Well, like most things, the good stuff is worth waiting for.
Not necessarily with respect to my race reports, just to be clear. But in general, its a good phrase to live by.
Uh....or something. As it usually goes, veni, vidi....maybe vici...then I went on to other things! But after events I hoped to bloggy post but lamely social media'd instead....you all reminded me....I have a RESPONSIBILITY to you all. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm dubious I can fit it all in to one post. But I'm gonna try. I'm sorry in advance for your pain.
When we last left our intrepid heroine (that's me, keep up) she learned the rookie mistake of not racing her own race. Check. I went through a few days of open water freak out - swimming in Lake Ontario in the mid fifty degree water - to convince myself that I could swim in open water without panicking. Dumbass. I can. I just went out way the hell too fast. Check. It wasn't on my agenda to win Eagleman, so I'll just swim my own race and call it a day. That's one hell of a race strategy. My coach loved it. (Insert Sarcasm).
I travelled down to Cambridge, MD pre race Friday with my buddy Marcus, who I've known for over a decade, but sadly, spend little 1:1 time with. Pity. He's funny, a good road tripper, dubious but enthusiastic singer (like me) and has the same penchant for four letter words on the road. We somehow spent 8 hours non stop chattering (most people think this guy is quiet - I digress!) and covered everything from life to work to kids to training and all the spots in between. One of the big conversations was obviously around the race - I hadn't spent a ton of time looking at timing goals, so we worked on our race goals - after last weeks swim, I was conservative and guesstimated a 40 minute swim, 2:50 bike, and 1:45-1:50 run, and 5 minutes for transitions, leading to a 5:20-5:30 finish. I secretly hoped to go a little faster on the bike, as I had *finally* nailed riding in aero, but had only been riding in it for abut 3 weeks (I KNOW, people, I KNOW) , so who knows. I won't reveal Marcus's goals but the big one was to qualify for the 70.3 World Championship in St. George, Utah. Holy goals. He asked me if I was gonna go if I got a slot and I laughed it off. Dream big but be realistic, people, am I right?
We got in late Friday night (Thank you Pennsylvania road work and traffic, you suck) and got up early Saturday for some course recon, packet pick up, testing out the open water and in general, pre race prep. I was nervous as hell until a personal life bomb landed in my lap at 8am that I could do nothing about, which took away all my pre race nerves and in general killed my mojo for the race. Annoying to vague post it, but important in the context of my mindset for the race (Note - I am working through said life hot mess and am resolving it, but being 500 miles away tabled the resolution until post race. Good for race nerves killer, bad for eating, focusing, or, in general, giving a crap about triathlon). Thank goodness for Marcus - he was an awesome friend and supporter - both in terms of life and fellow kick in the pants triathlete.
Enough of that. We got our race numbers (new Ironman protocol for packet pick up made it so that we were rack buddies - this was awesome for me, at least - poor Marcus....and we added our stickers and brought our bikes to transition nice and early. Apparently, neither of of knows how to apply stickers according to instructions, so we messed up the stem sticker. The nice volunteer checking us in helped us fix it and the other two stickers were spot on - I joked with him that "Two Outta Three Ain't Bad" and he joked back, Well, Meatloaf thought so! (Little did I know that was a foreshadow!)
With business done, Marcus and I hopped a quick swim in the choppy choptank, grabbed an early dinner, then headed back to the hotel. I'll admit I was a total killjoy the day before the race and Marcus was awesome, amping me up and being a great friend. He's a true Iron-man and earned himself a little nickname along the way to boot (LOL).
Race morning dawned early, humid, but not too hot. As it always is, the word on the street was all abuzz about the water temp, which came through at 75 degrees - wetsuit legal! We amazingly found a parking spot, set up shop and took care of race morning business. We joked around with our rackmates, and before we knew it, it was time to line up for our time trial start - which featured 3 athletes every five seconds! COVID protocols banned a pre race warm up, which was fine by me, and when the gun sounded at 6:45 we were....hangin out on the beach. Time to do the thing!
Swim: 37:30 (1:46/yd)
After last weeks hot mess of a swim at Silver Serpent, I was a admittedly a little nervous about this one. The water looked choppy, the 2100 yd swim looked...long...hmmm. Welp, lets do the thing! I lined up and before I knew it the volunteer gave me a GO and I dove into the drink. The first hundred meters or so were all about acclimation and the water was definitely on the choppier side, but I found my rhythm and felt pretty good after about five minutes. I swam from buoy to buoy without much fanfare (there were 15 total so sighting was easy peasy) and had a few encounters with some aggressive dudes who tried to swim over me and even copped a feel (WTF dude) but I maintained my open water calmness and escaped anything crazy, until about 1200 meters in when I felt a sharp pain and some throbbing on my cheek. I brushed my face, confused, then it dawned on me that I got stung by a jellyfish! Little sucker. My face felt kind of sore and annoying but otherwise ok, and I feel like i earned my badass badge. After approximately a zillion years (ok, less than 40 minutes) I saw the ramp to exit the swim and was off with a swim time that was spot on for my best goal - now it was time to run to transition and play on the bike!!
Bike: 2:38:56 (21.2 mph)
Mounting my bike out of T1 (where, yes, my helmet was on correctly this time, thank you!) I was grinning like a little kid, off to play on my bike. I settled in pretty quickly - the first five miles or so were full of crazy turns and while i was instructed to look at my power only, I'm human and was eyeing my average pace. My super secret goal was to average over 20 mph and it sounded ridiculous, but shoot for he stars, right?? The headwind coming out was a little gross but not too bad, and once we hit open road, I settled in and was averaging 20-21 with little effort. I was passing people left and right and kind of giggled to myself thinking - WHO AM I?- but loving every second. I took in Gatorade every two miles, water every mile, stretched out into aero, and enjoyed the ride. I hammed it up for the cameras, flashing thumbs up, shaka signs, and even a random I love you that was probably meant to be something else, but hey, what can I say. I did love it. I was IN LOVE. Mile 30 and I was averaging 20.8 and I got the crazy wild idea that I might even hit 21 average. I set the goal to be 2:40 for my bike split, which OMG who am I?? And rode the last 26 miles with that grin still all over my face. I joked with racers I passed - got passed by Marcus at mile 50 (who got a flat at mile 2, poor dude) and aside from the zoomy disc wheelie guys that passed by me with ease, I never got passed by a woman on the bike. Ever. Woah. Is Rae....a cyclist??? I dunno, but it was sure a blast!! On the way in I got stuck behind two cars that had no idea what they were doing, which was about the most annoying thing ever, but I sat up, drank, and coasted into T2 with my sub 2:40 bike split, good for a 10 minute PR on the distance at the bike....and it was time to dance!!
Run: 1:54:06 (8:41/mi)I zoomed out of T2 with so many dangerous thoughts. Transitions were long due to the bid transition, distance from the water, and having to run around the outside of the whole thing to rack my bike, but going into the run, the race clock was at 3:21. While I knew I didnt have a half marathon PR in me, I was thinking I could probably do a 1:48ish and come in at 5:10, which would have been a huge PR for me. I sailed through mile 1 in 7:44....then totally hit a wall. If you look back to my bike drop of and the title of this post and do a little basic math....the swim was good...the bike, epic.....well, 2 outta 3 ain't bad did not bode well for the run. It was hot. There was no shade. and the way the course was mapped out gave us about 3 feet across for lanes during miles 3-10 of the run, which sucked if you got behind someone. People were tired. The layout of the course also featured about 15 easy turns and some pretty gross gravel and potholes in spots. I was not impressed. And I'm sorry to say I let the heat and my grumpiness get to me. My neck hurt from riding in aero (Apparently, going from zero to 56 in three weeks might not be smart). My glutes were on fire. I just wasn;t happy. The first loop I managed to average about an 825-8:30 split, and then the second loop...I walked. A lot. First through the aid stations but then the Ironman walk/run thing. I stopped and let a super hot racer have some of my handheld (she was so grateful). I played games with I will run until x....and then gave up. I saw my awesome cousin who drove an hour to cheer me on and that made me happy....until I didn't see her approximately 5 seconds later. Whomp. I tried to take in some sugar, but it didn't terribly help.
With 3.1 miles to go, I settled in on a sub 5:15. I was at 4:48 for time and this was totally doable. Yeah, no it wasn't. I just didn't have it. I settled in on a sub 5:19 (my old PR) and for the last mile, summoned every give a hit I had to run it in somewhat strongly, for an overall time of 5:17:44, a 90 second ish PR and a completely WTF smile on my face.
Post race, I caught up with Marcus, who made up for his bike woes with a smokin 1:29 half marathon (Damn, he couldn't have carried me??) and an overall finish of 4:52. He placed 10th in his AG and I came in 9th in mine, both of us in the top 10% overall for our gender. Not too shabby for that shitty run and his crazy bike!! We debated staying for awards but were told Marcus would find out via email and could accept a World's slot that way, so we packed it up and started the 8 hour journey home. OOOF.
Once we finally made it home, three things happened.
The family crisis was resolved - quickly at first, then thoroughly within 48 hours. Whew.
Marcus got a slot for Worlds and is headed to St. George on September 18th! WOOT!
And....I'll be with him. Somehow, I managed to snag a spot as well....which was TOTALLY unplanned and I am still shaking my head in disbelief! Thank goodness I have the best husband ever, who told me to GO FOR IT! So I did. UTAH HERE I COME BABY!
Stay tuned as we tap into WTF is wrong with Rae's run and how do we fix it....and for Mini Mussel on July 10th, next up on the racing docket!
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