We drove to Palo Friday night after work to “camp” for the
weekend for the Pigman Olympic distance race. It took a bit extra to get set
up because I have not yet learned when figuring out where we want to set up the
camper, I need to make sure the power cord reaches the power supply box. Oops!
Finally got set up, had dinner, watched the beginning of Hitchcock, and
off to bed with the windows open. Loving
the cool nights. So rare this time of
year!
The internet is not ideal, so Saturday morning Wes headed to Starbucks
after breakfast while I relaxed a little and went for a 10 mile ride followed
by a 2 mile run. My effort felt relaxed
and was going a good pace. I didn’t
feel any leftover soreness from the previous weekend. The rest of the day was full of packet
pickup, a few errands, a visit from Wes’ mom, making dinner, and finishing up
Hitchcock. Unfortunately, it was almost
10:30 by the time we finally headed to bed.
It’s not like I get a good night’s sleep before races anyway, but 4:30am
still felt early.
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| Quick stop at the RV Dealer to pick up a part for the camper, and were talked into getting a pooh tube pig. The hawkeye decorations sold Wes on it. |
I was able to get to transition pretty early as I heard the line starts
to form at 5:30. Getting there at 5:40
put me about 20th in line.
Good enough.
I took my bike out for a short ride, then did a little run (to the
port-a-potty and back), put my wetsuit on, and headed down to the water. I had hoped to get through everything
quicker, but socializing ate up a good amount of that time. As I was warming up, I stopped for a sec and
heard them announcing some of the people that were racing. I only caught the end of the Olympic distance
women, so got the awesome news that I would be racing against a woman that
placed 20th at the London Olympics last year. Yeah! L
The race started at 7:30am with the men, then the women in a time trial
start. Every 3 seconds someone took off. We self-seeded ourselves, and I chose to go
last. No matter if I went first or last
for the women I was going to have to climb over people in the swim. I decided on last so I knew that everyone I
passed I was ahead of. Since the women
were last, this meant I would not have a chance of someone from a wave behind
catching to draft off of. Doubt that
made much of a difference. Temps have
been usually cool lately, so the water temp was only 73, which made it
wetsuit-legal.
I could tell I was working my way through the swimmers. I felt fairly comfortable with my swim. Never pushed myself, but never let up
either. It wasn’t my fastest 1.5k swim,
but not my slowest either. I was content
with it.
T1 was fairly good. I actually
got my helmet on correctly the first time, and was able to get a foot out of
the wetsuit as the same time. I’m used
to having to drag my bike with my bike shoes on all the way through transition,
but this was the first time in a while that I had a rack in the middle. Much nicer!
I headed out on the bike at a steady pace. I could tell there were a few women ahead of
me and I was starting to pick them off, along with a few guys. I only jockeyed back and forth once with one
guy. Usually it’s at least two that
dislike being passed by a chick on a pink bike, and fight back.
Everything was moving along well until the turnaround. I was about 20 yards from the turnaround when
a truck pulling a camper went through.
Not sure if he went on his own, or if the volunteers let him through. At first I thought it would be okay. I had hoped I could catch him before he sped
up too much, so I could draft for a bit.
The exact opposite happened. I
caught up pretty quickly, and he slowed down.
Apparently he didn’t feel the urgency to pass the cyclist ahead of
him. There was not enough room for me to
pass without crossing the center line, which would be a 2-minute penalty, but I
also feared as soon as I would start to pass he would pass and push me into
oncoming cyclists. I hoped he was just
waiting for a good time to pass, so I stayed behind…and waited, and waited, and
waited. I would pedal a few times, then
sit up and hope the driver would notice and pull over or motion me to go
around, or a race marshal would do something.
I even had to break while going downhill so I would run into the
camper. It felt like I was behind it
forever! Finally another cyclist caught
up to me, asked if it was illegal to pass (I responded “yes”), then he went
by…and I followed. I felt safe in
passing at that point, and knew if it was going to Palo, I would be slowed down
by at least 2 minutes if I stayed behind it.
As I turned the corner to head towards Palo I looked to see where the
camper was. It had just crested the hill
behind me. I was so glad I finally went
around.
The rest of the bike leg was standard.
I passed a few more people, held on tight for the railroad crossings,
and eased into transition. My bike
bladder had water mixed with one scoop of Hammer Nutrition HEED (100 calories),
and I went through about 3/4 of it.
Racked my bike, took off my helmet, put on running shoes, grabbed my belt
and hat to put on while running, and took off.
I got in and out of T2 quickly (3rd fastest T1 and T2 times
for the women).
I don’t wear my Garmin will running, so not sure how consistent my pace
was. While turning the first corner, I
was told that I was in fourth and two minutes behind third. I knew there were three people ahead of me,
so I was happy to know there weren’t more.
I was pretty sure the woman directly ahead of me was Jamie. Unfortunately, I had no idea where in line
she started for the swim. I just hoped
it was less than 2 minutes as I knew my run wasn’t much better than hers. I never fully pushed the run, but wasn’t
taking it easy, either. I really dislike
time trial starts. I know I should be
racing my own race, but I really like to know where I’m at and what I need to
do. I never passed any women during the
run, so wasn’t sure until I saw the results were I actually finished up.
I came in third for the women.
The first place uber-triathlete destroyed me by 10 minutes, and was 4th overall. Second place was about a minute and half
faster. I took a look at my bike
data. What felt like several miles
ended up only being 1.267 mile and 4:04 minutes of being stuck behind the
camper. Average mph on the bike for the
entire race was 22.6. While behind the camper I averaged 18.7. It definitely didn't slow me down by the
minute and a half I lost to second place.
By my calculation, which could be incredibly wrong, I lost 42 seconds,
but I also rested my legs during that time, so it’s hard to tell. I was only 36 seconds slower on the bike than
the first place super-chick. It would
have been really cool to have beaten her on the bike :) However, it’s not like she really needed to
try very hard to the race to win.
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| Radka Vodickova, Janet McCullough, and I (right to left) I look extra short because we're on a slight incline. |
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| 1st place club |
One more race for the season, Hy-vee 5150 Championships. Last year I placed high enough to get a free
entry into this year’s race, and won a $500 gift certificate to
Orca/Orbea. I finally used it this week. New bike is in the mail!
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| Orbea Carpe H60 (Wes affectionately refers to it as a barcycle) |
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