Pre Race: Matt and I drove to Houston Saturday afternoon. We met a group of my friends from college at their apartment later that night and went to True Food Kitchen for dinner. That place is ahhhh-mazing. Their kale is by far the best I have ever had. I will definitely be trying to copy cat that recipe! After dinner we went to a few of the bars in the Montrose area (I think that is what it is called?). Before calling it a night and finally crawling into bed around 3 am! Sunday morning I was exhausted (shocking, I know) but luckily I had brought along my handy dandy Vitamix and a few fixings so I whipped up my current favorite smoothie and headed out for a short 15 minute run. When I got back to the apartment Matt and I went to packet pickup and got a few groceries for our dinner. I have been trying this new thing called cutting out gluten, I am by no means intolerant, but I do think that the more I work out the more difficult it becomes for my body to process gluten. So I am trying to cut it out of my diet to see if my headaches and stomach problems decrease. So for dinner I had a few Amy’s frozen dinners (so easy to make when I am not at home!) and a pear with some hazelnut butter. Yummmmm. Riley was not a fan of staying in the apartment…I don’t think he likes all the noises and people! Monday morning we woke up around 5:15 and got to the race at about 6:30. Transition was a muddy mess! Unlucky for me my swim wave was the very last one to go at 8:16. So Matt and I had about 1.5 hours to just sit around and do nothing. We took short naps and mostly just chilled in a quiet spot away from the race. Swim: 7:10 (400 meters) I was the only person in my swim wave wearing a swimskin, which was a little awkward. But I was 1st in my age group by 10 whole seconds! Which is a lot for a 400 meter swim! Those Roka swimskins are amazing! It was a pretty uneventful swim, the weirdest part was the turnaround. There was a small island and many girls were standing up and walking around the turn rather than swimming! This was slightly annoying, so I made sure to make my turn very wide to avoid any feet! T1: 1:26 Coming out of the water it was really slippery and muddy, but the volunteers were pros at helping us keep our balance. Shout out to them for sticking around in mud and not falling over when none of us could stand up without help! While running into T1 I pulled down the top half of my swimskin, and once I got to my bike I immediately put on my helmet and shoes..and forgot to take off the rest of my swimskin. Thank goodness I noticed this before I got to the mount line! I had to take off my shoes, rip of the swimskin and then I was able to finally run out. Oh, and biggest mistake of the race. I forgot my sunglasses in the car!! Bike: 33:19 (11.75 miles) This bike course was pretty good, my only complaint would be how crowded it was by the time I got onto it! The Olympic distance racers were doing 2 loops and I had almost all of the sprint racers in front of me as well. Most of the time I was calling out on your left and most of the time people would move. But one guy just kept refusing! I was behind him for about half a mile! Finally I yelled “on our left” and I passed him outside of the cones blocking off the course, what else could I do??? The rest of the bike was pretty uneventful, there were a lot of spikes in my heart rate caused by passing groups of people. I am always afraid of being that jerk who is slowing up someone faster than me (like the guy who slowed me down) so I always speed up when passing other people to make sure I am not clogging up the passing area. My bike split wasn’t the best in the age group, but only by 15 seconds. And I blame the man who refused to move right and let me pass! T2: 1:48 Whyyyyy am I so slow at T2. I desperately need to start practicing this discipline. Run: 25:34 (3.1 miles) My goal for this entire race was to go all out the whole time. And I can 100% say I went as hard as possible for this run. I was dying from the heat and I tried to pour cold water on myself at every aid station which really helped! But what really helped me push myself was when an older woman passed me and she was pushing a pace just slightly faster than mine. I told myself I could keep up with her and I forced my legs to do just that. I didn't concentrate on anything except keeping up with her. Eventually she stopped to rest at an aid station but with only 1 mile left for the run I told myself it was like track practice. I mentally broke it down until 400 meter stretches and I told myself to speed up every quarter of a mile. I know that if I can sprint all out at the end of a track practice that I can push myself relatively hard at the end of a race! It was a fantastic run, I felt strong and hopefully I didn’t look like I was riding the struggle bus too much! In the end I beat second place by 1 minute! And I am super proud of myself since she beat me in the last race! This is the first race where I really felt like I deserved to be on the podium. Post race we hung out for another 1.5 hours waiting for the awards ceremony, so I drank my kombucha and ate my popcorn tofu (yes I brought this all the way from Austin) and we mostly just had a little fun.
The race is held at Lonestar College in Cypress, which is a beautiful campus! There were a ton of shaded areas to just hang out and I met an old friend of Matt's who is also into tris!
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LPCoach & Team - Austin T3 (Whitley Atkins) & Team Nuun |