Picking Up Where I Left Off...Iron Girl Columbia Race Report!

Hello? Anybody still reading this here blog? Likely not. In any case, I plan to at least use it a bit to write about some athletically oriented things in the next few months. Namely, training for the Goofy Challenge. But in the meantime, I thought I'd report on this year's Iron Girl Triathlon in Columbia, MD.

First of all, I should mention that I didn't train as hard for this tri as I did last year. I guess I wasn't as worried about not finishing. I did train fairly regularly and more intensely when I did train, but not as frequently as last year. I also started training in April...which was way too early. I was burned out by early July! Lesson for next year- start training in June! I did swim harder and farther than last year, though.

The race was Sunday morning, so Saturday we picked up our packets, racked our bikes, and Lauren and I had a tasty pasta dinner with our friends Pam and Todd (Pam was doing the tri as well).

I went home, and managed to get myself into bed and asleep by 10:30 PM. Which was great, because my alarm went off at 4 AM Sunday morning. Ick. I met Lauren at her house, and we carpooled to Columbia. At this point, I was a bit apprehensive...wondering if I would do as well as I did last year. I should also note that I bruised my tailbone in a freak cleaning accident the week before, and it was a bit sore. In any case, we arrived at the Park, set up our transition areas, and then wandered over to the start to wait the hour + for our swim waves to begin. In the meantime, my boyfriend J showed up and took a few photos.

My swim wave went off at 8:26 AM. I started out slow, wanting to let some of my wave get ahead so I'd have room to really swim. I had not gotten any open water training in this year, but it wasn't as hard as I suspected. Sighting and swimming straight were difficult, but that was about it. I hit my stroke rhythm about a 1/3 of the way in and swam on home from there. However, I was severely disappointed when I saw my swim time was 28:55, a whole minute slower than last year. Since I had trained the swim more than anything else, I wondered what had happened (more on this later). I chalked it up to pre-race nerves and no open-water training.

Transition 1 was pretty decent and I hopped on my bike and headed out on the ridiculously hilly course. I had used my inhaler about 1.5 hours before I started the swim (can't swim with it easily and couldn't put it back in the transition area), but was starting to feel my lungs closing up on the hills. I toughed it out through the first half of the course, but was dreading the hills coming back. Knowing that, I stopped at the turnaround point for a minute or so to take a Gu, puff on my inhaler, and drink some Gatorade. The Gu must have helped, because I didn't have any "I'm dying" moments on the hills on the way back, which were longer/steeper than the ones on the way out. I cruised back into the park and made a quick transition to the run.

And then, everything came to a screeching halt. I couldn't get my legs to move past a walk. I was even huffing and puffing just walking. At that point, I was ready to just walk the whole course (3.4 miles). I figured as long as I was moving forward, that was a good thing. I remember thinking something along the lines of "This is the hardest thing I've ever done!". Even harder than the marathon. And after an hour or so on the bike, my tailbone was aching. However, after 10 minutes or so of walking, I decided to try a little running. And it wasn't too bad. My legs were still dead and a little crampy, but I was moving. So I settled into a nice 2/1 Galloway run/walk that felt comfortable. Towards the end, I even actually felt good. And could still breathe! I guess it just took some time for my body to recover from the bike!

I was incredibly happy to get to the finish line. It wasn't quite as fulfilling as the marathon finish line, but was pretty close. I think that is probably the most pain I've pushed through in a race, and I hope to not have to worry about it again! My final time was 2:29:46. Almost 3 minutes slower than last year. I was a bit disappointed with that, until I learned that apparently the swim was 200 yards longer than last year! At least that is the discussion on the race bulletin board. Almost everyone's times were 2-4 minutes slower than last year. So perhaps I was a much stronger swimmer after all! There is no way to officially tell, but I will just tell myself that was the case. :)

All in all, here is a side-by-side comparison from last year:

2008 swim: 27:48 2009 swim: 28:55

2009 tran1: 4:41 2009 tran1: 4:17

2008 bike: 1:11:58 2009 bike: 1:13:28 (guess my 1 min break accounts for this)

2008 tran2: 2:49 2009 tran2: 1:53

2008 run: 39:52 2009 run: 41:15 (guess 10 min of walking slowed me down)

Knowing about the swim discrepancy and considering my breathing and tailbone issues, I think I'm pretty happy about my time. Still under 2:30 which was my main goal. Will I do the Iron Girl next year...I think so. The more lessons I learn from triathlons the better I think I will do!

3 Runs Later...

Well, after writing last week's blog, I managed to bust one of the valves on my bike. So, since I didn't get it into the shop until today, I didn't get any rides in. I felt too lazy to hit the pool, so I ran 3 times...about 4 miles on Tuesday (in place of the bike ride), 5.4 miles on Saturday, and 3 miles tonight in the rain.




This run was longer than it shows...had a 1/2 mile calibration at the beginning.





These two are the same run...the Nike+ cut out on me in the middle of the run. It was a run/walk for 5.4 miles down to Bay Ridge and back.



This run was in the rain...and one of my fastest in awhile. Good triathlon training..though I don't know that I could maintain a 10 min mile pace at the end of the triathon!

Back Again...

This poor running blog is somewhat neglected, isn't it? I think it reflects my running habits...

I am back in tri training now, so hopefully both my training and blog updates will be more consistent! I've gotten back on the bike recently, and last Sunday was my first foray back into the pool. As I've mentioned here before, I love swimming, so it was nice to get back in the pool and work on my form. I allowed myself one swim workout to get back into the water and remembering what it feels like. It didn't take as long as I expected to get back into my swimming form. Ideally, by the triathlon in August, I'd like to be swimming a mile in the pool without stopping (the swim leg of the tri is 1100 meters).

On the bike, I'm currently up to about 10 miles. The bike part of the tri is 17.5 miles, so I want to be riding about 20-25 once a week or so heading up to the race. I think that is doable...

And running is...well....running. 3.5 miles is nothing compared to my normal half marathons and the Goofy Challenge I'm signed up for next January. Although, my friend Jehiah has issued a challenge to me through Nike+, so I better get a couple of runs a week in!

Speaking of Nike+, I'll be recalibrating for this challenge, and hopefully will get my running stats back on the blog.