Montauk, NY
10/2/2010
This was a real team event, with 2 vans full of MIT triathletes!
NECTC Season Overall - 4th female
Overall: 8th/40 collegiate women, 59th/114 collegiate overall, 1:15:28
Swim: “750”meters/18:08
The swim was crazy, pretty big swells and TONS of people all over the place, and very difficult sighting; I assumed (as did many others) that we were supposed to go around the bright orange buoys, but it turned out that there were some red ones in a slightly different direction and farther away that we had to swim to…so, that was confusing. I think I probably swam almost twice as far as the real distance, and felt terrible. In a pool I could do 750 in ~12 minutes, so this was pretty bad, but it was really slow even for the best swimmers too, so I don’t feel as bad.
Bike: 10.5 miles/33:26 (w/ chain drop)
The bike was super short. Wow, I could hardly believe it when they told us to turn around to head back. Anyway, I was cranking it out pretty well, but I dropped my chain on a downhill while shifting into my big gear, and tried for a while to finangle it back on, but it got stuck around my pedal, so I had to stop and put it back on. 6 people passed me, and I lost at least a minute, maybe more :(
But then I got angry and went faster, so it was ok. It was really cool seeing some of the other MIT people on the bike, because the course was mostly an out-and-back. I saw Nick Loomis only a few minutes back and tried to speed up because I was afraid he’d catch me!
Transitions: Pretty decent & fast, didn’t have to sit down to get my shoes on or anything, yay
Run: “5k” (a bit shorter, I think, probably at least a minute)/21:24 (woo!)
I tried a new strategy on the run, one that I sort of started trying last week at Westchester: Try to run fast!
It is much easier to run when you have only been racing for ~45 minutes already, I found. I’m pretty terrible about doing speed work on the run (though I have done quite a bit for me over the past few weeks), but I do a LOT of fatigue runs (where I go for a bike ride or swim then add a run after to make the workout longer, because I’m OCD that way). So, I ran a lot faster than usual. It helped that, for the second week in a row, the temperature was perfect for running (high 50’s).
Last year at this race, the all-concrete run was where I stress fractured my foot. Shockingly, I found that it was much easier to run it this year, with a non-broken foot!
After:
The best part of this trip was definitely after the race.
First, we got to cheer on all the other finishers, which was awesome (so fun to have a full team!!!)
Then, Katie had the delightful idea of going swimming in the ocean during the short time between finishing the race, packing up from the hotel, and going back to see awards. It was the most fun thing I have done since coming back to MIT, I think, diving through the waves in the surprisingly warm ocean.
We went back to the race site (only about half a mile from the hotel) for awards, but they postponed them half an hour, so Scott and I went back and swam in the ocean again! I guess us poor people from landlocked states are ocean-deprived ;)
Katie won out of the NECTC women for the season, and Leslie won her age group, so it was pretty great to steal a few prizes away from West Point.
The weather was a beautiful, sunny, clear contrast to the dark cloudy storms of the rest of the week, which made the ferry ride back very relaxing. I wish we had a picture of almost the whole team sleeping on benches outside on the top deck of the ferry; one guy asked us why there were so many sleeping people with numbers on our legs, and whether we were doing some sort of auction…
Anyway, I am very sad that the triathlon season is over, but glad we had such a fun final trip. Now I need to think about what my 10-15 weekly hours of training are actually training for…
Until next season (or the next race I find),
-Shaena
