2012 San Rafael Classic Triathlon - Race Report

This weekend I completed the Olympic distance San Rafael Classic Triathlon. It was so much fun!

This is an x-small shirt. I had ordered a medium and it was HUGE so I'm glad they let me trade. (I got my hair cut last week and didn't even tell you about it! I cut George's hair last night too. He looks so handsome. :)

All I got was this shirt. I didn't get a medal, but I don't really care about that and actually didn't even realize it until the drive home. So if you do races for the big fat medal at the end, this is not the race for you. If you want to do a small, hometown race that is challenging and fun, then I'd highly recommend this one! They had sprint and Olympic distances as well as a duathlon and a kids triathlon (which seemed like the biggest event of the day!).

The race took place at Huntington State Park which is near Price, Utah. We drove down Friday night and it took us about 2 1/2 hour from Salt Lake, but it's kind of a nice drive so it went quickly. We were the first ones to get there at about 5:30 so I didn't have to wait in line to pick up my packet. Then the kids played in the water until dinner was ready. 

Mindy and Ethan were the only ones who got all the way into the water. They wanted to swim out to the floating dock you can see over to the left, but we told them to wait for tomorrow and I would take them out to it when I was in there with them. Elle and George just played in the mud and rocks.

George just wanted to throw rocks into the water the whole time!

The athletes got dinner for free, but I had to buy extra tickets for Pete ($7) and the kids ($5 each). We weren't very impressed. It was just spaghetti noodles with canned sauce, store bought rolls and bagged salad. It was nice to have since we were out in the middle of nowhere, but I wish they hadn't bragged about how good their "home cookin'" was going to be. 

Anyway, after dinner, we went looking for a spot to camp. The entire campground was taken over by triathletes. We didn't have a reservation, and the campground was full, but they let us find a spot to pitch our tent for free so that was nice. We picked this spot right by the lake:

Here's our view of the sunset from our tent. Isn't it nice?

George loved these cement pillars by our site, he kept hugging them.

Ok, so we had pretty much the worst night ever and never want to go camping again. I tried walking George around in his stroller for a while to get him to sleep, but that didn't work because there was just too much excitement going on. Finally I took him for a drive, and got him to sleep at around 10 or 11. I put him in the tent and he slept for a couple hours then woke up screaming at about midnight. I didn't want to wake up the whole campground so I took him into the car where he just screamed for like an hour. Finally I put him in his stroller and walked him around in the dark and that got him calmed down.

We decided to try just wheeling the whole stroller into Ethan's tent for him to sleep in there, then I went back to bed. Luckily Pete stayed up because George started crying again after a few minutes. I guess he didn't like the tent. Pete walked him around some more then ended up spending the whole night outside in a camping chair next to the stroller. Luckily George slept fine after that. It was so nice of Pete to take care of that so I could get a little sleep. I wasn't feeling good and my legs were really sore, plus I was freezing cold so the thought of jumping in the lake first thing in the morning did not appeal to me!

Elle came into my tent with me at about 4 and I went back to sleep for one more hour. Then it was time to get ready! Luckily, I felt totally better and just felt excited! I got dressed and ready while everyone else was still waking up. It was nice to be camped so close to the transition area because I walked over there and back 3 times before I was ready to go and get in the water.

I got in to get wet and warm up a little before the first wave went off. The water was so perfect! I was just swimming around at the exit, not really paying attention to anything else. I swam to the buoy and back several times and was just having fun. Suddenly a race official was yelling out at someone and I realized it was me. He told me the women were lined up and that our wave was starting in 2 minutes! Oops! No big deal, I just hurried out and over a little ways to the dock where I crossed the timing mat then jumped in for our deep water start. I looked around and said, "Is this all of us?" There were only about 15-20 women in the water. I got excited about that because I thought my odds of placing would be so much better. Turns out there were 17 Olympic women, 8 of them were in my age group, and all the ladies in my age group were super hard core athletes! I didn't know that though so I was just excited to go.

SWIM 1 Mile - 34:12

We heard the countdown and several ladies in the water said good luck to everyone and to have fun. It was really nice. I always think I'm going to try and draft off a fast swimmer, but that never ends up happening. I think I just don't like being that close to someone, or I just never find the right person going the right speed for me or something. Anyway, that's how it was this time. I was right next to one girl for a while and we kept bumping each other, but after a few minutes of that, I was pretty much alone. I couldn't tell if I was ahead of the other ladies or if they were all way ahead of me, but I didn't worry about it. I just thought about staying calm and keeping good form. I felt really good, and stayed in a nice strait line from buoy to buoy, though I did feel really thirsty. I started passing guys from the first wave at about the second buoy on the first loop, and there were a lot more sprinters to pass on the second loop. (The Olympic distance was 2 laps of everything on this course.)

T1 - 2:10

I had no idea what my swim time was when I got out of the water, but I felt good. Turns out I didn't have a very fast time, but I was 5th out of the water out of 17! I was happy to see Pete while I was pulling my wetsuit off at my spot in transition. He reminded me to put my shoes on since I was about to just take off with my bike without them! I'm such a scatter brain, there's aways something! He said he thought it was a fast transition, though, as I was leaving.

BIKE 30 Miles - 2:01:40

The bike course was weird because it totally looked flat, but it was definitely uphill. I was going probably 8-15 miles an hour the whole 7.5 miles up to the turn around. It wasn't a really hard hill, but it was just relentless. It was ok, though, the scenery was pretty and I just tried to keep it steady. I felt like I was pushing pretty hard, with my heart rate at around 150, but a lot of people were still passing me! I just told myself, "Well, at least I beat them in the swim," and tried to be happy for what a good job they were doing. After all, I haven't been training on hills at all so I really wasn't prepared for this!

Once I got to the turn around, it was so much fun! I peddled as fast as I could and kept my speed at around 30-35 most of the way down. I did get down to 20 mph towards the end, and that felt slow! I was so happy and excited that I got to do that again when I got to the turn around. This didn't last long as my energy quickly died down going up that long uphill for the second time. This time I didn't have all the sprinters with me and I was pretty much by myself most of the way. I would start to think I must be in last place and realize I was wrong when someone would come out of nowhere and pass me! Even the way back down wasn't quite as fun. I tried to go as fast as the first time, but this time my highest speed was 30. It was still fun, but I was feeling really tired!  I had not planned on taking 2 hours to do 30 miles! That was an average of 14.8 mph, slow!

 T2 - 1:39

I was pretty quick for this transition. I took everything out of my back pocket except for my last hammer gel, traded my helmet for my hat, and my bike shoes for my running shoes, then clipped on my race belt, grabbed my Garmin and headed out. I stopped at the bathroom just a little ways out of transition. I was feeling really tired and welcomed a few more minutes before the run started!

RUN 10k - 59:37

The run was 2 loops around the lake so I got to run by our campsite twice where the kids were sitting watching for me, and Pete was packing up the tent. It was nice to see them, but I knew I wasn't running fast enough. I was going to try to keep my pace at around 9 min/mile, but that idea was out the window so I just tried to keep it under 10:00. I was almost able to do this for the first few miles, but the last few were pretty pathetic. I just don't have it in me to push harder! Arg! I stopped at every aid station which was about every mile, took a drink of water and dumped some on my head. I took my hammer gel at about mile 4 and hoped it would give me energy to finish strong. I don't know if it did. On my second time around, Pete told me to hurry because George was getting fed up! Oh great! He also said I looked "medium strong" and told me to remember my posture. So from then on out I tried to focus on form and moving my feet faster. I don't know if it worked. It was mostly a dirt road, and really pretty running around the lake, but I was just tired! I think the run might have been a little short, closer to 5.5 miles, but I'm not sure because I started my Garmin a little late.

I finished in 3:39:18


I most definitely did not place in my age group. I thought I was very last, but it turns out I finished 7th out of 8. I guess that's not so bad. I though for a few minutes that I should just be done with triathlons, but then I remembered that I had a really good time. Who cares how many people I beat. (At least there was that one person, though!)

I just need to remind myself that I'm training for a half Ironman, and not an Olympic and I've been training mostly on flat and not for hills. This was a great race and I'm glad I got to go! The kids had fun and I had fun. I know Pete didn't have a great time  taking care of all the mundane details, but I'm so grateful to him for doing all that so I could do what I wanted to do. I am not going to quit doing triathlons. What else would I do? Besides, I've got Utah Half coming right up in a month and a half!

After the race, I found Pete and George standing near transition and George was just in a daze he was so tired. He didn't even acknowledge me or anything. I carried him back to our camp spot and put in him the stroller. He was asleep within a few minutes. No wonder he was so tired with such a hard night! We helped Pete pack everything up, then I took the kids over to try to swim out to the floating dock. Ethan panicked about half-way out so we just turned around and I had to tow him back to where he could touch. I'm glad they didn't try it by themselves. It doesn't look very far, but it was for them and it's scary when you're out in a lake and you can't touch! Maybe next time. I told him, "Thank you for giving me another workout!"

We got showered and changed, then headed home. We stopped to for lunch on the way because you have to get burgers after a race right?

Waiting for our food at the cute little restaurant we went to for lunch on the way home in Helper called Balance Rock Eatery & Pub. We all had delicious cheeseburgers. It was well worth the stop.