Beaver Freezer Triathlon
April 5, 2008 Corvallis, OR
45 degrees, wind 10mph, cloudy, light rain
500 yard swim (pool), 12 mile bike, 5k run

I was going to do this race with my team, but then it filled up the day that registration opened and I was the only one that got in. So, I decided to go anyways. I definitely thought that I was crazy when I woke up at 3am, wished my roommate goodnight, and loaded up my friend’s car for a 6 hour drive. Thank goodness I have a decent swim so I started in the last heat at 10:15. I arrived in Corvallis with just enough time to set up and do a warm up run.

Swim 500 yards, 6:57, 2/10 F20-24, 6/138F, 20/264OA
Oops! I never really found my rhythm. They seeded us by our predicted 500 time and started us circle swimming with 4 per lane. I think I swam a whole 30 seconds slower than last week because I was dreading biking in the 40 degree rain.

T1 1:12 1/10 F20-24, 1/136F, 3/264OA
– sure, it ranked reasonably up there, but I was kind of unhappy with it. I ran to my bike, put on my helmet, put on my gloves (really struggled with this – felt like it took forever), and ran and jumped on my bike. If I could have a do over, I would have forgotten the gloves and/or put my bike shoes on in transition.

Bike 12 miles, 36:09 19.9mph, 1/10F20-24, 5/138F, 28/264OA
Part of the slowness is because I could not get my bike shoes on. I had cold fingers and thick gloves and I accidentally pulled the strap all the way out of one of my shoes and I forgot to put body glide around the heel. It cost me somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute – I was very close to stopping and getting off the bike to get my shoes on. I think my actual moving with effort average was 20.3-5 mph. I’ll attribute it to a lack of warm up (normally not as much of an issue, but I had just driven 6 hours) and freezing weather (muscles just don’t work as well when they are 40 degrees and wet). Hopefully I’ll redeem myself at next weekend’s duathlon and prove to myself that last week's speedy bike was no fluke.

T2 1:34 1/10F20-24, 37/138F, 90/264OR
– Slow, but whatever, longish run with the bike for the size of the race and I forgot the body glide around the edges of my running shoes. I also have them laced really tightly so its hard to slide my foot in there. I think the most of the people that beat me in this split didn’t run around the whole transition area like you were supposed to. I generally rank really high in transition splits and nothing really went so wrong that that many people would beat me (and some by a minute). Oh well. I think I lost one place overall because of it.

Run 5k, 21:07 – 6:48 pace, 2/10F20-24, 4/138F, 32/264OA
The run was a 3 lap course around the OSU campus. I am really happy with my run. By the time I finished the bike, I felt more warmed up. I was a little frustrated because of the time I lost to other women at the beginning trying to get my bike shoes on. By the end of the bike, I was really looking forward to the run. I started fast and got faster. At least I ran down 1 of the 3 women that had been ahead of me at the end of the bike. Its not my fastest 5k split ever, but its only 40 sec off and its over a minute faster than I was at this point in the season last year. I’m a little concerned that some racers did not run 3 laps. Well, at least I’m sure that I didn’t lose any places to that kind of mistake. I’m sure it was just a mistake because they weren’t counting the laps for you and I can see how even 2 miles can seem pretty long at the end of a triathlon. Its certainly possible that there were just 3 people that ran run crazy fast for their swim/bike ability, none of the times were completely outrageous, it just seems unlikely because I googled all of them and came up with no running results that would suggest such an ability.

Total time: 1:06:59
16/264 overall
3/136 woman
1/10 F20-24

Well, I know that it was kind of stupid to drive 6 hours each way to a race all in one day in a car that makes my right hamstring cramp when I press the accelerator for too long, but I did it and I had fun.