Well it’s a little late to give a detailed report of lake murrays triathlon, but here’s the brief version. Last year I spent the day before lake murray doing the miracle hill 100 mile ride, so this year HAD to be better than that right . . . oh and I also got my first ever penalty. I had on my schedule saluda repeats, but got out there and started having issues with my chain coming off so I decided to turn around and go get it fixed ASAP. I figured if I got to the bike shop early they could fix it and then I would do repeats of paris mtn. instead. I was right. Ron fixed the bike, and I had just enough time to torture myself with paris mtn. before heading to Columbia.
I leave on time with Jeff and Sarah and the drive was uneventful. I was even good and ate what I brought for dinner. The morning started out ok until Jeff missed a turn and it put us a little behind. I think Sarah and I both were ready to blow, we didn’t go to the bathroom before we left so it wasn’t nice to pull into the race site to a LONG port o let line. Oh well, stuff happens. I put my wonderful wetsuit on thinking to myself it MUST have shrank. There’s no way I gained weight! Bad start. I panicked last year in the swim, so I was definitely hoping to have a better swim. Well, I survived the swim but only beat the time by 20 seconds. My goggles fogged, I couldn’t stay on course for anything, and my swim is just not where it should be right now. Oh well, step 2, transition. I am good at transitions, and I wouldn’t normally say I am good at anything but it’s the only place I can make up time. Well, transition wasn’t going to be where I was making up time at all. I couldn’t get my stupid wetsuit off at all! I swear it was like a 3 min. transition, ridiculous.
The bike I pushed really hard, trying to break the 45 min. mark. I missed that goal by 30 secs . . . pooh! Last years was 46:36, but remember I had done a 100 mile ride the day before. I just hoped to bust out my next goal which was to break 22 mins. on the run. Well, I know this run isn’t easy but all I thought about was focus on tempo. I wanted to run smart not hard:) Something Forrest has tried convincing me will work if I do it right. Well, the tempo must have worked. I didn’t realize until I saw the splits, but I did manage to do a 21:55. So, as far as goals go I managed to meet one of them and place 2nd in my age group.
Congrats to all who raced! Jeff managed to finally do a sprint at “all out” effort and ms. sarah parker also placed in her age group again. I did do a cool down run again this year, but missed Troy singing boots with the fur!
