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!