Not sure why this one is called Mountain Lakes Tri…there aren’t any mountains in AL. More like foothills. But I digress… The race was FANTASTIC! Outstanding organization, great volunteers, and just an overall great experience. Probably my favorite part was the race tats – hey I like to pretend I’m a pro for a day! hahaha :0)
Water was a balmy 71 which was perfect. They did a time trial start which I really liked – we each went off in 3-4sec intervals and the swim was a 600yd loop. I did a more thorough warm up than I’ve previously done before racing; usually I splash around a bit and just go for it. What happens is it takes most of the swim for me to settle into a rhythm and by then everyone’s passed me. This time, I swam around a bit, and while the first ~150ish people were starting their swim, I took just a short little jog up and down the sidewalk to get the HR up. While I was standing in line, I jumped around a bit and just generally kept moving. Well this was a good choice – I felt awesome the entire swim, and was able to actually pay attention and swim competitively the whole time instead of trying to catch my breath. Ended up with almost a 10min improvement from just two weeks ago in the last race.
My plan again was to pound the bike, as I knew I didn’t have a whole lot of time on my run legs. I was fairly confident I would be able to run the whole 5k though so I didn’t completely go all out on the bike. I am pleased to say only two females passed me on the bike…however they were both in my AG! I managed to keep up with one of them for most of the bike, but she lost me in the last couple of miles. I felt like I was not going as fast as the last race, but when I checked my garmin/CycleOps later, I avg’d 17.7mph!! This was almost a whole mph faster than just two weeks ago.
So pretty quick transition and off to the run. This was a flat run loop around a jogging path right along the lake. Very pretty! I took off out of transition and the legs felt pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised. The longer I ran, the better they felt. I took extremely brief walks at each of the two aid stations, and got right back to it. Was able to put in a decent pace increase to the finish line and was extremely happy with my new sprint PR of 1:38! My pace was 8:57 for the 5k – not bad for having done almost zero speed work for at least the last several months.
It was good enough today for third in my AG! Super stoked! I have a lot of work to do but am very confident I’m moving in the right direction 🙂 Next race is my first Olympic distance of the year – we’ll see how it goes!
rocket city athlete 