I was anxious to see how my off-season training was going to pay off this year. 2014 officially marks my 3rd year in the world of triathlon. To-date, I have only attempted sprint distance, but with help of Adam D, Mike W. and RJ, I am aiming at an Oly this summer. Having never used a wetsuit, I decided to bypass Seahorse and “tri” the Double Time, trusting the water temps would be warm enough to go sans wetsuit. 
As any team member with children will attest, finding time to train can be a challenge. I made a conscious decision to dial back some of the early morning workouts this winter (i.e. Masters Swimming) and concentrated on biking and run training. For me, I could easily hit the treadmill and rollers at home after the kids had been put to bed and it fit around my dynamic work schedule. With that said, I was a little worried about my swim time heading into the event…not from the standpoint of finishing the swim, but from a pace perspective. Pre-race, I had jitters fluttering through my head like “Please let me swim in a straight line. Remember to pick your head up and sight the buoy. Remember coach said to picture your arm reaching over a barrel and let your hand drop 6” under the water before starting your pull, etc.” As you can imagine, I was glad when the horn finally went off and all of my nerves and jittery thoughts went flying out of my head! I found my pace where I felt I was not fighting the water and my energy level was comfortable.
Once out of the water, it was a jog to the transition area making sure to avoid rocks with my tender bare feet. First transition of the year was a little clumsy as I could not, for the life of me, get my jersey on. After a quick check for shoes, helmet and sunglasses (post jersey debacle) I was off.
My goal was to avg at least 20mph on the bike. That quickly went out the window as my Garmin 910 was only displaying my overall time in the multisport mode so I decided to just go by feel but lucked out finding another rider to pace/race with. The roads were surprisingly smooth so it was easy to get into a good cadence. I dropped into the aero bars and began playing a game of “leap frog” with the other rider. Each time we leapt passed each other one of us would shout something positive to the other which was fun! While we were not racing under USAT rules, I still purposefully avoided drafting 1) because I thought it would be good practice for any USAT sanctioned races this season and 2) in my mind it seemed more like “fair play” to avoid the draft in a race. We caught a few riders on our way around the course (again I tried to say something encouraging as we passed by…probably a Pavlovian response I have picked up from Trizelle training). I had to keep a mental check not to drop into heavier gears as I knew I would have nothing left for the run if I did.
A quick check of my overall time on the way in from the bike and at 45 mins, I realized I was not going to make my goal time I had set for myself. Once I was off the bike, my legs were feeling heavy but I tried to keep my biking partner in my sites for as long as I could. In my mind, I was sure I was running a 10 min/mi pace. Just when I started wondering where the turn-around was, I got a mental break when a road raging motorist started honking his horn and yelling at all of the runners on the course with expletives and in no-uncertain-terms, to get off the road. To be honest, it was nice to think about something other than how tired my legs were getting. As I neared the finish, a quick glance at my watch gave me the inspiration to pick up the pace. I finished in 1:12 which was a PR by at least one minute.
Post-race, I got to explain the jersey to Cara Smith from Trikats. She had seen the jersey’s at events but my team training kicked in and I explained what WSI stood for and and snuck the jersey into a Trikat team photo. Turns out, I knew my bike course pacer. It was Scott Miller from Agility Physical Therapy (turns out we had done the same sort of thing at the Cereal City Tri last year). My race time breakdown is pictured below.
