Lorain Summer Triathlon

Time for my first race report! I survived, but it has made me a little nervous that I won't make it through my Oly. That was tough!

Pre-race:

Woke up at 5am. Ate a Cliff bar (I've decided that peanut butter toast is too heavy for race day). Took the dog for a walk, drank some coffee and headed out to Lorain. It was about an hour drive from my house and we got there at 6:50, 10 minutes before registration began. I went with my roommate Matt who also was doing his first tri.

We were setting up our transition area (I got a great spot- second rack from the bike course) when Brooks got there. What a guy! He brought me a race belt and took some great action shots of the race (I'll post those later). It was great to have a cheering section. I'll return the favor next week at Musselman.

Swim: I was definitely among the minority of swimmers who was wearing a wetsuit. It was definitely not neccessary because the water wasn't very cold and the swim was only 400 meters. But I wanted to practice with it because I am definitely wearing it for the Cleveland Oly. I hung out with Carly (a fellow CTC member) while waiting for our wave to be called. She was freezing because she wasn't wearing a wetsuit and had gone in for a warmup beforehand. I became even more happy that I had my Orca on! It was a beach start and the water was very shallow for about 50 meters. When the buzzer went off everyone ran in. I was one of the first one to dive in and start swimming. That was a little funny since I was swimming at people's shins. But it was much faster than running through water so I started pulling ahead. When we got outside of the breakwater it got a little wavy, but we just had about 250 meters of swimming out there and it went really fast. I passed a couple of people from the wave before ours that weren't looking so good. But there was plenty of help around so I'm sure that they made it out just fine. The swim back to shore was nice because the traffic had thinned quite a bit. I was probably about 7th or so out of the water from my wave in 7 minutes. Not too shabby for 400 meters in open water I guess.

T1: It was a good run up the beach and through the parking lot to get to my bike. My heart was racing from the swim (probably should have warmed up). It took a short bit to take off my wetsuit. Not terrible, but I can definitely improve on that. Then I put on my race number, helmet, shoes and then grabbed my bike and was off. We didn't have official splits for this race. I'm sure from my getting out of the water to getting on the bike course took several minutes.

Bike: Heart was still racing so it took several miles to settle in. Unfortunately there was a good sized headwind for the first 9 miles of the bike. I was thinking that I was having a bad day when I saw that I was just going 16 miles per hour. But then I realized that I wasn't being passed by anyone (except a few serious female cyclists early on) , so I stopped worrying about it. The second half of the bike was much better. I increased my pace to 20 mph and started passing some guys from the previous wave. The course was pretty flat altogether so the only real obstacle was the wind. When I pulled into transition I was the 10th woman off the bike.

T2: Uneventful and fast. Probably 30-45 seconds. I love my Yankz! And the snazzy new shoes that I put them on

Run: Total and complete torture! I had just adjusted my bike seat the day before to alleviate some of my knee problems. So my hamstrings were not happy about it and they were extremely tight for the first mile of the run. I think the only thing that got me through those 3.1 miles was seeing so many friendly faces. I saw Brooks, Shanna (Matt's girlfriend), and Angie at transition. Then I ran into Mark who was on his way to winning his age group. Then I ran into Brian (TriFrog), then Matt, then Tri-Eric on his bike cheering us on. Then I saw Carly right when I was turning around (she was about 30 seconds behind me). I also cheered on a bunch of people who were looking strong and a bunch of people with CTC jerseys that I had never met. It was fun, but I was hurting and not moving very fast. Knee was very sore, but I bought a band for it and I think that helped a lot. Nevertheless, I was so happy to see the finish line!

Total time 1:23:06 400 meter swim 14.3 mile bike 5k run

Post race: Felt like crap for a good while. Dizzy and light-headed. But once that passed it was fun. CTCers got a lot of bling:

I got 1st in my age group and a pretty sweet trophy! (10 out of 37 females)
Matt got second in his age group- Way to go roommie!
Mark won his age group
Carly won her age group
Joanne got 3rd OVERALL

Great day for the club :)

The good: the swim- I felt strong. T2 was fast and efficient. Sweet trophy.
The bad: T1 and my slow trek against the wind on the bike
The ugly: The run. Everything about it. Ugly. I need to do some serious brick training!