Race Report - GRIT And Bear It Indoor Triathlon

Hooray, it's race season! Meredith and I headed up to Delaware EARLY Saturday morning for the first race of the year. We had a wake up time of 5:00 AM, hopped on the road, and rolled into Ohio Wesleyan's campus in plenty of time. We even got a scenic tour of campus, as I read the map wrong and we ended up on the wrong side. Little did we know that we drove right by it. Oops!

This race was a 15 minute swim, 15 minute bike, and 15 minute run format. At the end, your paces for each were extrapolated to a 750y/20K/5K sprint tri format. We got our bikes turned in, our swim suits on, and we were ready to get 2010 underway! Meredith and I were in wave 1, so we got on over to the pool. Maybe it's just our gym, but we're used to some pretty cool water and the OWU pool was nowhere near as cold. Nice surprise on a 14 degree morning. We got in a few warm-up laps and discussed the possibility of drafting since we were in adjacent lanes and we swim a similar speed. And then I almost missed the start since I forgot there's no "Set" in swimming, just "Swimmers take your marks...Go!".

I kicked off at a good pace and almost immediately dropped Meredith, who was being a little more conservative. Oops, guess we should have discussed our pacing strategies too. My stroke felt smooth and strong, and I kept pushing at a "comfortably hard" pace. For some reason, I completely forgot to count laps, so I had no idea where I was in the swim. At some point, I decided to start, thinking there couldn't possibly be time for more than 10 more laps. And there wasn't. I came to the wall, saw Meredith standing up, and realized we were done! I ended up doing 975 yards in 15 minutes, which would be a 1:40/100m pace. For reference, this was exactly the pace I did in last year's indoor tri, but for a 15 minute swim instead of 10 minutes. Very excited by this, I had in my mind that I would be thrilled with 950. It turned out that I finished second in my age group in the swim, and 8/69 overall.

Swim: 975 yards (1:40/100m)

I stopped off at my locker for a quick gel and change, and it was out to the fieldhouse for the bike leg. One thing I really liked about this indoor tri was the chance to ride your own bike! We had a few seconds to warm up here, and I quickly realized that the resistance was a lot higher than what I was used to at home. As we started our ride, I settled in around 18-19 MPH depending on the gear. I played around with gearing a little, but eventually just held a pace for the first half of the ride. Halfway through, I decided to crank up the gearing and held it around 21 MPH. And every minute or two from there out, I increased my speed until I was going around 23 at the end. In retrospect, I might have been able to go a little harder, but compared to the competition here, a few tenths of a MPH wouldn't have made much difference - nobody that finished above me overall averaged under 24 MPH! I ended up 10/16 in my age group on the bike.

Bike: 5.1 miles (20.4 MPH)

After getting off the bikes, I remember commenting to Meredith that my legs didn't feel great. (I know, what else is new coming off the bike?) We had a 5 minute transition, and the 5 people in our wave toed the start line of the indoor track. (Another nice thing about this indoor tri - no treadmills!) Within the first 200m, it was obvious that I'd be running by myself: Meredith and another guy were about a quarter lap ahead, and the other two were well back. Once again, I settled into "comfortably hard", and since I'm not used to running a 200m track, I didn't bother trying to do pacing math, I just ran.

Soo...maybe I should "just run" more often? When we finished up and I sprinted the last few meters to eke out my last half lap, I had done 15.5 laps, or 3100 meters. That was good for a 7:47/mile pace. Um, when was the last time I ran that fast in a race? My 5K PR pace is a 7:42. Interesting. Hopefully that bodes well for the coming year.

Run: 3100m (7:47/mile)

Total: 1:13:05 Predicted Time

I won my wave, but as the day went on my position slid down to 6/16 in my age group, 10/29 men, and 10/69 overall. That's right, I would have been first overall woman. Probably the first time I can say that, actually. :) I would have loved to have placed in my age group, but this year brought some tougher competition than the results we saw from last year. That's fine, though! I was thrilled with my swim, surprised by my run, and have some work cut out for me on the bike. Bring on 2010!