Webster Triathlon Sprint 2009 (Part 2 - Bike)
My swim time : 23:17 (darn slow)
After my experience in the water, I knew once I hit the beach and feel of the sand through my toes, that it was all downhill from there. I ran up the beach and through the tunnel of spectators, until finally seeing my family. I heard my daughters cowbell ringing and looked to see them and it gave me an extra kick in the pants.
Funny, I wasn’t tired but mentally I had been battling that inner voice through the swim so it pumped me up to hear and see the family cheering me on.
T1 - Out of the water there was a 1/4 mile run (on the pavement) to the transition area. I, being the amateur that I was, wanted to try and get my wetsuite off as I was running. Well, even though I practiced this many of times, the heat of the moment certainly caused me to fumble. I couldn’t get the velcro off the back and once I did, I couldn’t unzip my suit while running. So , I stopped and walked fast all the while fumbling to get the zipper down my back. How do women do this with their dresses, I don’t know.
After a minute or so I did get the zipper down and trying to mimic what I’ve read, seen pull the top off and run to transition. Worked fine in theory. I pulled my arms out and pull it down to my waist and began to run harder. For some reason the top half of my suit kept slipping and slipping and I had to hold it up as I ran into transition. Darn, I felt foolish.
Once in transition, of course, it took me quite a bit of time to get off the wetsuit. It felt like I was on America’s Funniest Videos.
Once the suit was off I was ready. I was lucky as getting to the race early I was able to put my bike on the end of the transition bar so I had plenty of room and it did help.
I got my stuff on and off I went. Once on the road I had the hardest time getting into my clipless pedals. Now, I’ve been riding clipless pedals since they first came out so this was not the case of being a rookie to triathlon. It had to be nerves. Once in the pedals I knew that my comfort level would sky rocket. In familiar territory I pushed off.
The course itself was rolling hills and rather desolate which turned out to be a good thing on a misty morning. There were a couple of hills that were pretty darn steep. A ton of people were walking up the hills but living on the top of a pretty steep hill, I just pushed up them. The nice thing about going uphill of course is that there has to be some downhill somewhere. And the downhills were nice. I flew down the hills, topping out at 38mph and averaging 25mph for the downhills and the flats afterwards.
The bike seemed to fly by but checking my time I was behind what I thought I would do. I felt good but didn’t seem to get any faster. I rode pretty steady and once I pulled up the final hill I was extremely happy. I pulled into the parking lot , unbuckled my shoes and rode up to the dismount area.
Getting off the bike, I was extremely confident even though looking at my watch I was shocked that I went slower than I expected.
45:17 (12 miles).
Next up : Run
