r laughed so hard before a race! I went down there w/ Nicole the morning of the race. We have this race starting thing down to a science ... or so we thought. Our wave goes off at 9:30, we have to gel 15-20min before that & we put our wetsuits on somewhere around there too ... so we don't overheat in them. It's like 9:00 and Jeremy (race director & President of Set Up Events) starts hollering at all the athletes to get on the dock and then get in the water. Nicole & I are standing there, like "what? surely he doesn't mean us. We don't go off for another 30min." Sure enough he did mean us. The girls that were standing there ooing over the beautiful lake and aren't anywhere near ready to start a race, yep that was us! The international distance swimmers were coming in & we had to get off the docks so they could run up and out to TA. Thank God we had stretched up at TA! We stood there frantically trying to put our wetsuits on (which is not an easy process, especially for Nicole since this is her "pre-pregnancy" wetsuit!). I swear, people were cursing at us because we were standing there in the middle of the sidewalk. Goggles, swimcaps, gels, water bottle, plastic bags ... thrown everywhere ... I'm laughing my head off, Nicole has this look of panic on her face ... it was hysterical!! =)SWIM: We sat on the side of the dock for awhile & then finally got in. I got kicked a few times so I decided to just float behind the line of people waisting energy by treading water while I just chilled out! "30sec before wave 8 goes" - so I make my way up to the front of the line & then we are off. I swear, about 10 people ganged up on me and tried t
o drown me! Thankfully I swam faster than them & got out of harms way fast!
BIKE: Running to TA was difficult. Coming from the lake it was practically straight up. I stripped my wetsuit off on the dock so I wouldn't cramp & just ran as fast as I could up the huge hill. It was a hilly bike course w/ a few very steep hills ... granny gear here I come!
RUN: Guess what, the run course was hilly too. All in all I was very pleased w/ my effort. It was difficult for me, but I pushed it. Nicole came running at me on the last hill, yelling at me to push it. "It's a sprint it's supposed to hurt." Well, I was definitely hurting! I wanted to yell not so nice things, but honestly it was really nice to have that extra push. I finished and almost puked all over the volunteer - thankfully nothing came out!
I had never done this race before & I loved it. Yes, it is hilly and challenging, but that's what makes it fun. Can't wait to do it again next year!!
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