This past weekend, I competed in my first triathlon of the season. It was so nice to race at home, and sleep in my own bed the night before the race. It wasn't as hot as we expected, so race conditions were ideal.
We arrived at the race site in time to see our coach, Tim Crowley, race in the first ever age group draft legal race! It was incredibly exciting to watch, I really hope that we can continue to see more draft legal races across the US.
The water was right at 68 degrees, the race before us was wetsuit legal and our was not. So it was a little chilly in the warm up. I had a great start position, and a great line to the first buoy. I actually smiled when I was out with the lead right next to McLarty. We had practiced our swim entries the week before to the point of laughter and it was so much fun to get to do in the race, exactly what we practiced. Sara had about a 10 second lead on me exiting the water. Hot my heals, were Helen Jenkins, Sara Haskins and Flora Duffy.
We entered transition with a VERY small gap on the group. I could clearly hear Nate Korteum screaming at us to go now. So we hit it immediately and we had a gap of 25 seconds by the end of first loop. Our group of 5 was working hard, but so was the chase group with a lot more people in it, and we were only able to get about 5 seconds a lap.
We came off the bike with a 30 second lead. The second I stood up I felt my abdomen strain. With one side of my abdomen unable to work, I just didn't have the pop in my stride that I expected to have. I did the best I could, but I was flat. I held on for 10th place- it was fantastic to see so many women pushing the pace on the run.
I am now ranked 55th on the ITU points list. I'm looking forward to racing MIT next weekend!
Thanks for reading!
0 comments:
Post a Comment