Last week, I saw the web-based version of the USAT Spring magazine came out with all the rankings and discovered that I did surprisingly well in both triathlon and duathlon. Thus, I suppose it is time for a little self promotion.
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This was a late season add on to squeeze one more result out of my fitness and socialize. Mostly socialize. Pinehurst is that place in North Carolina you’ve heard of that has a bunch of golf courses. There might even be a big golf tournament at some point, but I don’t know anything about that. The area is called the sandhills region because the soil is sandy (even though nowhere near the ocean) and, suprise, it’s hilly. It’s a beautiful course, which a friend of mine noticed once he was done suffering through the race. So about that. The race. The suffering. Here’s the scoop. What a day. What a weekend. For those bottom line first, get to the point kind of people, here’s the scoop. I ran, but not too hard. Then I tried to pass as many people as possible on the bike and, for the most part, it worked. Then I ran again, but not as long this time and finished just as my right hamstring threatened to go into lock down. Run course may be a touch short, but just the right distance for me apparently. The whole thing took me a touch over 2 hours and 2 minutes. This put me in 3rd in my age group and 4th female overall, a best case scenario result! This was my third trip to Triathlon Nationals since starting doing triathlons in 2002. The first was in 2003 in Louisiana and I bonked, overheated and got soundly trounced. The second was in 2007 in Portland and I was, errr, overprepared and had a lackluster day but still squeaked out a 3rd AG finish. This year, I may not be as fast as I used to be, but I knew I wouldn’t be overtrained. Plus, a lot of my previous competition had moved up into the pro ranks. These are the things upon which I hinged my hope of finally getting that Triathlon National Champion title that I’ve missed thus far. It’s hard to pass up an opportunity to do a pre-Tri Nats benchmarking race that’s a National Championship in my home state. Especially when it’s in a beautiful location like Lake Logan. The plan was to test out my swim speed and endurance for 1500 meters and see if I could pull off a sub-20 5k after. Hopefully, the results would lend me some confidence as I enter the final build up to Tri Nats in Tuscaloosa later this month. Over the years of racing I’ve learned that I only have so many matches. More specifically, I only have TWO of those big, long fireplace matches per year. So here I am in the final third of my post-partum season, with the big races on the horizon. It seems like a good time to assess how things are going with my training and to consider if / what changes are viable in the final build to Tri Nats and Du Worlds. I keep showing up at races thinking I have about a 2% chance of winning. So, I just do what I can to have fun and race well and not worry about it. Then other people don’t show up or mess up or whatever and I end up winning. If you’d have asked me how many wins I’d have by this point in the season last March, I would have said one, Nelson Bay. So now you know the end, but you probably already did on Facebook or Twitter or, lo and behold, the local newspaper. I won Triangle Triathlon this year. So how did it happen? I checked and it had been six years since I last did this popular race. I remember it rained heavily at the beginning and continued through most of the race. This year, it didn’t rain during the race although we did have an impressive cloudburst late afternoon prior to soften up the ground on the singletrack run course and transition area in the field. Lately I’ve been thinking about how racing is different for me this year compared to previous years. I know my experience is mine and doesn’t apply to everyone who just had a baby, but I’m sure some of you can relate. |
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