Collegiate Triathlon Nationals
Olympic Distance Triathlon
April 17, 2010
Lubbock, Texas
Race report:
Well, I lazily decided to try to finish my 8.02 pset before writing a race report, but by now, I think just about everything has been covered very well by the other nationals bamfs. So, I will just add a brief report of my point of view, preceded by everything leading up to the actual race.
Before the race:
I came to MIT last fall after 4 solid years of high school endurance sports (running, cross-country skiing). Mind you, I was not at all fast, but I trained like a beast. Or so I thought. Then, I realized that what I had considered “training” for the small triathlons I did a few summers in a row did not actually correlate to real triathlon training; I pretty much was a runner, and would jump in the pool once (literally) to make sure I could swim the tri distance without drowning, and I bike commuted to work and school so figured I would do fine on the bike portion. And so far, it had worked – I was always a Junior in the age group categories, and the races were always small, so I pretty much always won! That was what made me originally like triathlon, because I could train a lot and race decently and actually get prizes (yes, greed was the motivator). Then came MIT.
I thought that the triathlon club had disintegrated here, since the website was never updated and I hadn’t seen anyone at the CPW athletics fair…so, I bought my first road bike last summer and decided I would do cycling at MIT instead. Once I got here, I was pleasantly surprised to find that indeed there was a triathlon team, AND that the fall tri season made it quite possible to do both triathlon and cycling without any conflicts. So, as soon as my bike arrived from FedEx (and the bike store put it back together for me…now I know how), I joined the tri club in the Lobsterman and Mightyman NECTC races. They were great fun, although by the end of Mightyman I had a stress fracture in my foot.
Unable to run for 9 weeks (which sounded like a death sentence to me), I started attending swim practices and cycling club rides. I swam in elementary school, but not since then, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that swimming actually came far more naturally to me than other sports that I struggled at such as running.
Cycling well really just requires lots and lots of hours on the bike. So, that’s how I spent my fall, riding my bike, meeting people, and swimming increasingly well.
In the winter, I could run again, but I was back home in Wyoming, so I mostly just skate-skied instead and attempted to ride my trainer indoors (boring). Once back here, I tried to step up my workouts to include an average of 4 weekly bike rides, 3 runs, and 3 swims; I had never trained so much in my life! It was great fun though, except that since I was racing on weekends for cycling, I never had the energy to run hard/do intervals. That showed in Nationals, but honestly even when I used to run 40 miles per week, I still wasn’t nearly as fast as most of the people there.
OK, this is actually becoming a rather long brief summary, so I will move on to the race.
Race:
We arrived in Lubbock eventually, put together our bikes, ate, slept, etc. The other race reports go into very good detail about all of this. Kristen did a great job driving through the “roads” that were really more like rivers due to all the rain and flooding. The swim did not feel as cold as the officials made it seem, but unfortunately my fingers were cold enough that I couldn’t hold them together; I basically clawed through the water the entire race, which felt terribly slow, but it didn’t really matter since the swim was so short anyway. The bike course was windy, and I felt a strong urge from the cyclist side of me to draft off of the big, strong men who passed by so easily; I did not, and just kept pedaling along. At one point, we went downhill with a tailwind, and my spedometer said I got up to 43 miles per hour, which was by far the fastest I’ve ever biked before! Anyway, I saw a few of our teammates on the bike but was too distracted/concentrating to say hi to most of them. Then came the run. Bleh. For a former runner, I really hate running fast. I’m really glad that I finished, and that my feet thawed to the point where I could feel them after a few miles, and that the other MIT people looked like they were going so much faster than me on this part.
Kristen demolished me in the run (well, she pretty much demolished everyone), so we actually ended up with the exact same finishing time of 2:30:33. That was pretty awesome, since we always thought that we would probably end up close, but not THAT close. Matthieu did amazingly, and Chris would have if he hadn’t had a flat tire.
Though Brad was in Texas for less days than us, he raced well and helped us out SO much by driving us to and from the airport. Senovio and Scott both raced very well, despite this not being the ideal first race conditions. Zuzka was very fast, of course. Kristen and I were both quite happy, I think, since we were in the top quarter of the women! And Ari did quite well too, though it didn’t help that they cut down her best section (the swim) by so much.
Overall, nationals was a great experience despite the weather. The triathlon club in general is a wonderful place to find training partners and work towards common goals, and along with cycling is my favorite part of MIT so far. We have an amazing swim coach (Bill Steele), great sponsors, and dedicated members and officers. Hope to see everyone at the New England Season Opener and at NECTC races next year!
-Shaena
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