I have been doing the Women of Steel triathlon race for 6 years. As a matter of fact, it was the first triathlon I ever did. TimeHop reminded me of this yesterday. I laughed when I read my post because my swim is still my weakest link in the three and my transition time for my first race was almost 5 minutes. What the heck was I doing in transition. haha!
I had a great race yesterday. I PR’d from the following 2 years overall, but individually I didn’t feel as strong as I would have liked. Funny how you train and train then life throws a few curve balls and you hope to just “get through” a race. That was my attitude starting yesterday for two reasons.
First, the weather forecast wasn’t overall motivating. I had several friends bail because of the weather, so I was soloing it. I decided to tough it out because I like this race and mentally, I need to race to re-motivate me from St. George 70.3.
Second, I hadn’t had a workout since St. George 70.3 because of recovery, kid chaos and busy at work. Crazy schedules allowed for no training time.
It was COLD in the morning, so after I got set up, Shane and I headed for the car to stay warm!
Swim
I wasn’t sure how this would go- my swim has either ROCKED or SUCKED, so it was a coin toss yesterday. It sucked. 2 seconds after I started to swim, I couldn’t get my breathing under control. I think that was my worse 300m swim ever! Not as bad as the woman in front of me, who did the turtle breast stroke to hold up everyone behind her.
T1
Because of the weather, I threw on a long sleeve shirt, which I normally don’t do in T1, but because it was cold and I was wet I figured it was a good idea. It was. But it was hard to get on. Have you seen the Fat Man in a Little Coat from Tommy Boy? I looked like him trying to get my long sleeve shirt on being wet.
Bike
I came out of the bike strong and felt strong the whole time. On the second loop, with more gals out on the course, it was a little tricky because new riders ride like they are all alone on the course and when you yell “on your left” they either don’t move or move left and you have to swerve. I am pretty sure I danced with being hit by a car a few times yesterday.
T2
My flying dismount could use some work.
Run
Seriously, for someone who ran cross country in high school, why is running such my Achilles hell? (Yes, I mean hell, not heel.) But speaking of Achilles Heel, the run tore up my heel. So instead of blisters on the bottom of my feet like normal, my shoes tore up my heel and the tops of my feet this time. The good thing is it only really started to hurt the last mile.
Finish
I PR’d my overall race by 1:24. I came in 5th in my age group out of 38 and 16th overall! I am super proud of that because 35-39 age group women are badass. It’s improvement over the last two years and massive improvement over 6 years ago, when I came in 82nd with a penalty for wearing my head phones because I didn’t know you couldn’t.
Women of Steel FINALLY did medals! YAY! It’s about time!! They’ve always had great shirts. My favorite race shirts have been from this race, but this year’s shirts were lame. They weren’t the soft shirts like previous years and the sizes ran smaller than normal. My 12 year old can wear my race shirt.
I figured I was racing this race alone this year because my other tri gal pals weren’t racing it. But I wasn’t alone. I made some great new friends and the spirit of why I continue to tri was stronger then ever yesterday!
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