July 13, 2008

Today was Danskin, and while I finished I feel like I raced like shit. Basically the only thing I feel that I rocked were transitions.

A pic of the beach...many women ready to swim.

This is Sue, Elaine and I ready to swim.

Tri Buddies!
My swim was 5 minutes slower than the last race for the same distance. Open water blows. And 5 minutes? I feel like a no talent ass-clown. I'm supposed to do better with the second one, not go slower. I guess the problem is the open water. I practice in a pool (ie no waves). It was windy and the water was a little choppy. So that pretty much sucked.

Elaine's husband took this pic of our wave swimming...and it totally cracked me up!!

On to the bike. The bike, also not faster. Napierville was 15.82 mph and Danskin was 15.62. To top it off this bike was shorter! So I get no warm fuzzies there. One problem was my chain popped off due to bad shifting. I got it right on (thank you, Pete for showing me the stick trick!!). My main problem was that there was a AWFUL head wind on the second half of the bike. I felt like I was on a stationary bike. My gears were in the big granny gears. And don't get me started on the joys of up hill and in to the wind. (OK, after the post, I checked the weather for Kenosha Co., and the wind was gusting 20 mph. I guess if I was riding 15 mph, I should be thankful I was even making forward progress.)

I was very happy with my transitions. I felt really good about swim to bike. I almost cut my first transition time in half--ROCK STAR!! And then almost a minute off the second transition. From the last. I know it's a different course with different transition areas, but it's nice to have done something significantly better.

Pay no attention to the fat girl trying to get out of her wetsuit. (I hate this pick, but I'm posting it for motivation to work harder to get rid of that sparetire that seems to engulf my mid-section.)

Must get shoes on...

On my way with the bike..

Finally, I guess I can't complain about the run. It was a little over two minutes faster than the last 5k portion of the sprint tri. I guess then I rocked two things...the transitions and the running. This next photo, is my favorite race photo ever--I look awesome!!Over all Rank: 1715 of 3650
Class Rank: 212 of 311
Swim: 00:20:53
Swim Place: 2539
Transition 1: 00:03:09
Bike: 00:47:45
Bike Place1586
Bike MPH: 15.5
Transition 2: 00:02:23
Run: 00:34:17
Run Place: 1952
Run Pace: 00:11:03
Finish Time: 01:48:29

Here's Elaine and me with our medals. Elaine rocked this race! I'm so proud of her!I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself. If you had told me 5 years ago, that I'd do a Tri, I would have laughed at you and asked what you were smoking. Still, I just wish I could improve my swimming. I didn't even do the 10 miler yesterday (cancelled due to lightning). Grrr...I guess there's all the incentive to really go balls out at Glenview.