Little Liz’s Training Blog

Initial thoughts… it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I didn’t feel the cold as much as I thought I would. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Day Before

I reached the hotel after my mom and sister and found them in the room relaxing. My sister wasn’t feeling too well (worst week of the month for the both of us). I opened my bag and showed her my gear and the things I had gotten for her (a belt for her number, gels and body glide) and then we made plans for the next hour or so. We decided to head to packet pick up and then wait until we heard from Sarah about a bike ride on the course that evening. At packet pick-up we learned our numbers were back-to-back, which was what we were hoping for. We entered our swim times as the exact same time and I figured she’d be before me in alphabetical order, which is exactly how it turned out. So that was exciting. I think it was at that moment we confirmed, yes, we will be sticking together through this entire race. As we were looking up our swim start times the lady there said “wow, you ladies must be great swimmers! Sisters??” My sister said “Yes, and that’s ALL we have going for us!” Hah. It was true. Then we left packet pick up and called Sarah and decided to just meet her at the pre-race meeting. So my sister said “I need to ride my bike, let’s go on a short ride.” We decided to ride part of the course. It was gorgeous outside – sunny, about 73 degrees. Beautiful! So we went on a quick ride (we actually ended up riding for 4 miles, 3 of which were the RUNNING course, not the biking course, oops. But I am really thankful we did that), then rinsed off and headed to the pre-race meeting.

At the meeting we learned a few things about swimming etiquette, what time to arrive (9am was the latest, but would be a good time for us since our start time wasn’t until 11:22am), where to mount and dismount on the bike (although they also made that pretty clear during the race as well), etc. It was a helpful meeting. We met up with Sarah and shared a hearty meal with her at our hotel.

Then! We went to bed! Around 10pm.

Morning Of

I did wake up before my alarm… Tommy texted me at 6:58am with “are you up?” I texted back “in two minutes I will be.” I had woken up at about 2:30am to go to the bathroom (a sign of being well hydrated, I suppose) and I stayed awake for a good hour or so with transition thoughts on my mind. I prayed that I’d get back to sleep – and I did. Whew. J But I did wake up right on time at 7am. The alarm went off and I woke my sister up, but she took her time getting ready. She just wasn’t as eager to get to the race as I was. I was a ball of nerves… ready to get dressed in my tri suit immediately, ready to have my hair braided (so it would stay out of my face), ready to go go go! I ended up leaving the room before her, heading downstairs to the restaurant and ordering her breakfast for hr. The food arrived before she even showed up. I had a hard time eating even half of my meal of toast, eggs, and coffee. My stomach was flipping and flopping! I was very, very nervous.

I kept trying to figure out what exactly it was that I was nervous about… the bike? No, I wasn’t even planning to push very hard… the run? Not at all… I expected to walk some of it. The swim? I kept thinking… I should do well in the swim… but ultimately, I think I was mostly worried about the swim because it’s the swim that pushes my body the hardest. It makes me feel things I have never felt before and it really wears me out. And aside from that, what eased my nerves the most was watching the swimmers before me. And how much they did not look like swimmers at all. I wondered how I looked in the water if I was to go after them.

Anyway, so back to breakfast. I got some toast down and some coffee and one whole egg. We decided to bike over to the set up area (2M ride) to try to warm up. The weather had dramatically changed from yesterday’s beautiful ride in sunny 75 degrees to cold, very windy about 43 degrees. I was glad we decided to bike it so we could get a feel of the temperature while biking.

Arrival

We arrived and rolled our bikes right into the transition area.

Our bar was actually the very first bar when you came out of the swim area, so that worked out great. We didn’t have to stop and think about where to turn. We started to set up but then stopped when we realized we were wearing half of our gear and there was no way we were taking it all off 2.5 hours before our start time just to put it in place. So we picked up our timing chips and got marked.

Then we hung around for the race start. My mom and my friend Tasha both showed up with cameras and took a ton of great pictures for us.

This gave us plenty of time to get nervous, then to talk ourselves out of it, too.

We watched the first swimmers start, finish their swim and we paid close attention to their transitions. It was neat to see that even though they rushed, they still went slow enough to do what they needed to do. Like dry off, because it was too cold to not dry off all the way. Or pull on warm clothes, because it was also too cold to not really pull on warm clothes (unless you are someone like Sarah who doesn’t feel the cold). So it was cool to watch others do their thing and to learn that this really is an individual sport!

At 10:50 I found my sister and we went outside to get ready.

We set up our transition area and grabbed the few items we would need. We did our thing (last minute bathroom breaks – I think I used the bathroom about 5 times in my one-piece suit… not sure how I feel about that one piece idea) and then went into the pool area. We hopped in line and chatted with the other triathletes around us. There was a 10 year old boy 3 people in front of me.

The Start

My sister took off in front of me. As soon as I pushed off the wall, it was like all of my nerves were pushed away and left at the wall. I just swam. Man, I love swimming. I did my first flip turn and swam back to finish the first fifty. I was too nervous to try and do flip turns at the end where I needed to duck under the lane guides so I just touched the wall and ducked under. Soon I caught up to the person in front of me, whom I thought was my sister. However, it was the lady who was originally in front of her. I sprinted by her because I had space and I reached the wall a little before she did. I skipped the flip turn again out of politeness to her and just pushed off to stay out of her way. During this next 25 I caught up to my sister and turned over to do backstroke because her wake was in my face. I tapped her feet and she paused at the end to let me pass her. I ducked under the lane guide again. By then I was simply getting out of breath and tired and I finished the swim with no more flip turns and no more passing. I sprinted the last fifty meters, touched the wall, immediately hopped out of the pool and ran to the transition area. I took my cap and goggles off while running.

T1

I ran to T1 and dried myself thoroughly. I do not panic at all. Actually everything went very well in T1. It was probably the most fun that I had. I had everything lined up right in order, down to “put gel in your pocket before you put on jacket.” I ate some shot blocks immediately and drank some water. While I ate them I dried off, got dressed and put on my helmet. I grabbed my bike and I was the first one outta there out of our group!

I ran with my bike on the wrong side of me so once I passed the mounting line I had to move to the other side of the bike to mount it. Silly me.

The Bike

The bike ride was a little tough. The course was a loop course, but for some reason we never really did get behind the wind. It seemed to be in our face the entire time. It hovered between 15 - 20mph the whole morning. There were more hills than I expected (not really a flat course if you ask me!). The first 5 miles we mostly recovery from the swim… it wasn’t until mile 5 that I really was able to start really pushing. A TON of people passed us, but we were okay with that. My sister was directly behind me and she had a little trouble keeping up with me but she stayed with me. She said I challenged her and her legs were burning, but it was a good thing. I downed a gel at mile 8. Nothing too exciting happened, we just did it… and finished and pulled in. Dismounted before the line.

T2

We pulled into T2 and hung up our bikes. All of the other bikes around us were already there and had probably been there for a good 10 minutes or so, but there was still room for us. My sister took her helmet and coat off and ran in for a bathroom break. I ended up taking two top layers off, my shoes AND my pants off. I put my shoes back on and even slapped some sunblock on my arms so I wouldn’t have any numbers tanned onto my skin for my wedding. Then I ran over the transition timing mat and jogged in place for about 6 seconds until my sister came back outside.

The Run

We started the run and I was feeling pretty good. I could have run quite a bit of it except that mentally I had prepared myself to walk, so I wanted to walk! (Now I see the importance of mental preparation.) My sister wouldn’t have it. She pushed me hard during the run. We walked/jogged the first 1.5 miles but then after the water station at the halfway point, she said “we are running the rest!” She pushed and pushed me, staying about 10-15 feet ahead of me most of the way, talking to me. She would come back to me and talk me through it “relax your elbows, your hands, roll your feet, chest back…” She would say “You are an athlete! You LOVE running! You LOVE this! Look at you! You are out here with these athletes! You are one, TOO!! Can you believe it?!” She loved it… she’s a great encourager. It was really great to have her there. I couldn’t do that for her during the swim or bike (not that she needed it) but she did it for me for the run.

The Finish

The last 1/4 mi was absolute torture. You would think it was the best. My whole body felt like it was falling apart. She said “We are going to sprint it! This is IT! We are finishing!!” I saw the flags and nothing inside of me wanted to run. I wanted to walk across the finish line. She turned around and said “RUN up here NOW!!!!” And I gave her the meanest look. I was mad! Ha ha. She said “I am LEAVING you!” And I said “Don’t you DARE!!” And the people around us laughed! And then she waited (I was jogging very slowly) and we crossed the finish line together.

I actually kind of teared up a little bit when we crossed the finish line. Silly me.

Results

• Swim: 5:52, ranked 37th!!
• T1: 3:02
• Bike: 56:29
• T2: 1:57
• Run: 38:34
• Total: 1:45:54, Ranked 152 of 156 (Not last place!)

Filed under: Triathlon, Goals, Rewards, Race Report