Courtenay Brown

I am sitting in the Vegas airport waiting for my flight home, and I’m totally cracked out on caffeine still from today’s race (do recall that I stayed caffeine-free till race day and it was a long race with lots of gels and a Neuro1 so OMG I’m wired and talking a million miles an hour).

Silverman was a perfect way to end my season! If you just want to know how I did without hearing the gory details, just skip to the bottom, but since my flight has been delayed like 2 hours thanks to airlines maintaining their normal flight schedule despite the fact that 1 of the 4 (i think?) runways here at McCarran is closed, I am going to indulge myself in a nice long play-by-play. Lucky you!!

So yesterday’s weather was beautiful, mid 70′s, sun, and barely any wind. But for today’s race it was in the low 60′s, cloudy, 10-20 mph winds, and RAIN. Yes I know it’s the desert here but I swear, there was rain. And thunder. WTF? Suddenly my decision to bring my disc wheel seemed incredibly stupid. When I packed, there was no inclement weather forecasted for race day, but I should have considered the fact that even in ideal conditions this is *not* a fast bike course and thus totally not a disc-wheel course (which Hi I did the race last year, so I have no excuse! I should have known better! Lesson learned…)

Adding insult to injury the wheel flatted in transition before the race, when I was topping off the air in my tires. Crap. But I fixed it since I am so skilled with all things bike-mechanical (ha).

Then I got all sunscreened and wetsuited up and went down to the majorly wavy water. Swimmers from the full-distance race were slowly staggering in (except for Dawn from Splish, who did the swim leg of the relay with no wetsuit and totally spanked everyone, she came out of the water first!). And kayakers were getting blown all over the place. And then this powerboat went by dragging a kayak filled with water behind it, I guess waves splashed so much water in it that it started to sink. Then they announced that all half-distance athletes needed to get out of the water and go up to the changing tents to stay warm. Then it started pouring with rain, and then it thundered.

I was kind of stoked for a minute, I mean I am NOT a great swimmer and I have just been waiting for the day I luck out and do a race where the swim is canceled! But on the other hand, I have been working so hard on my swim in the past 2 months and I reallyreally wanted to see how much I have improved. It’s kinda hard to do that if they cancel the swim!

Then suddenly they decided we would swim and like 2 seconds later we were off. I felt great about my swim. They don’t have splits posted yet but my very casual self-timing seemed to indicate something in the 36-37 minute range. Three months ago at 5430 I swam over 40 minutes! Yay for improvement. Thank you SOOO much Jen!

The bike started out awesome. I felt super strong and even though it was windy and I had a stupid disc wheel, whatever I can handle my bike and I can deal with adversity, so just ride, right? Then I flatted. This was at mile 20. Somehow the valve on my tube spit in half? How does that even happen? Then of course my brand new spare tube had a hole in it? So I just stood there helpless and crying for 10 minutes as all the people I had passed over the previous 20 miles passed me back. Then a super sweetheart guy stopped and gave me his extra spare tube!!! And I was off again, trying to pull a Chrissie Wellington (although a. I am not Chrissie, b. I was not in the lead, and c. I had half as much distance as she did at Kona to overcome a setback). I counted 12 girls ahead of me because the course has a turnaround, by mile 48 I had passed all but two of them. Then I flatted AGAIN on that stupid disc wheel that I hate. Seriously what the crap is with me and flats?! I have gotten more flat tires in the past month (remember I flatted at my last cross race) than I have in my entire cycling career, I am not even exaggerating. But 12k to go and no tube and no patch kit (stupid of me) and not much chance of a second good samaritan, so my only option was to just ride it in. I admit I shouted a lot of FUCK FUCK FUCKs!!! (sorry to all the kids standing along the course, sorry sorry sorry!) and just kept my speed up as much as possible. The last 5k of the course has a lot of turns and it was super sketchy and it felt like riding on ice! Ugh.

So, obviously my bike split was slower than last year. But when I flatted that last time, I took a peek at my average wattage for the ride so far, and it was 23 watts higher than last year’s wattage, and 15 watts higher than my best half-IM this year. I’ll TAKE it!! I come from a bike racing background and so I figured I had seen my potential on the bike and wasn’t going to get better, but maybe I was wrong. I am really thrilled that I have improved my cycling so much this year even though I am training less on the bike. Quality vs. quantity maybe? I have no idea but like I said, I’ll take it.

So on to the run, where I am sure I looked like a total disaster area because I had road dirt all over me thanks to the rain and I was kind of pissed off a little bit so I had a scowl for the first couple of miles and THEN I caught a glimpse of my shadow at like mile 8 and my hair was all over the place under my visor! OMG what was I thinking! My race photos will all be awful! So I fixed it.

I actually had an awesome time on the run. It’s a hilly run, you basically go up from mile 1 to mile 9 and then head back down to the finish, but somehow it’s still easy to get a good rhythm because you just go up and up and more up and then eventually down. And, no chance of getting a flat! Somehow despite my dumbness on the bike, I was running in second. The winner (Beatrix Blattman, who was second to Alicia in the full last year) was 15 minutes ahead of me at the first turnaround. We high-fived as she passed, I got the chance to hang out with her and her husband for an hour this morning during the delay and she is really awesome! Then I just kept trotting along and next thing you know I was at the finish. It’s always like that at races, they are over before you know it! I finished 10 minutes behind Beatrix so that was cool that I made up some time, but she had a super cushy lead on me and she’s doing IMAZ in two weeks so I am not really patting myself on the back for the fact that oooooo I ran faster than the winner. Instead, I am patting myself on the back because I think that was my best run spit this year?! Again, no official splits are posted yet, and my self-timing is fairly casual, but I am suuuuuuuuper proud of a ~1:36 on this course which I am going to try to paste below.

silverman_run_profile

So I finished second! My goal was to beat last year’s time by 30 minutes, I only beat it by 20 minutes, but I feel fairly confident that my equipment shenanigans cost me at least ten minutes (I did look at my watch while I was standing on the side of the road). So yay, I have improved since last year! Which I certainly HOPE I have improved, I mean I have a full year of triathlons under my belt now, and that belt is one or two holes smaller than it was a year ago thanks to all this multisport training. So, it’s not like me being faster is some breakthrough revelation!

And even though I didn’t win the race, this was a great way to end my season. It’s great to have the validation that I have improved. Even better, I learned some really important lessons today, not only about equipment but also about my mental toughness. It would have been really easy to call it a day after that flat at mile 20. It was tempting. It’s been a long season, I have had more success than I ever expected, I didn’t need this race to prove anything to myself or anyone else. But then as soon as I got back on my bike it was game on. I really wanted to know exactly how much better I have gotten. Then after that flat with 12k to go, when it definitely would have been easy to just call it a day, I was too angry to even consider it. It made me DETERMINED to get out there and run my heart out and conquer adversity, or at least give it a run for its money. Because next year, I will not be seeing the front of the race very often. I need to practice being far behind, pushing myself to my limits even when the podium is 20 minutes down the road.

But next year is a long way off… right now, time for a little off season fun .

Thanks so much for reading!