Sunday February 28 - Stanford TREEathalon - Sprint Distance Triathlon
Since a sprint tri is over before you know it, so will this race report! We added this race to our calendar as a way to brush off the dust and get into the grove of racing. The race started at 9am so it was actually a morning we could sleep in relative what we have been doing on our full training weekends. It is always such a good vibe at races and in transition meeting the athletes and thinking about your day. This was the first race where I had to have "35" as my age on my calf....so sad :( Not much else to report here - we got set up - saw lots of friends and cheerleaders - and headed to the swim start. Walking to swim, a friend told me that at the end there are no steps and no shore/beach to exit the water from so the race volunteers PULL you out of the water like "a sac of potatoes and make you feel like an old man" (his words, not mine!)! These are NOT the kind of surprises I like to be faced with minutes before the race. "They are gonna lift me out of the water? Sure they are!" The collegiate waves went first and it is awesome to see them power thru the water so fast. This was the first race for me where the swim was a deep-water start. So, you get to warm up by swimming out to the start line. The water was 57 I think that day and yes, that is pretty damn cold on your face and hands. I swam straight to the starting line (other women took their time either to warm up or swim around which wasn't the best plan as it turned out) and was pretty numb by the time I reached the buoys. I looked up and was only at the line with like 10 swimmers at the most and the gun went off! More than half of the wave wasn't even at the line yet! That would have been stressful to know the race was starting and you weren't ever there yet. Anyhow, off we went. Swim was fine for me though it did take me an extra minute or two to slow my breathing b/c it was so cold. 500m feels like a warm-up so we were approaching the end of the swim before I really got into a grove. I sighted the docks (we were swimming between boats in a marina area) and saw swimmers being lifted out of the water just like my friend had warned me about. Well, here goes.....I swam to the dock and lifted my arms up and two dudes picked me up under the armpits (I slipped out a little at first) and tossed me onto the dock. Another guy said, "Hurry up, get to your feet". Seriously? I was kinda dazed then so didn't pay him much mind. It still takes me a second to shake the dizzies out when I get out of the water so I walked up the ramp and slowly started getting my wetsuit off and to my waist. Some racers are able to run fast to transition, but I need a few minutes to adjust. Transition was 1/4 mile away from the "swim out" so it is hard to judge what my actual swim time was. My whole time including running to transition was 12+ minutes or so, so I guess 10+ minutes or so was the swim part. I was 7 out of 25 in my age group out of the water.
The bike course was 3 loops for 12 miles and though it was nice to have such a short bike, I felt it hard to really get going with all the turns and other bikes in the narrow lanes out there. I wouldn't say the bike was "bad", but it for sure didn't feel awesome. I avg only 17mph or so and I should have been able to be a bit faster than that over just 12 miles. It is fun to see friends out there as you do the 3 bike loops. I saw one crash and one flat tire, but other than that seemed everyone was having a good day. I slipped to 8 out of 25 in my group after the bike.
Onto the run - my least favorite part of these things, but an area I have been trying to improve lately. It was only 3 miles so I knew I should be able to push it a bit (pushing it for me really doesn't mean much!) and I felt pretty good actually. My legs were loose and I kept it under a 9:30 pace the whole time and finished feeling pretty good. My race time was 1 hour 26 min. I ended up 10th out of 25 in my age group for the day. I guess I can say this is my first "top 10 finish"!!
