Well here we are!  My first Olympic distance tri of the year!  For my less tri-inclined readers that is a 1500m swim (about a mile -so think the distance of four laps around a track), a 25-mile bike, and a 10k (6.2mi) run.  My goals for this race were a ~30min swim, a 1:30ish bike, and hopefully about an hour for the run.  Based on my training times I felt like these were achievable goals, but my last race at this distance was 3:58 (yes that’s just under FOUR hours), so I kept the goals in the back of my mind, but didn’t overly stress about it.

Day started off kind of iffy – it was an hour and a half drive to the venue so I was going to leave at 0430 to get there by 6 and have an hour to set up and scope out the place.  Well, the alarm was on, but it was only set for weekdays. Race is on Sunday.  Fortunately I had a reminder on my calendar which faithfully dinged at 0430.  Good thing I had pretty much packed everything and was out the door by 0445.  Got there in plenty of time (should have taken more pictures!), got my number, set up my spot and was ready to go.

Swim went very well – I have been incorporating a lot of paddle/buoy work in training, and the extra strength paid huge dividends.  I was able to swim the entire 1500m without having to take a break, or think about how far the next buoy was, or feel like I was flailing around and not getting anywhere.  Glanced at my watch on the way to my bike and saw a 3 for the first number so was quite thrilled – my last several Oly swims have been in the 45min ballpark.  I was off to a great start.

I had been practicing leaving my shoes on the bike and getting on and off that way, so decided to go with that today.  I was very careful getting on and was able to get going without any mishaps.  The course was fairly rolling but nothing crazy and not too many turns to slow down for.  Halfway through I saw I was ahead of my 1:30 goal and was feeling strong.  So I kept that same effort and got off the bike with my computer saying 1:25ish.  That’s about 20min faster than any of my other Oly bike splits.

When I started on the run I glanced at my watch: 2:05.  Holy cow!  As long as I finished the run, this was by far going to be my fastest race at this distance so far.  I tried to remember not to go out too fast at the beginning (I knew from running off the bike a lot in training I ALWAYS ran faster than I planned to even though I thought I was going slow),so I concentrated on cadence and form and just followed the course.  Now I don’t know which race description I was reading, but I missed the part where “scenic” meant “hills”.  And not little hills.  I’m somewhat energetically bouncing up the first hill, joke to the lady I’m passing about the hills, we take a left, and there’s this hill that I think my car would have stalled out on.  It was crazy.  Of course at this point I hadn’t seen the last hill – LITERALLY it was so steep I had to walk down sideways.   However, I am most proud of the fact that I didn’t have to walk any hills, felt strong the whole time, and my goal of an hour-ish?  Turns out I finished in 1:00:02.  #nailedit!  hahaha

Final times were 34:25, 1:28, 1:00; which meant my finish time was 3:04 plus change.  I NEVER thought I would be able to do that.  It was good enough for a 5th in my AG which I was very happy with – this race was a Special Qualifier for the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships, so I figured there would be some pretty fast people there.  I was 100% satisfied with my performance on the day and was excited to keep training and see how much faster I might go the next time.

But wait…there’s more!  Turns out, special qualifiers means the top 33% OR top five in each age group qualify for the national championships. Which means…..I’M GOING TO OMAHA!!! woot woot!!