Hooray for a successful return to the Half Iron-distance! My last half before this one was Wildflower. I am happy to report that I have improved a lot over the past two months. My favourite improvement is probably my attitude – at Wildflower, I went into the race so focussed on my result that I forgot to have fun out there, and in the process fell short of my desired result (which was probably a bit unrealistic in the first place). At PC, my head was in the game. I had a ton of fun out there and at the end of it all finished 1st Amateur and 4th Overall Female. Woohoo! I had a goal time in mind but I was pretty flexible about it, having never seen nor raced the course and not knowing how my body would respond to temperatures near 100 degrees in the context of a triathlon.
Also I made sure to say “good job!” to everyone I passed (except for the one girl who looked like she was drafting and the handful of rule-breakers who were racing with iPods!). Perhaps it’s a vestige of my bike racing days, but I really like interaction with my fellow racers, even if it’s just a few words.
OK here is a breakdown of the day…
- No regrets from the swim (aside from ever-elusive speed of course). My time was 40 minutes, a far cry from the 36 minutes I felt I was capable of, but I know that I sighted well and that I swam better than I did at Wildflower (time of 39:40)… Looking at race winner Sunny Gilbert’s time and Kat Baker who finished second, it seems that the swim was probably long, plus chop and a mysterious current slowed it down too. So it goes. I have no idea how anyone can measure a swim course with any sort of accuracy anyway, don’t GPS devices have a 50 yard margin of error?
- My one regret from the bike was that I chose to ride an 11-23 cassette rather than a jerry-rigged 11-27. I spent approximately 10 km pedaling at 50-55 rpm, typically not a good cadence for my legs. It’s my own fault though, for some reason I took advice from Roman and Greg. What was I thinking! They climb twice as fast as I do! My consolation is that it was perhaps a good strength-building workout? My bike time was about 5 minutes faster than Wildflower, although this is a case of comparing apples to oranges because PC’s bike was 2 miles longer, had less climbing, ranged from 4,000′ to 6,000′ altitude rather than 0 to whatever WF was, and the temperature was about 20 degrees warmer. Unsure about differences in wind conditions, but you get the idea.
- The run went great, I stayed hydrated and kept a good steady pace. My time was a bit slower than I wanted (1:39 instead of <1:35) but it was soo hot that I just stayed positive, went as fast as I could, and the miles just ticked away. I had the fifth fastest female run split of the day, and I think I was only a minute or two slower than the top split? All those details should be online soon.
- I think I need to go to a podiatrist or something, my feet are just not toughening up. Or one of my feet anyway. The right foot is fine, the left foot developed one blood blister under the pinky toe that burst at ~mile 12 and another blood blister on the inside that I finally just lanced because it was so huge and I didn’t want it to burst on its own all over my cousin’s nice house – it squirted all over me instead. On the plus side, my nasty looking foot seemed to earn me some serious coolness points with my cousin’s kids when I peeled off my shoes and socks right after the race!
- Nutrition seemed to go great, which is nice given how much time I spent planning it all out. My top-secret formula for a good race: I started the day off with Neuro1, on the bike I had two bottles of Gatorade Endurance (sorry Huntress, it was free and Powerbar is not!) mixed with 2 Endurolyte capsules, one was also laced with some First Endurance Pre-Race, I had frozen them both overnight but they melted fast, then I had one plain water bottle, and also two additional Endurolytes and 6 Powergels, then on the run I carried another melted but initially frozen Gatorade Endurance/Endurolyte/dash of Pre-Race bottle, which proved to be *VERY WISE* because once I finished my concoction at mile 5, I just stopped at every at a couple aid stations and re-filled my bottle with a few cups of electrolyte mix. I know I was able to get in a lot more fluids and salt that way than if I’d relied on the aid stations alone.
And that’s about it! Thanks for reading!
Comments
This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Neuro1, Nutrition53, Race Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
maybe they boat around the swim course with a tape measuring. i could see that.
nutrition is such a fucking mystery to me; its definitely one of the biggest obstacles in longer racing.
good job! and you just keep getting faster. i soooooo want you to move back to the bay area and get faster with you!
Great job!!
Oh..and if you’re looking for the all-around cassette to use on your bike, I highly recommend the SRAM 11-26. It works with Shimano or SRAM, and is quite useful for those climbing routes that also have rollers and descents where you want to spin out.
Congratulations! It sounds like you had an awesome race! It makes me super happy to read that someone as serious and successful as you are still takes pleasure in cheering on the other racers. As someone who gets passed a lot, it makes me feel warm-and-fuzzy when some superstar flashes a smile or says something encouraging.
YEA! YEA! YEA! You look great – seriously! Congratulations on an awesome race – tremendous how much you learned! That’s great – what a difference from WF. EXCELLENT that the nutrition was nailed – super. And for the record, I know how much a long swim course sucks. Take solace in the fact that everyone has to swim long…. (but it still sucks!). Good for you for cheering people on – if I’m not about to blow up, I try to do the same. Except for drafters and ipod users. There are always a few…
No guy will ever admit to racing an 11-27, well, except for me. I’m the guy spinning past those suckers (except for maybe Roman and Greg and Ben). Congrats. Only a few more places to go! I’m excited to throw some pre-race into my Vineman bottles. It glows and scares me. Nice job.
STUD! Wow, great job! I’m interested in learning whatever you do from your podiatrist. My feet are disgusting to begin with, but anytime I race in just about anything over a 10K I get nasty blisters. Even with socks. I just assumed it came with the territory, or I just have very soft, princess-like feet. If there is a cure, I would like to know. If there is a cure for ugly feet, I would also like to know that. Congrats again on an awesome day.
CONGRATS Court! Woohoo! Way to go! I am so happy that you had an awesome day and you just keep getting better. So sweet! Recover and relax now…..
E
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! GO COURTENAY!!
OH MY GOD I AM SO STOKED I’M WRITING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I’M SO EXCITED!!
Major major high fives all around. I agree with Kelly, though. You need to move down here so we can get faster with you.
Awesome! Solid race beginning to end. Nice work on the nutrition as well… I’ve been trying to get that right all season.
you look hella buff in that picture. And your feet sound really bad-ass.
Beauford says hi!
Woohooo! Awesome racing! Wow, I am so impressed! A super-duper job well done!
Good luck with the feet…mine are still suffering from Disney 70.3. Once the big toe nails came off, everything seemed better…then I raced again!
Great job! Always enjoy your races. Otherwise, why race? And never take gearing advice from wicked fast male cyclists, although Eric Bean did give me some good tips before Silverman, but usually…
Way to go!
Hey Cort,
Glad you had a good race, sorry I gave you the wrong advice. I guess you should follow your instincts next time, you probably know best.
Roman