Lonestar Triathlon Race Recap!!

5:52:30

I am back. Back from Galveston, TX where I had one of the best days of racing EVER!! Here it is, the race report you have been waiting for.....

The day starts, I get up and eat large. As I have learned from Jeff W., I am not eating enough before I race. I am going in already depleted, so this race was about trying new things nutritionally since it is not my 'A' race. I get up around 5 AM, eat around 1000 calories before I load up the bike and gear and head down to transition. Get my race packet (thanks Adam!!), continue drinking water, warm up on the run, make sure all gears are working on the bike and grab my wetsuit to head down for a warm-up swim. I get in the water, swim for about 8 minutes. Salt water is weird and tastes funny.

I finish my bottle of water, eat a banana and wait for my wave to be called.

We take off at 8:05 and here is what happened.

Swim: It was a deep water start so I used the tricks that Texas Iron taught me for Open Water swim....I get about 200 out and I relax into my stroke, feeling good and efficient with my TPR. As we hit the second bouy, the water becomes a bit choppy and I panic as I am being slapped in the face in each direction. After about 5 minutes of mayhem I talk myself into calming down. I was happy to reach the finish and I felt good about my swim. 44:16 was the final time (2 minutes off my last Half Iron) I was sad about this because it felt like my time should be better. However when I talked to Mo (coach from T3) he told me that the swim was long and my time would have been better.

Bike: My goal for the bike was to get the calories in and to watch ONLY cadence in order to save my legs for the run. We had a head wind going out, but it wasn't horrible. The first loop out it was about 10mph and the second looped it picked up to about 13 mph. Thankfully we had cloud cover and so you were not overheating going into the wind. You got a nice tail wind coming back into racesite, so that was nice. My bike time was 3:00:45. (4 minutes better than personal best) Average cadence was 94 rpm's, Average mph was 18.6. Not bad for either actually.

Run: Here is where I took the course and totally made it MINE!!!! I headed out onto the run course and ran the first 2 miles with a small bottle of water in hand (a tip Jamie Cleveland taught me so that you don't go out too fast) I used the first two miles to just get comfortable and to stretch my back out again. Being aero for 3 hours is more painful than I thought. As I finished the first half, I could feel that my legs had enough in them to really go so I picked up the pace for the second loop of the run. The last 2 miles were 8:05 and 8:10 miles for me....Making my run 2:03:25!!!!! (9:25 mile average) I took 18 minutes off my 13.1 mile best which makes me MORE than happy! I never walked in this race and stayed in it mentally the entire time!!

Final time- 5:52:30

I went under 6 hours which had never been done by Colleen Renee Wilson. Took 24 minutes off my Personal Best for Half Ironman and had such a great time during this race!

A shout out to Carrie W. and Amanda A. for finishing their FIRST Triathlon!! They are training for Wildflower Half but did the Olympic yesterday to get in the swing of it all and totally ROCKED it! And to the rest of the Austin crew...Shelley, Mama T, Amber R., Naomi, Barry & Ryan...thanks for making this a FUN trip!! It was great to see you back out there Jodi, nice work! Way to go Billy for taking 2nd in his Age Group in Olympic Distance!!

In Jack & Adam's most recent newsletter Jack writes, "It is not about where you finish, what type of bike you have, what you do for a living, where you are from or where you are going. It is about having fun and that is it. You can have many goals in our sport without forgetting this key element."

So very true. I had some serious fun yesterday and had a great race at the same time!!