Tri Girl Race Recap

Sunday I competed in the Tri Girl Sprint Triathlon at Lake Houston. I was feeling pretty good about the race. I even managed not to eat too much tacos and cake at Shaye's birthday party. (More on that tomorrow.)

It was perfect weather for a race. Hot, muggy. Usual Houston weather. Saigie came with us and we left the babies at home asleep with Ty. Ty wasn't happy about the 5:00 am wake up call, but we did pay him.
So we got up, got a bagel and were on our way. The Coach did (does) not feel good. He has some kind of summer cold, but he was a trooper anyway. I think if this had been a different race he may have skipped, but this is an all female race and he says the "talent" at this race is better.

I was in the first wave, so I got in the lake ready to go and when the gun sounded I immediately got ran over. Bad positioning I guess. The rest of the swim continued to suck as I had to stop three or four times and empty water out of my goggles. A 300 meter swim took almost 8 minutes. Not good, but if you are going to suck on a leg it is better to suck at the swim. It is short!

I was much better off than the girl they couldn't find. Apparently throughout my whole bike and half my run the race officials were in a panic because a competitor was lost. They feared she drowned in the swim. No one saw her get out of the water. How awful for her family. She was found later as she returned from the bike. My guess is that she was not a strong swimmer and her family was worried when they didn't see her. That made me ask The Coach if he always watched me get out of the water and he said, "Yes." Apparently the swim makes him a bit nervous.

So she was found and I am so glad that ended alright.

Everything went smoothly getting on the bike. No helmet problems. I had both shoes. I decided to try a new approach this time and start with a lower, easier gear. It seemed to work After a few minutes I moved into a higher gear. I felt like I was going pretty fast. The race report said 18.2 mph was my pace. That is my best bike pace! It was cool to be in the first wave too because I could tell exactly how many people were kicking my butt. :)


This picture is not flattering, but it illustrates the reason for the mysterious stripe of very dark skin I have on my lower back. Hmmmm.

I had already decided to just RUN on the three mile run portion of the race. I wasn't going to worry about saving energy. I got off the bike and before I knew it I was at the one mile mark. I was getting passed regularly, but not by any 80 year men, or 5 year old kids. (Partly because this was an all woman race and there were no 80 year old men.) At least all the people who were passing me were going at a pretty good clip. I ended up running at a 10:45/m pace. I was happy with that and with the fact I still had enough energy to pick up the pace for the finish. Finally I may have a race picture where I am not crawling on my hands and knees to the finish line begging for a cookie and a beer.

Overall I was 32 out of 79 in my age group and 117 out of 353 total.

I think part of the reason I did better was that I finally learned a couple of things.
1. Trying to lose weight while training for an endurance sport is not a good idea for me. I did manage to lose some weight this summer, but I think I paid a price with my training.
2. Same thing for weight lifting while training. Bad idea. For me anyway.
3. Also I recently got some advice from Rock Star Tri on race nutrition. The advice was intended for the Olympic length race I am doing next month, but I decided to practice on my training runs and this race. The difference was huge. I used to be afraid if I ate too much I would cramp up and not be able to finish. Not so. I had so much more energy. I guess common sense would have told me that. Duh.



After that we got home to only minimal destruction at the new house. The kids lost sight of Tayte while he played with the water in my bathtub. Grocery shopping that day may have been more of an endurance sport that the race actually. But it had to get done in order to head back to work on Tuesday.

How is summer over??