9/18 - Buzzard's Bay

Buzzard’s Bay Sprint

Dartmouth, MA, 9/18/2011

.6mi swim, 15mi bike, 5k run

In the week leading up to Buzzard’s Bay, the summer weather turned miraculously cool, portending an ideal-conditions race to come. MIT brought quite a few athletes, since the course was only about a 1.5 hour drive from campus and we didn’t have many registered for the NECTC race of the weekend. Due to the necessity of avoiding low tide for the swim, the start was a luxurious 10:30am (although that would not have seemed so wonderful if the weather was hot like usual), so we didn’t need to leave until 7:30 – oh, the joys of “sleeping in” on a race day! My non-triathlete friends think I’m crazy…

Swim: 10:59, ~600yd, 230/505 overall

This was an ocean swim, point-to-point, and the water was quite wavy due to relatively strong winds. It made for a bit of a learning curve, since I haven’t swum much in waves and took a little while to figure out NOT to breathe on the right side or else I’d swallow water. On the plus side, I sure wasn’t lacking for electrolytes the rest of the race…

Water was 67 degrees, and I used the long-sleeve wetsuit, which felt a bit unnatural since I haven’t used it for so long but ultimately nice and warm and reasonably fast. Came out of the water in a reasonably fine position, not sure exactly where in my wave but apparently toward the front, since I didn’t see many women on the bike. The swim times ranged from about 8:30-15min, so it didn’t make much of a difference for anyone, although a couple of our team members were quite fast swimmers!

T1: 1:27

Pretty fast T1 for me – for once I didn’t feel tired enough to sit down or anything, and I just got new cycling shoes which are pretty fast to put on.

Bike: 43:30, 15mi, 20.8mph avg, 5^th woman, 78/505 overall

The bike course was fast and flat. The headwind was pretty strong at times, but I felt awesome flying by with my new aerohelmet. My new cleat was a little bit loose, which worried me some, but it didn’t significantly impact my ride or fall off (thank goodness), and upon finishing the bike I was the 3^rd woman overall J

T2: :54

Run: 22:52, 5k, 7:22/mile avg, 127/505 overall

This run turned out well for me, for once! I felt strong at the beginning, maybe because after just a sprint distance I was well warmed-up but not totally exhausted. The temperature was nice and cool (low 60s and cloudy), and I have been adding a good bit more intensity and speed/cadence work to my runs for the past 2 weeks. (side note: shin is hurting in a kind of weird way today, so maybe I should scale back on the intensity this week – would be unfortunate to get a stress fracture mid-season!)

Anyway, I came through mile 1 at 7:30, then soon saw our men (who started 5min ahead of us) coming back the other way, which was cool. Mile 2 was at 16:10, which seemed odd because I didn’t think I slowed down that much (8:40 mile 2?), so I suspect that maybe the mile marker was in the wrong spot. In any case, 2 women in my age group passed me in the final mile, which was very sad, except that I still came in to the finish in 22:52, meaning the final mile+.1 was at 6:32, which is ridiculously fast for me (and another reason to think that mile marker 2 was off).

So, solid run, certainly didn’t lose more than a minute or two off of most people, other than the girl who won our age group, who ran a lightning-fast 19:02. The other woman who passed me at the end was Ari from our team, which was awesome! Unusually, the F20-24 age group was the most competitive F age group to place in (i.e. 3^rd F2024 would be 1^st or 2^nd in any other age group)

Overall: 3/13 in F2024, 6/204 Women overall, 90/505 overall, 1:19:31

Overall, the race turned out very well! I felt strong despite what I thought might be a bad “taper” (Mon-Wed hard/long, Thursday off, Friday 8-mile easy-ish run, Saturday 20 mile bike and short OWS)

We dominated the male and female 20-24 podiums (2^nd and 3^rd place in each), and had several other very strong performances. In addition, some new members of the club completed their first triathlon! Hope we can keep up this great momentum for the final 2 weeks of racing!

9/3 Lake George Olympic

Lake George Olympic: NECTC#1

Lake George, NY, 9/3/11

After the first official NECTC race (Cranberry) was canceled last week due to Hurricane Irene, I was feeling recovered from my Half and ready to race again!

We brought 2 men (Sam, Zack U) and 2 women (me, Caroline L) up to Lake George, and once there met our MIT-turned-Dartmouth friend Leslie. It looked to be a great race venue, with a stunning early-morning view of the lake and pleasant temperatures.

Swim: 30:32

The swim seemed long. Maybe it wasn’t, and I just swerved all over the place, but in any case I was severely disappointed with my swim time; I know I’m in good swimming shape, having done some max effort-type tests last week and establishing that my times are as good or better than ever. So, this swim taking so long really shocked me, especially since I thought I was going quite hard and had tired arms the next day. This kind of pace is the equivalent of 1:00/50yd, which is a lollygagging pace for me in the pool…

Oh well. Caroline dominated the swim, and Sam and Zack were also quite fast.

T1: 2:11 Slow…hope to soon get some faster-to-put-on shoes and am practicing my bike mount

Bike: 1:13:01 (20.4mph), 3^rd in NECTC women, 10/205 women overall

The bike was great! Much of the course was quite smooth, with a particularly memorable wide downhill bike path where I flew along at 35mph. Upon starting the bike, someone told me I was the 4^th woman (not sure if that was quite true or not – if so, everyone else had terrible swims as well), and I passed 3 women on the bike before being passed by an age-grouper, so for a little while may have been the #1 woman! (I think there really was one more pretty far ahead, though). Saw Caroline near the beginning, but didn’t see anyone else from the team, so I hoped that they had great swims and were ahead of me rather than behind.

This was my fastest Olympic bike split yet J

T2: :52

Run: 53:08 (8:34/mile)

I’ve been struck with lots of terrible runs recently, due to heat or injuries or bonking or any number of maladies. This time, nothing too bad happened, although I accidentally ingested a caffeinated Gu thinking there would soon be an aid station with water, but there wasn’t water for another mile so my stomach cramped up a bit for 2 miles near the middle. Still, I ran the first 5k in under 25min, which would put me on the kind of pace I would be satisfied with. Yet, came through the finish with as slow a time as always; I guess that even when nothing goes wrong, I’m still a slow runner L Tempo runs will be added to my training regimen for the rest of the season and next season, for sure. I just hate them, having gotten so tired of running at threshold after high school cross country…

Overall: 2:39:43, 3^rd/15 NECTC women

Leslie passed me on the run and took 2^nd, but I was quite happy with 3^rd – that’s the best I’ve ever done in collegiate! More pint glasses to add to my collection...

I think our team will have a very hard time meeting the new Nationals qualification standards, since our strategy was to try to bring a few members to each race rather than concentrate on a couple, which backfired once they decided to only count each team’s top 2 races. Hopefully we can qualify at least the men (they at least are bringing a full team of 4 men to several races) and some individuals, because nationals is so much fun! I should have a decent chance of qualifying individually, since they take the top 7 women and it rolls down from the individuals who are on teams that already qualified. However, with some good luck and recruitment, maybe we can bring a lot of people to a race and qualify as a team – I certainly hope so!