RACE REPORT: Independence Day Triathlon at Tradewinds Park

    I know that Sprint Triathlons don’t exactly prepare me for a race that’s about 12 times as long. But, I saw no harm in doing a Sprint Triathlon just for fun…especially when it fell on a Wednesday and wouldn’t interfere with my all-too-important weekend workouts. Granted, I actually chose to wake up at 4:30am on my day off from work. And, although he came and cheered with a smile on his face, I know my boyfriend wasn’t too psyched about the early wakeup either. But, that’s what you get for dating a crazy person like myself.

    Anyways, although it was an early wake-up, I felt comforted by knowing that the race would only take me about an hour to complete. It’s a lot less nerve-wracking waking up for a Sprint Tri than for a Half-Iron. And luckily, although it was beyond humid out and the mosquitoes were out with a vengeance, the sun stayed away for the most part and I was able to win the race in my age group with a decent time of 1hour and two minutes (and 10 seconds to be uber-specific).

In Transition

The Swim/Run to T-1: 

Not much to say about the quarter-mile swim. I went out hard and had the 13th fastest swim overall for both men and women. It’s hard for me to get a good lead in a sprint race on the swim, though. Swimming thirty seconds faster than somebody in a quarter-mile is like lapping that person in a pool. But in a triathlon, thirty seconds is NOTHING. I could essentially drop my hemlet in transition and lose that lead.

T1: 

Acceptable at about a minute but I still need to improve my transition times. I’m not too worried about the transitions for the full-Ironman though…obviously.

The Bike: 

 I averaged a little over 20mph which was decent for such a turn-ridden, crowded, narrow bike course. Also, on my first of the two loops on the bike, I narrowly escaped a MAJOR collision at an un-marked turn about 1.5miles into the bike course. I feel bad for the man whose bike got split in half right in from of me. However, I’m also pretty glad that it wasn’t me. The collision definitely freaked me out though and I made sure to really slow down at all of the turns on the course after that. There weren’t any volunteers or signs to signal upcoming turns so it was up to each individual biker to stay very aware of what turns lay ahead. I definitely sacrificed a lot of my speed at every turn on the course. But, I still maintained my lead which ensuring the safety of both myself and my bike.

T-2: 

Definitely slower than it should be. This is definitely an area that I can improve upon.

The Run: 

That's me...numero uno!

 I’ve been putting A LOT of strain on my body recently and my muscles have been feeling heavy and exhausted. In fact, I just completed my 100-mile bike milestone last Sunday. I didn’t feel the general body exhaustion really kick-in until the run. But, when it did, my legs felt very heavy and sluggish. Overall, I felt strong and composed on the run. But, I just couldn’t get my legs to turn over any faster no matter how hard I tried. Fortunately I did not have to out-sprint anybody to the finish because I’m not sure my legs could’ve responded. But, my split wasn’t all too terrible and I made it to the finish still feeling strong so I’m pretty happy.