Swim
Comments: The swim start was weird. We all had the same color swim cap for the Oly distance. So you had to get in this mass of people and find you age group. My feet were frozen, I was shivering cold and standing on chip seal and tiny rocks was killing my feet. I found my age group and started the shuffle to start. They were sending 6 off at a time about 10 second apart. Which worked fine. I eased into the water and it was cold. VERY COLD. I hate cold water. HATE IT. I kept easing in and tried to swim freestyle. Too cold! Did breaststroke. Tried to swim freestyle again. The cold water was taking my breath away. I couldn't put my face in the water. More breaststroke. Then some side stroke. Tried to swim freestyle. My right ear started to hurt really bad. I think from the cold water. Great. I can't put my head in the water. So more breaststroke and sidestroke. Mind you, I'm also cussing and complaining the whole time. Anyone who could hear me, heard a lot of 4-letter words out of my mouth. At this point I start to contemplate HOW I'm going to finish this swim. I can't do it all with breast/side stroke. Not going to happen. I see someone up ahead get fished out. It looks like a good decision. I tell myself to just make it to the first buoy. THEN I can decide if I'm going to bail on the race or not. I get to the first one and tell myself to try to put my head in the water again. All right, it's better. I'm more acclimated to the cold water. My right ear isn't hurting anymore. So I start doing freestyle and pop up with breaststroke occasionally to sight and what not. I get to the second turn buoy and I stop to pee in the wetsuit. I did OK, but I can't pee and swim. I even tried floating, but it didn't work out so well. I look at the finish line and say out loud, "Let's finish this b@itch!" and start swimming hard. I also have a chorus from an old and pretty lame Whitney Houston song as my mantra, "It's not right, but it's OK, I'm going to make it anyway... " I finally reach the finish line and stagger out. And I'm p@ssed off. While I finished, it was the most miserable and horrible swim I have ever done. Transition 1
Comments: This T1 time reflects my attitude at this point. I didn't give a d@mn! Can you tell? I was cold, miserable, ticked off, and I was not happy about getting on the bike. So I took my time. I dried off. I put on a hat under my helmet, two jackets, pants, socks and full fingered gloves. I just wanted to be warm. Did I mention that I hate being cold? Ha! Bike
Comments: Started to leave T1 and I needed a restroom badly. Oh wait, ALL of the port-o-johns were the opposite direction of where we had to leave the park. So either I stop on the way back to Dallas on the route, or I go out of my way, off the course all together to pee. I decide to just hope to stop at a restroom along the course. Luckily I found some port-o-johns that belonged to the park (not associated with the race) to use. I had to cross through mud and a small gully to get to it, but I did it. Once I was done peeing I got on the bike and just rode. I didn't care how fast I rode, as you can tell by my average. I just wanted to be safe and to not wreck. Having a wreck would not benefit me at all. The course is hilly. I would have enjoyed it on a dry, sunny, warm day. I didn't enjoy it in the rain and cold. I didn't see any wrecks, but this one idiot almost caused one in front of me. He was swerving all over the road looking at something on his bike and almost took out two people passing him on his left. I yelled at the top of my lungs at him and he looked up at the lost moment. Ugh. Not much else to say about this bike. I just rode and was annoyed. Transition 2
Comments: I am so happy I put all my T2 stuff in bags. My shoes, socks and jacket were dry, which was nice. I saw Jonny in transition and chatted with him for a bit. As you can see, I really didn't care either way about moving fast. Peed again before leaving T2. Run
Comments: The rain had stopped at this point so I was happy. I told myself to just run steady and to not blow it out. That's what I did. I think the cooler weather and not pushing on the bike contributed to an amazing run for me. My performance here is the only bright spot of the entire race. I owned it! The run course was out and back on the Katy Trail. Which was nice, but hard to dodge the casual people out for their morning workout. I also liked it because after the turnaround, I swear it was all downhill! I saw two people with headphones on, on the course. I came up on one girl as I was passing her. I said, "Hey", and she looked up and smiled. I just told her, "headphones are against the rules and not allowed, you could get DQed for that", and kept running. Yes, I was a b@tch but she was obviously trying to hide them (headband over the earpiece, wires all tucked into her clothes) and knew better. My run was pretty uneventful. I just ran and kept a steady pace. Took in 1 gel, and learned that I need to carry a water bottle to be able to eat gel while running. Just getting a cup at the aid stations doesn't work for me since I take 10 minutes to eat a gel. Post race
Warm down: Crossed the finish line and found Jonny. Started getting cold so got our stuff and left. I had to drive to Corpus Christi (8 hours) later that day so I needed to get out of there. Event comments: Overall this was a good race. Had the weather been nice, I would have had a great time racing this course. Yes, it's a hassle to do a point to point race, but it's different. They did a good job of organizing it, minus the lack of shuttles to take racers to the start (hello- you need more buses!). They also needed some port-o-johns in T1. Otherwise, it was a good race. Last updated: 2009-07-31 12:00 AM
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United States
55F / 13C
Precipitation
Overall Rank = 543/640
Age Group =
Age Group Rank = 14/18
Woke up, ate breakfast and wen to Jonny's house. We then drove over to the AAC and set up our T2.
Found Derek and the rest of the crew and drove over to Joe Pool Lake. Thank goodness we had someone to ride with over there! There weren't enough shuttles and a lot of athletes arrived late to the race. Thanks again Derek for the ride!
Once we got to the location I set up T2. It was cold and there was rain off and on. It was miserable. If I hadn't paid so much for the race and rented a wetsuit, I would have bailed on it. It was just a training day so I didn't care about my performance.