WaterFront Sprint!

So it was a beautiful morning for a little local triathlon action...

This was a fun race this morning- made more fun by the fact that Scott decided to jump in and play too! (Funny aside- yesterday he asked me to go to the pool with him and give him a few swim tips.... He is not a bad swimmer! In fact, I gave him 2 fairly standard tips about what to do with his head and his hands and he swam a 100 right next to me yesterday! He's got some freaky talent. And ~40 years of big wave surfing experience which I guess counts for something.) So cut to the chase- I only beat him by less than 2' in the swim this morning! The swim was advertised as 750M but it was short b/c I came out in like 9' flat but he was out in <11. Solid.

Anyway, I think I was like 4th woman out of the water? We were all really close though... I was swimming right next to my athlete Elizabeth for a good chunk of it and it was so cool to look over and see my logo on her cap every time I took a breath. She pummeled right over me at one point and my instinct was to just knock her out but then I decided to be nice (since she was my athlete and all) so I let it go. Next time though, Elizabeth, I might not be so nice! Ha! J/k of course... ALL IS FAIR in love and triathlon!!

So I got through T1 pretty fast though I did make the rookie mistake of not paying attention to which rack my bike was on. Duh. My little mistakes in this race were all pretty much due to me just taking too much for granted... and it was a rookie move to not be super attentive to where I put my damn bike! Actually, rookies would have actually paid attention to that! Oh well.

My goal on the bike was to rip Rae's legs off (After the race we were jogging down and I told her that and she told me she knew it so it's all fine me posting it here! ;). Rae can swim faster than me and she can run faster than me... and last month she biked a 20K faster than me... so I knew my chances of beating her this morning were slim but also knew that the only chance I might have had was to make her work ridiculously hard on the bike so I just stomped on it and hunted her down... I passed her... She passed me back (good girl showing GRIT)... I passed her back... It was definitely a rather violent effort on the bike but it did not scare me. I think I had maybe 45" on Rae going into T2? The bike was advertised as 13 miles but last minute they cut like 3 miles out of it with a new course- short bike rides are never in my favor so this was disappointing.

Whatever my lead was, it was not enough and Rae caught me fairly early on after we started running. Then maybe the only thing I'm sort of disappointed about was how I sort of settled in on the run and just ran what felt like hard enough... I specifically remember getting to the mile 2 sign and thinking This is not a violent effort I said I was going to put out a violent effort but this is not that... but I wasn't motivated enough to do anything else about it? And make no mistake... I knew there were plenty of girls behind me who were running faster than me but somehow I was missing that SPARK required to really take it to myself. I got passed by Marianne with maybe 1/2 mile left and just sort of watched her go and thought about how efficient she looked... She made it look so effortless and easy... Then my athlete Elizabeth came up on me right before the finish and she was gutting it out and I just sort of cheered her on as she ran by! WEIRD b/c I can show so much GRIT on the bike but then on the run I am just like la la la totally content to just run my own pace instead of RACE. So anyway, that is the next thing for me to work on. :)

Here's Elizabeth running me down for 3rd OA. Good girl!

The best part about local races is chatting with your friends afterward... This is Patrick who is another athlete I coach who put together a good race and came 2nd Military.

All of my athletes actually put together great races out there this morning so that made me happy! And of course my husband finished his first triathlon and we celebrated with beer. :)

So get this... after the race we went to breakfast (where Moana ate more than I did!?! Hungry girl!) and there was Scott... studying his race results and hypothesizing how fast he could have gone with a real bike instead of his old mountain bike... then he said "How long is the Honolulu Triathlon?" Uh oh. I really did create a monster. It's so cute though... He's sleeping on the couch right now wearing his finisher's shirt.