Genine's Timberman Sprint Race Report

This is the first race of my season that I felt really confident and prepared going into. The swim distance of .33miles was my shortest swim so far (10mins and out I kept telling myself). The bike was 15miles that I knew I could knock down. The run was where I was hoping that my recent track training would pay off. This time I had set an expectation for myself of an 8:45pace for the 5k. I was hopeful, but still not solid with how my hip/hamstring would respond after the bike. It was a long weekend with a lot of back & forth travels between the house & the race site, as Matt noted in his report. A gigantic thank you to Shawn, Amy and Fiona for getting up early (yet again) to make the trip to see my race!! It was such a lift to hear you guys cheering for me!

Timberman transition at 5am...oh so dark.

Matt & I got up at 3:15am Saturday, left the house by 4:00am and arrived at the race site at 4:45am. Got stuff out of the car, bike unloaded and headed to get marked and transition. I took my time laying everything out in my spot and then covered it with plastic bags as the sky was not looking too favorable. Then the waiting game, "gotta go" porta-potty time started. Somehow my timing was such that I missed every line for the potties! Not sure how that happened, but thank goodness for little things! I grabbed everything I needed out of transition as it closed at 6:30am. I decided to remove the plastic bags covering my bike & run stuff. I didn't want to have to fumble with it in transition & I was hoping the rain would hold off. My wave started 7:24am and I didn't want to put my wetsuit on any sooner than necessary because of the high humidity...ugh. Matt & I walked over to the swim start and I put the bottom half of my wetsuit on. Then I had to go...again. I didn't want to race yet another race in "agony" and luckily there were a few porta-potties on the beach at the swim start, so I took advantage of them. Good call! Now I am ready to race!

Focused and ready to swim!

As my wave walked into the water, I lined up in the back outside left of the group. I tend to pull right and this also kept me out of the churn of the start. worked like a charm! As we started, many women were walking thru the shallow water. (probably could have walked almost to the first buoy because it was so shallow). Not me...I started to swim....and passed people!! This was a rather new swim scenario for me...NO DOG PADDLE!! I was totally focused and determined to remain calm as I swam. The water was nice, not as clear as Newfound Lake, but beautiful. I swam as far in as I could at the end and got out of the water feeling good. Into transition and ready to bike!

Finishing up my soggy ride....

I think my favorite part of the race is riding my bike out of transition and on to the start of the bike course. Mostly because the swim is over :-), but it is the one part of the race the I get truly excited about my performance. The course starts with a climb out of the park. As I neared the top of this hill, the rain started....a steady rain that lasted the entire ride. I just told myself to keep pushing and ride hard. I knew the course from riding it with Matt in July, so I knew what to expect and when. Since I started in the first wave of women, this was by far the most crowded bike course I have ridden on to date. But everyone was respectful to their fellow racers. I have to say, it was kind of fun passing all of the slow guys from the waves before mine! There were some awesome women out there. I managed to keep myself in with 3 of them for the majority of the ride. We were playing the pass and catch-up game on all of the hills. I think by the end of the bike I was #2 out of 4 of the "group". Not too shabby!

As I racked my bike, took off my bike shoes and went to grab my running shoes, it was then I remembered "oh yeah...it's been raining for an hour"...as I had to turn my run shoes over to dump the water out of them! Ah well...my feet were already wet! and I wasn't going to put on dry socks...so wet shoes it was! Next time I bike barefoot and keep dry socks & run shoes under the plastic in rainy situations. I think my blistered feet would agree!

Starting my run....

I started the run immediately feeling tightness in my hips/hamstrings...grrrrr. "That's ok, just work it out", I thought to myself. When I looked at my watch the pace read 9:41...no good. So, I started to think - fast feet - speed up my cadence. this seemed to help a bit(9:00pace), but as I started the gradual incline that was the first half of the run loop, and I tried to go faster, my hips got tighter. I stopped at the aid station at the turn around to stretch for about 30seconds. Not a noticeable improvement...ah well. Go, go ,go.... The second half of the run was a gradual down hill. This worked to my advantage as I let gravity help to speed me up. I was able to maintain an 8:30ish pace for the last 1.5miles. I finished the run with an 8:53pace. Didn't make my goal pace of 8:45, BUT was able to make my secondary goal of keeping it under a 9:00pace.

I ended the race feeling quite good. I didn't experience any of the "stomach issues" I felt at Mooseman & Tango after my final push to the finish. That was encouraging. All in all, it was a good race for me. It boosted my confidence in my swim, validated my bike training and it gave me hope for faster run times. As I am nearing the end of my first official race season, I thought it would be fun to go back to my first race in May (Jerseyman) to compare times. Even though both races were sprints, the distances for the swim & bike were slightly different, so I figured out my pace for each race as a comparison. Here they are:

Swim Pace:
JM (.5mi swim)- 38:35 mile pace
TM (.33mi swim)- 31:46 mile pace

Bike Pace:
JM (19.5mi bike)- 16.4mph
TM (15mi bike) - 17.6mph

Run Pace:
JM (5k)- 9:44 pace
TM (5k)- 8:53 pace