St. Croix Race Report, Better Late than Never?

Ok, ok, I will finally write my race report from St. Croix. The swim went pretty well. The water was crystal clear and I saw everything: sunken ship, colorful fish, garbage can, sand, and a lawn chair. There were some small buoys at the beginning that may have been a swim zone for hotel guests, but we had to swim around them so the beginning was a pick cluster and got interesting. After that we turned and were heading pretty much straight into the waves. I had no idea where I was but I saw two girls up a little ways. They were headed out left, a ways from the buoys, I stuck near the buoys and caught them at the turn buoy. Then I cut in too narrow and they stayed on track. I caught them about half way to the last turn buoy and we swam all together to it. After the last turn I swam away from them a little bit and was second out of the water.

T1 went pretty well and then I was passed within the first mile by a certain world champion. Well, it was fun while it lasted. I expected to be passed by a few on the bike. The bike was beautiful and challenging. The Beast (a few photos of that above, though even the photos don't do it justice) was brutal. Harder than I thought it would be. At one point I was sure walking up would be faster. The rest of the course was either up, down and twisty, and with a grusome headwind. Came of the bike in 8th.

T2 was just fine. The run was a little rought. I felt really full and sick again. So I will be working on fixing that this next few weeks. Run was a little hillier than I expected and my time was a handful of minutes slower than I would have liked. Overall it was still a pretty good race though and I finished in 8th.

St. Croix is a wonderful race and a wonderful place. It is a gorgeous island and the people there are the friendliest people you can find. I would love to do this race again someday. I have updated my race schedule, but it still may change~sometimes I'm indecisice and sometimes it's fun to be spontaneous!

Miami Race Report

First race of the season finished! I went to Miami for the first race in the 5150 series. My race didn't exactly go great but I learned a lot, hand fun, and am even more motivated to keep training harder and race again. Miami itself has wonderful weather and great beaches but I also couldn't wait to leave simply because the traffic was so terrible. We stayed at a hotel too far away from race site. It was cheaper and we thought it might be quieter than the big hotels on the beach in case they were full of crazy spring breakers. If I go back next year I will just stay as close as possible to the race site.

The Race

Swim- An in water start. No wetsuits for the pros. I think they said the water temp was 72 degrees. It was sooo cold waiting for the gun to go off. The swim was great-it was a race the whole time! That was new for me. It also made me realize I NEED to start swimming with people and pushing myself more in the swim. I am happy with my swim time (best without a wetsuit) and fact that it really seemed to be more of a race, but I know I can easily improve my swimming if I make my swim workouts count rather than just 'doing' them.

Bike- My T1 was terrible! I will definitely be working on transitions before the next race. The bike went ok. I pushed hard for most of it, but it got lonely! The girl's race was quite spread out, so you are out there pretty much all alone and have to keep pushing hard even when there isn't a person in site. I was unprepared for the weather. On my bike I only had one water bottle of drink. This was probably my biggest mistake and lesson learned from the weekend. I probably could have drank that bottle around half way thru the bike. I made it last until 3/4 of the bike. Then I felt like I was dying. Thankfully we were on the second loop and biking around some of the age groupers so I could pick out people here and there and try to keep up so I could keep pushing hard and get my mind off how thirsty I was.

Run- T2 was better than T1 but still not great. I think I was so dehydrated fromt the start of the run that I never really had the chance to have the run I wanted. It felt like I was running 8 min miles and that all my effort was going into simply trying rather than racing hard. Well, I made it through the run at a deathly feeling pace and finished my first pro race.

Lessons learned/Things to work on: -Better to have more hydration or nutrition than not enough, even if that means carrying around a little extra.

-Must find groups to swim with even if it means driving or spending extra $
-Work on run off the bike

The Good: -Points earned toward HyVee if I decide to try to qualify for it

-I didn't get last or make a completely bomb

-I cannot wait to keep training and race again!

I am disppointed but not discouraged! Time to look forward. Next race is St. Croix 70.3. After that I will decide if I want to try to qualify for HyVee or 70.3 Championships or do something else completely!

One Month!

About one month until my first race of the year..eeeek!! Cannot believe it is coming up so quickly! I have not been nervous for a race in a long time and I'm getting really nervous for this one. Somehow I will just have to keep distracting myself from the nerves.

Training inside is getting old, and this warmer weather is really getting me excited to train outdoors regularly again. I tried to upload some photos of an indoor training day, but it wasn't working. I will try again later.

Also, I have put my tenative 2011 race schedule up-at least through July. Races after that will depend on races prior to that. I will try to post again with photos and more details soon!