was off.

The bike leg was reasonably flat.  Some rolling hills but no major elevation changes. The wind, on the other hand, was pretty fierce going out the first 6 miles or so.  I had strapped my Garmin to my bike so I knew I wasn't hitting all my splits, but I hoped that the wind would be in my favour on the back half of the ride.  It was and I had some great mile splits on the back half of the course!  The great part of the bike was that I not only held my own, but I was only passed by, I think, 4 riders and I passed about that many myself!  I actually finished this leg 109/159 riders...which I am THRILLED about!  My goal was to crank at 15mph pace and I ended up 16.4mph....yay me!  What completely different bike experience! Who knew the bike could not suck?!?

Once again though, I didn't know what my cumulative time was, so I was not sure how I was doing at this point.

Being a clipless pedal scaredy-cat, I was already in my running shoes, so my T2 consisted of throwing my bike in the rack and dumping my helmet.  27 seconds. Enough said.

The run, I was SO happy to find out, was on the park trail (yes trail...OMG...Per-fect!). It was 2 loops, with a just one, not too bad hill at the beginning of each loop.  I couldn't get my watch switched to run mode, so I just let it run in bike mode for the run. I have to say, I had a girl in pink that I had been trying to catch since she left transition onto the bike just ahead of me.  I couldn't catch her on the bike and she was about 25 seconds ahead of me, but since my T2 rocked, she was maybe 20 yards ahead of me coming out onto the run course.  I kept at a steady pace and slowly came up on her.  As we neared the finish, I sprinted and caught her, but I went too early and she caught me at the end.  I felt bummed until I saw the '22' on her calf....bwahahahahaha...girl, you almost got beat by an old lady twice your age ;-D

Pink chick getting me, me laughing at her '22'

Collecting my AG award!

It wasn't until we rounded the last corner and came within about a 100 meters of the finish that I finally saw the clock.  You have no idea how awesome it felt to realize that I killed my PR and did my best ever in every single leg! Plus, I had none of that 'oh my god, why on earth did I think this was a good idea' feeling when you start to run.  My legs felt good.  By the time I had run out of transition, across the grass and onto the trail, they felt fine. No rubber legs.  My goal was to get under 30 minutes. I came within a minute of my all-time 5K PR.  27:14!


3/11 in my age group
89/159 overall

I am doing this again :)