Two Down

Same course as last year but it seems like there are many, many more participants. Checking the results afterward showed that there were almost twice the total number of women who completed the race this year.

Pre-race: This year, I've convinced a friend from work to do the triathlon with me. D and I arrive at the site at 6:45 am. D's wave starts at 8:10, mine at 8:15. We find a decent spot in the transition area although it's apparent that we've missed all the really good ones near the exit. So many people! We get our chips and our bodies marked.

8:10 : D is off! Woo! Woo!

8:12 : Getting ready to start. Step in water. Er, sludge. No seriously, the shore was black and very goopy. Think wet, think slimy. The water was opaque. Look to right, look to left. Everyone else's face is slightly disgusted. I'm going swimming in this? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!

8:15 SWIM START : Yes! I'm going swimming in this. Here we go. Goggles on. Goggles fill with water. I'm getting kicked, there are people all around. (Hindsight: My wave was the largest of the race. 174 women. Last year, the field was 78.) I come up for air and swallow water. Don't think about what's in the water! Keep moving. Try to clear goggles while swimming. FAT CHANCE. Getting run into from behind. Argh! All that nice freestyle practice? Fuggedaboutit! About the only thing I can do is breaststroke otherwise I'm running into people and have no idea which direction I'm headed. Must keep going. A couple times I catch a break and do a few strokes of crawl then it's back to breaststroke again. I'm breathing really hard. Much harder than I should be. I try to calm down and keep moving. As I make the second turn and head for the shore, the field suddenly seems to clear up and I don't have anyone in front of me. I freestyle towards the shore, pop out of the water, rip off my goggles and fill my cap with water. I also notice that my watch has lost its waterproof-ness and is now history. I'm a little bummed but I must focus. Now, where was that bike again? Second picnic table, turn right, two rows behind the three mylar balloons. (Apparently, one of our friends who came to watch saw me come out of the water and was screaming my name and shouting encouragement. I didn't hear a thing. Was totally in the zone. Must find bike.)

T1: Take my swim cap of water and empty it into my little plastic bin. Step into bin and rinse off my feet. Feel extremely pleased with my resourcefulness as my feet are now clean(er) and not sandy anymore. OK. Shirt. Check. Shorts. Check. Socks. Check. Shoes. Spray on sunscreen. Little bit of energy gel. Drink too. Get on bike. Get going!

Bike: AWESOME! I love the bike ride this year. I felt strong and steady. I feel like I could ride on and on and on. My little bike computer tells me I'm going at a pretty good clip. I think I have a chance of lowering my time from last year.

T2: Ripped through this one. Dropped off bike. Dropped helmet. Grabbed hat. One sip. Go!

Run: Argh. Not an auspicious start. There was water to be had right away but after I take a drink, it goes down the wrong tube. I try not to choke and keel over. It was only 3 miles but it felt long, long, long. When the final stretch was in sight, I couldn't wait to cross the finish line. Time to lengthen strides. Look for boys. Then two women come blowing by me as they sprinted to the end. Oh well. Maybe next year that will be me.

Cause there will be a next year.

Final time: Three minutes faster than last year. Yipee!

Triathlon, Saturday

Gulp.

It's two days away. No, less than two days. In less than 32 hours, I'll be getting up and packing up the car to head to the race site.

I've been training, but not as hard as last year. Surprisingly, I'm not freaked out about the swim (400 yds), I'm looking forward to the bike (11 mi) but I'm slightly worried by the run (3 mi). Why is that? I've spent the most time running, I've been swimming just once a week and I've been biking maybe a total of 6 miles per week. I don't feel as strong running this year. Maybe it's because I'm not also getting ready for a half marathon so I haven't been doing any long runs. My max has been three miles at a time.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Ready or not, here I come.

Ride Like the Wind, Bullseye!

Remember that ambitious training plan where I was doing something every day of the week? Well, two weeks later, I've mostly stuck to the plan.

Last Friday was my first venture back into the 50 m pool. I need to work my way up to swimming 400 yards continuously and it's a lot easier to do that in the bigger pool. There's nowhere to stop in the lake and hold on to the side. Last year, I had trained to swim 400 yds freestyle straight but, when the actual day of the race came, I found myself breaststroking for about half the distance. Even though I had been in the lake before, being in the lake with 50 other women all swimming in roughly the same direction at the same time was very different and disconcerting. My goal this year will be to minimize the amount of breaststroke that I do and maximize the freestyle. Oh, and not lose my goggles and not swallow too much lake water.

Last Sunday was my first 'long' ride of the year - 11.3 miles. That's about the distance of the triathlon bike leg. It was wicked windy for more than half the ride. I swear I was in my lowest gears and was still moving at a snail's pace. Still, I stuck it out by looking for a landmark that wasn't too far off and saying to myself, "Just a little bit further, just to that post/tree/hole/turn." It felt really awesome to finally turn and have the wind at my back.

As for running, I tried my first interval workout the Sunday before last - running a minute and then walking a minute. This actually pushed my total running time down. Will try this again this week.

At the end of the week, I'm off to the East Coast for five days to attend a conference. In addition to all my work stuff, I'll bring my running shoes and my gi. Training doesn't stop just because I'm traveling.

Vacation is Over

Tomorrow it's back to work, back to reality, back to exercise! I've decided that this year's challenge will be to beat the time that I posted in last year's sprint triathlon. I've convinced one of my new colleagues at work to do the triathlon with me and we're going to train together which is absolutely awesome.

This means, of course, that I need to step up my training and start swimming and biking again. Right now, I've been running 2-3 times a week at a fairly leisurely pace and a fairly short distance and going to aikido class twice a week. I'm back to swimming laps once a week. Yesterday, I finally wired up my bike computer (which I've had for five months!) to my road bike and went out for a six mile ride. Got to start slowly.

My training schedule, leading up to race day will look something like this:

Monday: run
Tuesday: aikido
Wednesday: run
Thursday: aikido
Friday: swim
Saturday: run
Sunday: bike

Hang on, when do I rest?

One Down

The short version:

My hoped-for completion time: 2:00 at the most, anything less than 1:45 would be gravy

My unofficial completion time (based on my stopwatch): 1:22:50

My official completion time: 1:22:14

HOORAY!

And now, the gory details, for anyone who cares to read on:

Woke up at 5:30 am. Still on East Coast time, so this was not a problem. Headed out in the dark to Pleasanton. Travel time: 30 mins. No sweat. Found a parking spot. Found a spot in the transition area.

Now what? OK, need race number, timing chip, body marking.
Check, check, check. Arrange stuff in transition area. Look around. Hmmm, lots of people looking professional. Lots of body glide being applied. Many wetsuits. Did I mention that there was steam coming off the lake water in the morning air?

Swim:
Slower than I thought I'd swim but I didn't drown! Ended up doing a mix of freestyle and breaststroke. Didn't get kicked in the face. Goggles didn't leak. Remembered to fill up my swimcap with water for washing off feet at T1. Not fast but not the slowest in my wave either. All in all, not bad.

T1:
Man, it takes a long time to put on stuff. Forgot to put on sports bra. Remembered when I was almost ready to get my bike. Decided to forgo wearing one. Sometimes it's good to just be a B. Squeezed out about half a serving of one of those energy gel packets. EEEEEEEEWWWWW! Quick, get some water to wash that down with! OK, extricate bike from rack and let's go, go, go.

Bike:
I'd remembered to rack my bike in a pretty low gear so I made it up the hill out of the park no problem. Loved the bike ride. My legs felt good, not tired and my bike was a dream to ride. I passed a few people, a few people passed me. No cars to worry about as the course was well policed. Floated up the single hill that there was to climb. Before I knew it, I was back at the transition area. My watch read just over 50 mins. That meant that if I had a decent run, I'd totally come in under an hour and a half.

T2:
Remove helmet, put on cap, drink, force some more of that gel down and go, go, go.

Run:
Oh, man, got to pee. Never mind - mind over matter, you can hold it for 3 miles. Just run.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Ack! Rock in heel, must stop. Dig out rock. Start running again. HILL!!! Walk up hill, there's no shame in that! Now run. Just run.

It felt awfully slow but I guess I was making progress. I passed some, and got passed by others. Just a little more, just a little further. Just keep running. Just keep breathing. Water station. Get water. Get water down wrong tube. Cough, cough. Just keep going. I need to finish this.

There it is, the finish line! Time to put on the afterburners.

The WHAT??

Hey, it's the whole gang, waiting for me and cheering! Woo-hoo!

I did it. (And, then, I finally found the bathroom.)

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Love You, Tomorrow

Eek! It's here. The triathlon is tomorrow. I've been on the East Coast all week and the flight back last night was delayed four hours which meant that I didn't get home till 2:30 am today. I took the day off work, got some sleep during the day and made my checklist of stuff. Tuesday night I had my first anxiety dream about the event: made it to the swim start but didn't know where my shoes or my bike were and my running shorts fell in the water. I did manage to get a couple of short runs, a single swim and two aikido training sessions (which I do want to blog about, but not in my current state of mind) in while in Princeton (lovely campus, by the way) so I don't feel completely unprepared. But still...

Let's see, my bike is on the car, ready to go, tires all pumped up, brakes checked. Helmet is in the back seat, check list is on the dining table along with the rest of my gear. I'll wear my swimsuit.

Just checked the weather. It's going to be in the mid-50s. Oh baby, the water is going to be cold. All the better to swim fast(er) in, I suppose.

Time to sleep.

Bitten by the Bug

The triathlon bug that is. It started innocently enough: running three times a week, then I thought I'd get back in the pool because the summer was so hot and running at noon was sweltering, then I started riding my bike back and forth to aikido class and the pool instead of driving and coughing up the parking fee each time. Next thing I know, I'm surfing the web, looking for a triathlon to do.

Found one: See Jane Tri - all women, non-competitive, SHORT - 400 yd swim, 11 mi bike, 3.1 mi run. Better yet, the site is only a half hour drive away from home which means that I can get up relatively late for the 8 am start. Yeah, I'll be up at 5 am, but I think that will be nerves.

Oh, and it's two weeks away which means that I've been squeezing in biking, running, swimming and aikido into my weeks that are already full with work and family. Thank goodness I've got M backing me all the way. Wouldn't be able to do this without him. I think he secretly harbors this fear that I'm going to be trying for longer distance tris after this. All in good time, I think. Maybe when the boys are a little older. I want to see how this first one goes. I might hate it. Then again, I may love it.

I'm excited.