Valley Girl Sprint Tri

Long time, no post....sorry! July has been such a busy month - Hoopfest, major yard projects, hubby left for a foreign country for 2 weeks, one race and a whole lot of training. Whew! And let's not forget the amount of time glued to the TV rooting for the cyclists in the TdF. Seriously, when Dave was in Australia that's all I watched - grown men in spandex. Apparently I need to get out more.

First, just let me say THANK YOU to the bestest friend in the whole world, Sherpa Katy. Since Dave was gone for the weekend Katy tagged along and we had a blast. She may have even convinced herself to do a tri next summer. I had nothing to do with it, I swear *evilgrin*

Ok, race report:

Overall I had a good time at this race. It was well supported, there were lots of spectators, the volunteers were awesome, and there was an espresso stand at the race expo.

Swim: 1/3 mile, 12:56, 2:13/100yd

Ugh. Still not thrilled. I hyperventilated at the very beginning (again) and had issues the whole way (again). Fortunately since then, with the help of Scott & Sam, I have figured my breathing issues out. I also got kicked, grabbed and generally smacked around more in this swim than any other. An all womens race - the claws were out!! One of my goals for this race was to have a great swim, and that didn't happen, but I tried to push that out of my mind as soon as I was out of the lake.

That being said, Liberty Lake is a fantastic lake to swim in. Fairly clean water, despite the fact that you swim through the marina, very little seaweed (which I swam through without panicking -wooho! ) and the water was really warm.

Coming out of the swim. 3rd from the right, black wetsuit.

T1: 3:05

Not thrilled with the transition location at this race. Had to run out of the water, up and across the beach, around the arbivitae, and then all the way across transition to find Honey, who I completely ran past. Oops.

Bike: 13 miles, 41:57

Very pretty bike course! It takes you on a complete tour of the Liberty Lake community - residential areas, business park, pine trees & farms. I saw buffalo. Seriously! I was riding along and thought to myself, "Damn. Big cow." Nope - buffalo. Which then made me hungry for DK's beeffalo burgers, but I digress.

I did pretty well on the bike, I thought. I can tell that my training has involved a HUGE swim focus and not much else, which is reflected in my bike time I think. It was nice to be able to get that swim out of my head and push on the bike. That was my second goal for this race - push as hard as I could on the bike (avg. speed was about 17mph) and see if I had any legs to run on.

Most people to that for fun, right? Kill your legs on a bike ride and then, just for fun, try to run? No?

oh.

I do have ONE tiny complaint. I almost got hit by a pickup. A note to boys in their big trucks who drive with something other than their brain - DO NOT CUT ME OFF when I'm taking a sharp corner at 20 mph. I pretty much had to powerslide around to corner to not get hit, and then I gave the driver the dirtiest look I could muster through my sunglasses while holding a gel pack in my mouth.

I'm sure he was terrified.

Climbing the incline out of T1

T2: 1:42

Nothing spectacular. Lots of people cheering when I left on the run - kinda cool when people you don't know are screaming their heads off for you.

Run: 2.9 miles, 28:03, 9:21/mile

Overall, very satisfied with the run. I had legs the entire time, which makes me think I probably could have pushed harder on the bike. The run course was nice, but HOT, and there was something in the bushes making hissing/buzzing noises, which made me nervous. Got to run past 3 of the million golf courses on a paved trail, which was nice. They also had water stands set up at every mile, which seemed to make the run go faster, and since we were running through a residential area people were out in their frontyards with hoses offering to spray us down as we ran by. Very nice.

I managed to pass quite a few people in my age group, and even held off two of them for the last mile which was quite a challenge. Not because they were fast, but because I was starting to hurt. Apparently I had more left in the tank because I had a really good sprint through the finish chute which was about a block long.

YAY! Done!

Total Time: 1:27:45 - a new Sprint Distance PR! YAY me!

Glad to be done. My brother calls this my "One time, the car broke down 12 miles from home, so my Mom gave me a Dr. Pepper and a Snickers bar, and I pulled the car home...I was TIRED!" picture.