Kinetic Race Report

I'm a little behind on race reports....

 

I was using this race as a great way for training. We (M and I) drove down to my cousin's house who lives in the area the night before. It was nice to sleep in till 5 instead of driving down the 90 miles the day of. We left her house at 5:30 and were at Lake Anna by 6am. I guess we should have given ourselves a little more time because we were in transition setting up until it about closed. We also found out that Setup Events had a little snag with there timing chips and "lost" everyone's timing chips who's bib was higher than 400. So yeah raced without a timing chip. Not really a big deal, but not really sure how they got accurate swim times.

 

Swim: 1.2 miles - 43:39 (swim + T1 time)

We were in the last wave that went off at 7:20. The water was about 68 I think so I wore a sleeveless wet suit. As soon as our wave went off I panicked. I seriously am getting sick of panicking in the water. I have done this enough. This should not be happening, but it was. After about 100 I stopped and treated water for a little to bring my heart rate back down and relax. I don't know why this is happening? I really flustered with my open water swimming and these stupid panic attacks at the start of the swim. At any rate I continued to swim and felt fine. I even was sighting ok since it was over cast. I thought I felt fast (for me) in the water but as I ran out on the beach and looked down at my watch I saw 40 minutes. WTF. 40 minutes. This is 4 minutes slower than my 70.3 swim on the same course last year. How could I have swam 4 minutes slower? I only treated water for maybe 10 seconds. I was very flustered and mad as I made my way into T1

 

T1: Nothing special here. I decided to put on cycling gloves because it was raining when I got out of the water and didn't know if it would continue to rain during the bike. I just feel more comfy with gloves on if it's raining. Once I got to the bike mount line I realized my shoes were completely lose and had to re-tighten my dails. I guess I was out of it.

 

Bike: 56 miles - 2:55:24

Like I said it was lightly raining as I started the bike leg but it wasn't too bad. My heart rate was pretty high and took it took awhile to calm down. My big issue for the first 20 miles was my hip flexor. It was killing me. I wanted to cry it hurt that bad. But I didn't want to slow down and I wanted to try my best so I kept pedaling. Eventually it felt a little better around mile 25. I told myself over and over drink my drink, eat my snacks, I hope M made it out of the water. This is actually the only thing that went through my mind on the ride. No songs, no talking to myself. Just this same phrase over and over again. The course this year was a single loop instead of two loops. I liked to course. It's a fast course with some rolling hills for the first half then it picked up the old course around mile 30ish or so. My goal was around a 2:50 - 2:55ish. I was on target but we really hit some nasty head winds around mile 30 - 45 or so. Ugh. Wind. Why is it always windy? Oh well, kept pedaling. I was pretty happy when we turned back into the park and I knew I was done for the day. No running 13 miles for the win. Although I felt like I could have ran. My legs and stomach felt great.

 

Overall Time: 3:39:03

 

Brick: 2 miles

M and I finished within a couple minutes of each other and did a short brick along some of the run course.

It was a good day and lots of fun. Also so proud of M for finishing his first 1.2 mile swim! I think we are both ready for Raleigh. 2 more weeks! woot!

 

Happy Monday All :)

Racing Weekend

It's Race Day tomorrow!

What race you ask? Kinetic 70.3 - Well I'm only doing the aqua-velo as a training day for Raleigh 70.3

I have actually never done an aqua-velo so it should be fun :) I plan on taking off my timing chip and doing a short brick run when finished. I think it will be a great chance to test out my nutrition plan and work on getting my T1 time down. I always suck in T1.

Hopefully the rain holds off for us. As of now it's a 60% chance of rain. Ugh. Biking in the rain. Not my favorite thing to do. At least on the bright side of things it will be about 70 when we start the ride, so I won't be freezing.

Regardless I am excited about this race as it was my first ever 70.3 last year. 

I think the course is great! But I will be honest I'm not shedding over tears about not running 3 hill filled loops. I'll let everyone else have fun with that.

Happy Friday All and good luck to everyone racing this weekend :)

Weekend Recap

This weekend was filled with sports, traffic, and rage....

Saturday:

I set my alarm for 7am, but was up by 6:30.  I had some oatmeal and was out the door running by 7:30. I had a 105 minute run on my schedule. Sometimes it's hard for me to guess my mileage based on time, but I was guessing this would be around a 12 - 13 mile run. So I did a simple out and back up to the Zoo (6 miles one way). The first half of the run is mostly uphill. My splits: 8:11, 7:59, 8:24, 8:13, 8:39, 8:30. I was hungry by the 6 mile mark and ate half of my honey stinger chews. I normally don't have to take anything in during a run this distance, but I guess I was just hungry that day. But onto the second half which is mostly downhill: 7:56, 8:00, 8:10, 7:56, 8:20, 8:09, 7:35.  As you can see my splits are really all over the place. I really wasn't looking at my watch much and over all the run was uneventful. My overall pace was 8:06 which is right around where I want it to be at Raleigh. Oh course the challenge is keeping that pace after swimming and biking. Also I slow down a lot in the heat. So even though I hate that it's still been in the 60s. I would love it to be that temp come race day. One can only wish.

Soon after my run, we (Rachel, M, and myself) were on our way down to Lake Anna for an open water swim clinic. Lake Anna is about an 1:30 drive from DC so we gave ourselves a little over 2 hours to get there since traffic on 95 always sucks. And sure enough it sucked but we still managed to get to the lake right at 1 o'clock which is when the event was suppose to start. But to our surprise they changed the start time till 2 then delayed it a little more. So it was a lot of sitting around which was irritating. Finally Rachel and myself just got in the water and started swimming. The water felt ok at about 63 degrees. Originally a 500 meter course was suppose to be set up but after swimming 6 loops I realized it was not that long. We are guessing it was around 250 - 300 yards. Not really sure? I ended up doing 9 laps and it was great practice. It was really nice to get some open water swimming in since we never really get a chance to do so. Afterwards we stopped at Chick-fila which might have been the highlight of my day. Oh so good! Then it was onto more rage inducing traffic on 95.

Sunday:

Sportz take two: Bikes!

I will be honest here, I woke up with a running nose and I felt so tired! I did not want to do this ride at all and neither did M. We finally got ourselves out the door at 9:30 to start our ride. The schedule had us doing a 3-4 hour ride. I wanted to go on the longer side of the ride since we missed the last two weeks. I was freezing cold all the way up to the BP and the stupid wind. Ugh. With my race wheels on I feel like I am getting blown all the place. It's scarey. When will I get used to these things? I went out a little past the T down river then turned around to go back home. Once I made it back to the T my legs were trashed. I took a quick break and almost bit the dust trying to clip back in. Then I had a serious laugh attack after telling M I was done and there was no way I was making it back home. I don't know why this was so funny but I have never really laughed so hard on my bike. I was going so slow up hill (5mph) and had to unclip to finish my laugh attack before I fell off my bike. The rest of the ride sucked. Then it sucked some more ounce we hit Georgetown and had to ride back to the city to get over to the Hill. Worst 62 miles ever.

Once home I thought about skipping my brick run but forced myself to do it since it was only 20 minutes. My legs felt like crap but started to warm up but by that time I was done. I was happy with my pace on the run but the thought of running about 10 more miles in 4 weeks, ugh. Can I do it at this pace?

The rest of the day turned into napping :) Oh how I love sleep!

What was the favorite part of your weekend?

Happy Monday All :)