Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Race report- Athleta Esprit de She 2014

Its been almost three weeks since the Athleta Esprit de She triathlon, so my race report is a little late.... Better late than never, right?

It was a great race to start off the season! The morning was COLD and cloudy. Cold enough that everyone with wetsuits was already zipped into their wetsuits before transition even closed just to try to stay warm. My sister has a sleeveless wetsuit, so she was wearing that, her husband's hoodie, and my fleece jacket! I was shaking, but that was probably 1/2 cold and 1/2 nerves. The sun started peeking out during the bike and was out in full force by the run portion. Fortunately, a lot of the run was through a tree lined neighborhood and a shady park.

That's me in the blue wetsuit. :) My sister was two waves after mine, and I also had my mom and little brother there cheering us on! It was a pretty even mix of wetsuits, swimsuits, trisuits, and a few random "they're wearing that?!" outfits.
 
 
The swim was a challenge, and yet I really surprised myself. There were around 80 women in each wave, and it was in a quarry. Imagine a huge stone pool, shallow sandy beach at one end and 15" deep at the other, with lanes.... It was a back and forth zig-zag swim, totaling 6 lengths. The first length was a chaos of bodies, and I tried to do my front stroke. By the end of the first length I was questioning my abilities... "Why am I doing this?! I can't swim this. I'm never going to improve my times. Blah blah blah." The typical swim voices-in-my-head I battle with every time I get into the water. So I flipped onto my back and started backstroking to calm myself down and slow my breathing. The next thing I knew I was done with the second length. So I kept backstroking..... And finished the rest of the swim doing the backstroke.

As I climbed out of the water I looked at my watch.... Time???? 15:53!!!!!!! That is HALF the time of my last sprint!!!! Half!!!
T1 4:34.


Bike was good too. It was a pretty smooth closed course, 2 loop ride. Very windy though! There were points that I was just pedaling against wind, and not going very fast. My sister mentioned that she couldn't use her aerobars because the wind would nearly knock her right over!

Time 49:39, averaging 16.07 mph, which is also an improvement from last year. (I KNOW I would have been even faster without the wind.)

T2 2:16. And that pisses me off. At the Bike In, I got stuck behind a lady who clearly hadn't done a race before and was having trouble locating her aisle. With TERRIBLE luck, it was MY aisle too, and she couldn't find her transition mat, so guess what? She put her bike right over MY transition area!! I had no place to rack my bike! I even told her, "That's my stuff" and she didn't move her bike! I finally shoved my bike against her's, tossed my helmet on my mat, and took off running. I was a new triathlete too once, but at least I knew not to rack my bike over someone else's mat.


Run was challenging but good! I caught up to my sister at the Run Out and thought it would be so cool to finish together. :) Then my shoelace came untied and Katie kept going. LOL It is a race after all. Note to self: double knot the shoe laces. The run started and finished in the park, and was a pretty straightforward loop. It was hot in the sun but nice in the shade. I alternated running and walking, until some guy was like "You're almost there! Only a half a mile to go!" And I was like, "I can totally run that!"

He lied.

Time was 33:13, averaging 10:42 min/mile. Certainly not my fastest 5k, but a huge improvement over last year's 12:31 pace. :) In hindsight I wish I had tried harder to run more of it.


Overall, my final time was 1:45! I took off a half an hour from last August! I'm very pleased with my time and my race, and I hope I can do just as well at my next triathlon.

Next up: ITU World Triathlon Series Chicago!

1 comment:

  1. Awesome!!! Congrats on a great race and good luck at your next tri!

    ReplyDelete