WOW!

Ooohh how cool I get to finally write a triathlon race report! First one for me since... Ironman '07... and first one since... giving birth to Moana!

It was just a little sprint this morning... 750 swim, 12 mile bike, 3.6 mile run. I showed up and I swear I wasn't the least bit nervous about the swim/bike/run part... but wasn't sure I'd remember how to get through a transition in decent time. Sure enough, I got smoked in both transitions, but hey... whatever.

It was cold and windy this morning (what's new, eh?) and even though I was under strict instructions to get in a good warm up, I only managed to jog for about 10 minutes and swim for like, a minute. Not like I was gonna actually get 'warm' in that cold water anyway... that was my rationalization... sorry, Jen! The water was actually cold enough to make it 'wetsuit legal' but no one bothered with a wetsuit.

I lined up near the front with Rachel, Kathryn, and Stefan. Rachel said Stefan was wicked fast in the water... I'd never swam (swum? swimmed?) with him before but given Rachel's description I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to hang with him. Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when after a couple minutes I could see him off to my right and we were swimming stroke for stroke! I'm no dummy... I slowed down a bit and just tucked in his draft... tapped his toes for much of the rest of the swim (sorry, Stefan!!). It was great though because he just led me directly from buoy to buoy and all of a sudden we were running up the beach towards our bikes. Kathryn was, of course, just ahead of us.

Transition? Yah, not so much. I fumbled with my helmet for a while and by the time I was getting on my bike at the line, Rachel had already gone by. That was cool though- my super-secret goal was to see if I could keep her in sight for the short ride after she inevitably passed me. I had no idea how realistic this was because Rachel and I haven't trained at all together this year... so again, imagine my very pleasant surprise when I managed to stay just a couple of bike lengths behind her for the whole ride! We picked our way through the majority of the men's field up ahead and arrived into T2 together. WOW!

Getting off the bike I almost felt like my goal had been accomplished because I had no illusions of being able to run with Rachel... but again, after another slow transition, I started off on the run. I worked as hard as I could just trying to maintain my second place. In all honesty I don't remember too much of the run... just trying to put one foot in front of other and not trip over myself I suppose... I went as fast as my little feet would take me and for the first time ever, no women passed me on the run. That's another really big WOW!

So, first race back... second place overall... Though in all honesty, it's hard to be really proud of the placing because most of the fast local gals were on the Big Island racing Lavaman today. I *so* wish I could have gone and raced there this year but family responsibility and lack of funds made that unrealistic.

So the Blogger Chicks ruled the day today at the Waterfront Triathlon! And I suspect that if you pop on over to Rachel's blog later you might find this same photo along with her version of today's events. What a fun way to start the tri season... :)