SWT Olympic Tri RR - 4/6/03

Quick Summary:
Who: Katie Paulson & Todd Patterson
What: Southwest Texas State Olympic Triathlon
Where: Canyon Lake, Texas
When: Sunday, 4/6 at 7:30 AM
How: Not bad.
Katie 2nd Athena @ 2:54:02
Todd 4th Clydesdale @ 2:49:43
Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/TriFilly/SWTTri4603/photo#s5114307799744957170

Long Version:
Since both Todd & I are training for IM Idaho (A-Race) in June and Gulf Cost 1/2 IM in May (B-Race), we figured we'd better get one C-race in before those longer distances & SWT Tri was the first open water swim tri of the season in our area.

We drove down to packet pick-up on Saturday and then to the bike course & swim site. Luckily we did this in advance, as it was about 20 miles farther than the 20 miles indicated in the race packet. The water felt fine, cold enough for wetsuits, but not crazy cold. The bike course was hilly and I was very concerned about it, but Todd thought it would be fine. We didn't check out the run course, but knew it was all inside the park and would be pretty hilly, based on our drive of the bike course.

Race Day:
Got up about 5 AM (really 4 AM due to daylight savings time) and Todd made waffles on his waffle-iron in the hotel room. Very tasty (I think, since I didn't have enough saliva to really eat them - sorta washed down with a diet coke). Left hotel, drove the 45 minutes to race site & got set up in the dark. This was SWT's first try at an Olympic distance and it showed... as the body marking and chip pick-up was disorganized & slow. Chips were given to you with a zip-tie, luckily I had my neoprene strap along, but Todd wasn't so lucky. He Body-Glided his ankle well & didn't seem to have nearly the issues w. the zip-tie rubbing I thought he would.

SWIM:
Into the wetsuits and down to the water. The Clydes & Athenas are in the second wave, so they blow the airhorn (kinda weakly) and the first wave starts off. Apparently they decide they need a better blow on the airhorn for that wave so they blow it again - but this completely confuses the first wave, so some of them stop, meanwhile, all of us in wave two is saying GO, GO, GO!! Quite a fiasco. OK, wave two goes off without a hitch. I'm a MOP swimmer & usually just count on my swim to be there. It wasn't. I got claustrophobic in my wetsuit, got kicked a couple times, took a hand to the mouth, really just couldn't get into a groove!! Oh, did I mention that there were only two "real" buoys, 800 yards away down at the turnaround point? After rounding those, we were supposed to swim back on the outside of the no-wake buoys. Well, with an overcast sky, and the white no-wake buoys only about 2 feet high - it was impossible to sight off of them. We all ended up swimming back on the wrong side of the buoys, but then proceeded to round the last no-wake buoy before heading into the beach. Wasn't pretty, but it worked. Finally, I'm on dry-land & cannot get out of my wetsuit - argh. Get if off, and jog to my transition area & Todd's bike is still there... Wow, he must've had a bad swim too. As I'm lolly-gagging through T1, in comes Todd, out goes Todd, I'm still in T1 (oops).

BIKE:
I finally get out of T1 & can see Todd about 50 yards in front of me and continue to hang with him for the first five miles. I'm quite pleased with this, as this is my first race on my new bike, but as I watch Todd, he doesn't appear to be concentrating/racing... Finally, he pulls over, I ask him if he's okay & he says yes. About a mile later, I'm going up Devil's Backbone (a hill that wasn't nearly as hard as they mad it out be) and hear Todd yelling at me from behind. We crest the hill together, he takes off, never to be seen again on the bike! Later, I ask him if he had a motor stashed in the bushes, but no, he had changed out his cassette the night before & didn't ride his bike after doing so. Needless to say, he was missing a few gears and after the stop and some minor adjustments he was back at 100%.

RUN:
Lately my runs have been completely cratering, so I wasn't looking forward to this part of the race. Since Todd was already off and running, I knew I'd have to force myself to run and didn't think I'd be able to push myself too hard. Luckily, the run had lots of short out-and-backs where I got to see Todd several times and to see how far in front of me he was. Of course it was my goal to catch him, but I realized quite quickly that was impossible - just to shorten the distance between us would be progress. I started out about 5 minutes behind him, then caught up to about 3 minutes behind and then let him slip away to 5 minutes again by the finish.

Overall, the race was okay. Splits haven't been posted yet, but based on how I felt about the race, I was disappointed with my swim, pleased by my bike (only 5 minutes behind Todd on such a hilly course is good for me - I suck on hills) and neutral about my run. I guess I really need to work on my T1 time too. Glad to have a race under my belt before going into Gulf Coast and very lucky to have such a cool training partner to put up with me through all this too! (It's all his fault)!

Thanks for reading,
Katie