St. George Tri - I mean Duathlon

Well, today was the day of the St. George Tri. We slept at our friends' house, and despite the fact that Pete and I both set alarms on our phones, we slept in. His battery had died and I don't know what happened to mine. This seems to be our pre-race ritual. I can't think of very many races where we woke up on time. Luckily, I was awake, laying there, wondering when my alarm would go off when I looked at the time. It was 5:45 - half an hour past when we wanted to wake up.

We had planned on bringing the kids with us, but we didn't want to wake up and take even longer, so Pete said he'd just drop me off then come back and get them. 

Of course, I was totally nervous, and felt sick, but I managed to eat a banana in the car. I had my heart-rate monitor on and my hear-rate was in the 90s just sitting there.

We got there in plenty of time, but when we got out of the car, it was pretty windy so I was worried it would be a repeat of last year. Pete dropped me off and I got a good warm-up riding up to the transition area. When I got there, they were announcing that the water was too wavy for the kayakers to hold their position, and unless they could hold their position, it wouldn't be safe enough to start the swim. We waited around for about an hour, but there was no sign of the wind stopping so I didn't get my hopes up about doing the swim. Sure enough it was canceled. What a disappointment. The whole reason I signed up for this race was to get the swim practice. 

Oh well, one thing the announcer said was, "Life is change," and he was right. We just have to take what we can get and go with it. I was determined to have a good race, even without the swim.

The run is two laps of a 5k course, so they had us do one run lap, then the bike, then one more run lap. It probably would have been more accurate, timing-wise, to have us do a 5k then a 10k, but I was glad to not be doing two laps in a row on that course. It's not fun.

As we were watching the other waves start (Olympic women were in the 4th wave), someone pointed out that there were only 2 Elite women. (The Elite racers are the ones racing for money.) I made her spit out her drink when I said, "Dang, I should have signed up for Elite then!" Seriously, though, I would have been 3rd, that would have been awesome. Pete said he thinks you have to qualify to race as Elite so it probably wasn't an option anyway.

The run was still hard, but I think they changed it a little, and it felt easier than last year. I didn't feel like I was going to die anyway. I wouldn't say I was very fast, though. They also changed the bike to make it harder by adding a bunch more turns and hills. I guess the one really hard hill wasn't enough? 

I felt really good and strong on the bike. I passed a lot of people and felt really fast, but there was no way to tell because my speedometer wasn't working. Dang it. I kept my heart-rate in the 160s for pretty much the whole race, so that was pushing it pretty hard. I even passed some guys going back down the big hill, and that was cool because usually the guys smoke me on the downhills. I had to yell, "LEFT!" several times to one of them because he was all the way to the left, and you're supposed to pass on the left. He moved over and I passed him, and another lady passed him on the right at the same time. I'm just glad no one got hurt because we were going pretty fast!

I thought I had done really good on the bike, but when I got back to the transition area, there were bikes racked all around my spot. So I guess I didn't do as well as I had thought, but I headed out on the run and did my best. I passed several people on the run, but I'm sure I wasn't going very fast still.

I finished strong and, even with it being shortened because of no swim, it felt so good to be finishing! It is way awesomer to run into the finish line when there are still people there to cheer for you. What a good feeling! Pete missed getting a picture of me because he was moving when I came in so I don't know if I'll have pictures to post after all. 

It was a fun race, other than the disappointment of not having the swim. Maybe I'll have to sign up for Battle at Midway after all so I can get that mental preparation.