On August 25th I completed my very first Half Distance Triathlon, more specifically the Bear Lake Brawl Half Distance Triathlon. For those of you unsure, triathlons come in a variety of distances most commonly known as Sprint, Olympic, Half, and Full. Each of these distances is roughly 2x's the distance of the one prior to it. The distances of each sport in the half is 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 run.
Training for this race was a little haphazard as I have been training for multiple events this year including smaller distance triathlons, marathons, ultra-marathon, and bike century ride. Due to how the schedule worked out as well as some of my other hang ups with biking I really neglected training on my bike, simply hoping that the outrageous numbers of miles I was putting in running would help me squeak by on the bike. I did however spend a significant amount of time training the swim which really helped me to feel prepared and confident to be able to race the swim. Thanks to two previous triathlons and several outdoor swim training sessions I had also gained better control of my anxiety in the open water that had somehow still managed to plague me at the start of the year.
So I guess you could see that I was at least decently prepared in 2 of the three events. Which only left me the tiniest bit nervous about my overall performance and time to completion. Not to get ahead of myself, but I did manage to do better than I expected on the bike.
Friday we drove up to Garden City/Bear Lake from our house in West Jordan. What should have taken only 2 hours took us 4 freakin hours! The traffic was awful! Between the Utah/USU football game, LOTOJA, and rush hour traffic we just couldn't get ANYWHERE fast. Josh was so cranky by the time we arrived in Garden City that it took all the effort that I had to not die of laughter when he saw the condition of the motel we were staying in. Ha ha ha oppsss...
Josh, like everyone, has his hangups of things he does not tolerate or like very much, and one of those things is nasty hotel rooms. I found this out on our "honey moon" which, was not really a honeymoon but that is neither here nor there. I booked the motel a few weeks before thinking that with the race it would be dreadful to find a place to stay and so I literally booked the first room that google showed available. It was dreadfully ironic because just the week before (Labor Day weekend) my sister had wanted to share a hotel room with us in St George and Josh whined and complained when he learned there were cockroaches in the room (heaven forbid). So when we arrived and saw this he was not pleased with me. However, despite its grubby outward appearance it was at least a clean grubby look on the inside. So he eventually forgave me for the indignity.
Here are a few shots of the room:
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| Sorry I couldn't figure out how to flip this. But this was our sinkfridgestove. Pretty nifty huh? |
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| Settled right in! He didn't even require a sheet to lay on top of :) |
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| Super modern and high tech TV, closet and bathroom. |
Once fed and moderately settled we laid down to watch some shows on that killer tv set. All's I can say is I felt lucky to have DirecTV :p We had found out that they had pushed back the start of the race until 9am the next day! And because I was in the 3rd wave of swimmers I wouldn't start until 10 am! I was bewildered not knowing what to do with myself! I had never done a race that started so late. Normally at 9pm I'm going to sleep because of how early we have to get up, but this time... I felt like we had all the time in the world. So I didn't feel the urge to go bed. So what did I do instead? Got myself pumped up by watching 2 hours of CSI before going to sleep.
The next morning we arrived to set up the transition area. Typically Josh is racing with me, but since he wasn't this time he got to play support crew. Lucky him. He helped me retrieve things from the car that I had forgotten and buy me extra food and what have you. Then... I had to wait. The race was super small. Only 183 people in all. Which is both frustrating and nice all at the same time. Typically races are so big that you feel very anxious and stressed because you are constantly being pushed around and kicked in the swim and there is no space for you in the transition. So having practically no one made the stress and anxiety levels much lower. However, fewer racers means that you kind of lose that racey feeling that you love so much.
By the time I was in the water warming up it was about 9:40 and I was still getting use to my new wetsuit (big no-no by the way, I should have practiced in it multiple times prior to race day). Luckily my wetsuit and I bonded quickly. Once the swim started I felt strong, but wanted to pace myself a little in the beginning. We ended up doing an out and back 2x's and it was so crazy but both times once I turned around and was heading back towards the beach I felt like I came to a stand still. No matter how hard I tried I didn't feel like I was moving forward at all. I can only assume it was either in my head or there was a weird current there. The swim went well and I was pretty quick out of the water and onto the bike. One thing I learned that I need to consider for future racing is bringing a water bucket to rinse my feet in... they were covered in sand. I ended up using someone else's water bucket :) and no I never said thanks.
Once on the bike it was really just the mental games, since the route was incredibly easy and beautiful. Basically I rode completely around the lake. It was SO pretty I am tempted to do it again. Mentally it was challenging for a few reasons. One, I was not 100% sure what intensity I should be holding. If I go to slow, I miss knowing what I'm capable of. If I go to fast I burn out and my run will suffer. The whole time it was like a game of slowing down, speeding up, etc. Not too mention I was also trying to get used to the aero-bars (another first time no-no). Then there was this whole getting passed by what felt like everyone... ok not quite, but it felt like it. No matter your reasons for signing up for a race it is difficult to not let the mental game of wanting to compare yourself to others get to you. However I did the best I could.
Once on the run I felt fatigued but still fairly strong. I wish I had my gps on me because I must have been going pretty fast, according to our best guess I hit mile 2 in about 15 minutes. Of course I wasn't able to hang on to this speed, but I did pretty well until about mile 7 when all of a sudden I started to feel something similar to COPD. Or in laymans terms I was hyperventilating. The pressure of my sports bra on my chest in combo with my rapid rate of breathing had increased the pressure between my lungs and the outer plueral layer which meant that I was not able to fully exhale and I couldn't then get enough air into my lungs. So basically it came down to only two options 1. slow down and walk or 2. take the bra off and finish without it. well... I chose option #2. So after taking it off I still had to go pretty slow while I attempted to recover, but it did get better. Well, that was until my abs then started to cramp :) I was able to hang on until about mile 10 then had to start walking on and off. At mile 11.5 a girl was trying to catch up and pass me which gave me the motivation to pick it up and push through all of the pain and discomfort. I managed to go fast enough that she never caught up!
I crossed the line at 6 hours and 3 minutes. Not competitively fast, but due to the small number of females and the fact that the top 3 females over all were in my age group I managed to come in 3rd place in my age group. Ha ha not something to really brag about but I'll take it.
Here are some pictures of the finish.
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| Swim Start! |
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| Start of the run |
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| Finish line! I wanted to die! :) |
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