Waterfront Triathlon

First triathlon of 2010 is in the books and we'll call it a big success! It was just a short season opener, but it brought out most of the fastest athletes on the island... everyone wanting to test themselves out after a long time off from racing.

Moana and Scott came out to watch and cheer. Turns out, Moana is a great cheerleader and insisted that I eat my blueberries pre-race. She's no dummy- she knows about SuperFoods... Oh, thank you, Moana!

The water was a little more rough than usual, which was fine by me (and all of my athletes who are good swimmers). They changed the swim course a little to accommodate us in the waves and it actually turned out to be a bit longer than last year. Yes, we cheered! Here's a video of the swim... it's like you were there! :)

I love swimming in rough water (this is new for me since moving here but since we do it so much it's grown on me). I navigated my way through most of the men who started ahead of the girls and came out of the water as the second woman, behind my super swimmer athlete, Karen. My other two local athletes were right were behind me!

I was biking scared the whole time, knowing that there were a bunch of fast women (who would not be far behind me) hunting me down...GO GO GO I told myself. I was right on my redline the whole time and it occurred to me more than once that I might want to back off the effort just a little... but my instructions to my athletes in this short race included something like, "There is no pacing in a short race like this- it's flat out from start to finish so don't hold anything back..." So I followed my own advice and did not back off until the very end as I was coming into transition.

Scott taught Moana to say "Go Mommy!" and "race" today. She had fun watching the craziness!

Prior to the race I had resigned myself to getting passed by just about everyone on the run. I hoped I'd be first off the bike but told myself inevitably that I would be passed by at least 5 women, maybe more. But as the run went on and I wasn't even being passed by too many men, it occurred to me that I might have enough of a lead to hold off more women than I had envisioned. Hmmmm. Maybe I needed to change my mindset? By mile 3 when I was still in the lead I was scared to death to look behind me because the last thing I wanted to see was a whole pack of women breathing down my neck... turns out it was only Rachel, and shoot, I'd expected her to go flying by me way earlier than she did! The finish line was in sight by then and I kept my little legs going until I crossed it in second place. Phew!

Checking my splits, I saw that I biked and ran and transitioned faster than I did last year. Sa-weet! The swim was longer this year so cannot compare.

In more great news, two of the athletes that I'm coaching finished 3rd and 4th OA! How cool was that?!? Great job to those girls!! This may be the last time I beat Rae in a triathlon so I'm glad we got a picture of it. ;)


In bad news though, my other superstar had a mechanical problem on her bike (her cadence sensor came loose on a bump and found its way into her spokes and caused her to do an endo over her bike... poor thing went straight to the hospital and may end up having surgery on her separated shoulder tomorrow morning. :(

So we're wishing Karen the best speedy recovery ever...