This is probably the best, and also the most uneventful race I’ve had to date.
A
few weeks back, for my birthday, Miguel and a few of my alcahuete
friends put some money together to help me start a new bike fund. Thanks
to their pretty sweet birthday gift, and with some good old financing
help, I went down to Jack and Adam’s and, after trying it out for a
week, got a new Quintana Roo Dulce.
I
had been using the new bike for a few weeks now, and it was obvious
that it was faster than my Felt, but I hadn’t had the occasion to test
just how much faster it was. So, with that in mind and in order to do
some final training Lake Pflugerville Tri, I decided to go out and do
the LPT bike course a week before the race. I ride around Pflugerville
often and even time-trial there every once in a while, so I was
pleasantly surprised to see that I was able to comfortably do the tri
course at 17.4mph when my best TT speed to date had been 17 flat (and
that was pushing it the whole way). With that in mind, I decided to set
some goals for LPT. I played the numbers game and decided I wanted to do
the 500m swim in 12:30 (2:30/M), the 14mi bike in 47 minutes (17.9mph)
and the 3mi run in 27:30 (9:10min/mi) and that would leave me with three
minutes in transitions to finish in an hour and a half. Other than the
swim time --which wasn’t so much of a goal as it was a realistic
assessment of my abilities-- I knew I was going to have to sweat it
every minute of the race in order to beat those times.
Come
race day I woke up extra early, as usual. Everything went according to
plan, which meant we actually did make it out of the house by five and
were at Lake P by 5:30. Ok, that was a little too early, considering the
race started at 7:30 and I had the dead last wave at 8:09. Once
everything was unloaded from the car, I made it to transition where
Carolyne body marked me. Jess was also there, and I asked them about the
TriZones rack, but neither of them knew where it was, so I decided to
rack on the best place available, which turned out to be four racks from
the bike in/out. I took my sweet time to set up transition since I had
what seemed like all the time in the world. Once I was done I was
heading out when I finally saw the TZ rack. I guess it was a good thing
that I didn’t rack there because it was packed!
I
waited patiently in the team tent until it was time for the pros to
start; said my hello’s, my good luck’s, you know the usual deal. Once it
was 7:30 some of us went closer to the lake in order to see the
swimmers make it in and out of the water. I watched all the men start
and once the women waves were about to begin, I decided it was a good
time to make my way to the start line. Before I left for the start I
reminded Miguel of what my goal times were, so he would have a good idea
of when to expect me at the different spectating points. Off went
everyone close to the start line, and soon enough there were only white
caps left. We were starting 49 minutes after the Open wave, so I made
some quick calculations to figure out that I had to cross the finish
line before the race clock read 2:09 if I wanted to beat my goal. It
didn’t take long before they send us off.
Once
the swim started I went out about 100m and my goggles started to fog;
it wasn’t a problem for the first two buoys, because they were pretty
big and bright, but I couldn’t see the turnaround buoy, so I had to stop
for a moment and clear the goggles. They started fogging again as I was
turning back to the swim exit and I had to stop one more time to fix
them. Other than that and some hydrilla at the end, which I was
expecting, the swim was pretty uneventful. As I was running out to T1 I
saw Miguel who said I was on time.
I
made it through T1 at a decent pace, not the disaster that was Rookie
T1, and since I was pretty close to the bike out, I didn’t have to run
too much in my cleats. Once comfortable in my bike I started to
purposefully pedal ((c) Coach Jen 2012) my way through. The first
stretch of the course on Weiss Ln is always pretty fast because there is
usually a strong tailwind. Supposedly, there wasn’t going to be any
wind in Pflugerville for the race --yes, 7-8mph wind in Pflugerville is
NO wind-- but I was still going pretty fast, so I was convinced the gods
had decided to blow a little for me. The only good thing I can think
about starting on the dead last wave, is that hardly anyone passes you.
I’m a slow swimmer, so not only was I on the last wave, I also made it
out of the water pretty close to last. The thing is, not only was I not
getting passed, I was passing a lot of people --rare occurrence for me.
In what felt like no time I was out of the rolling hills and on to the
recently super smoothly paved segment of Cameron Rd, and I was again
convinced there had to be some wind out there helping me out. After the
making it out of Cameron and into Pecan, I decided to look at my watch.
Any day that I can make it to the corner of Pecan and Weiss before 35
minutes is a good day; when I looked at the watch it read 29 something.
Holy crap! That hour and a half goal is starting to feel very real! I
kept on pedaling on to 130 and then around the lake to finish the bike
leg. When I made it back to Weiss I looked at the watch again, it was
reading 18.4 mph. Oh yeah! When I dismounted on T2, I saw Miguel and
shouted something about blowing my time and being so happy. Then quickly
made it out to the run.
If
I had to chose just one word to describe the Lake P run, it would be
boring. If I had to fancy it up, I would say uneventful. There is not
much to look at, but the person in front of you, not much of a scenery,
very few spectators, not even a tree. Still, one good thing about it is
that you can see -and hear- the finish line from about a mile and a half
out, which I find very encouraging. (Actually, you can hear the finish
line all the way through). So I just focused on keeping my pace and
trying not to get passed. The first goal was accomplished, the second,
well, not so much.
As
I approached the finish line my Garmin was reading 9:05 for my average,
so I knew I was doing good in time. Then, once at the finish line, I
was able to see the race clock reading 2:06:something. Yey! At least two
minutes less than my goal time. I just couldn’t believe it! My
teammates and I stayed until the last person crossed the finish line,
and then watched the award ceremony.
Finally, at home, I was able to check the official results:
- the swim: 12:31, pretty much what I expected. I need to do something to get faster...
- T1: 2:05
- the ride: 45:18, and 18.6mph. Holy cannoli, that’s fast, very fast for me. It must have been the new Chiqui Roo :-)
- T2: 1:05
-
the run: 26:16, and 8:45min/mi. Well, that’s fast, but it’s also
questionable. My garmin read the distance as 2.8 miles and that would
put me closer to 9:05min/mi, much more believable...
Total time was 1:27:11, almost three minutes better than my goal time. Yey for the little victories that keep us racing!
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