Not really anticipating rain, but knowing there was a chance, I'm glad I packed my raincoat cause guess what! About 6:30AM race morning it started raining! And as I was setting up transition, conditions continued to get worse and worse. It got colder, windier, and rainier. Plus, I was looking forward to swimming in the bay, which is usually flat and warmer than the ocean, but with the weather at the time, the bay was extremely choppy which was going to make for a harder than normal bay swim. Which to be honest, as a strong swimmer, favors me more, so I really shouldn't be complaining. Since the air was in the 50s and the water in the mid-60s, wearing a wetsuit was a no-brainer. After lubing (body glide, lol) up, I slide into my wetsuit and walked down the beach to the swim start for the point-to-point swim. As stated before, the bay was extremely choppy, which made for a slow swim and it didn't help that it was hard to sight 'over' waves. But after navigating the buoys faster than everyone else, making sure to keep them all to my right, I exited the water first and I began to peel the top half of my wetsuit off on the run to transition.
It's a good thing that at transition practice before Josh would always move my helmet, because the wind blew my helmet and sunglasses off my handlebars. But since I had been put in this situation before, I was able to stay relaxed and not panic, locating my helmet while stripping my legs of my wetsuit. After running out of transition, I hopped on my bike and was on my way on the rainy and windy bike course. Given how windy it was, I'm very happy that I don't have deeper wheels than I do (55mm) since the crosswinds came out to play today! On the first lap of the bike course, without following anyone, there were cars on the road and there weren't any police officers after a certain point and I was convinced that I had missed the turnaround. But without panicking, I continued to ride and found the turnaround! I wasn't off course and was still in the lead! It turns out, the way back had more of a head-crosswind, which allowed me to ensure that I put more effort into the returns than the way out (the bike course was 3 laps). The only benefit of having 5 turnarounds on a 10 mile bike course is that it was very easy to establish and monitor time gaps on the rest of the field, since I was getting serious about hunting for the overall win, and with every turnaround, I estimated my gap was shrinking, and I was certianly right. By the time I got to the turnaround on the last lap, where I realized I still had around 30 seconds on 2nd place I decided that it was time to just go for it. With a good surge I rode in hard to try and maintain my sizable lead.
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| comin off the bike! |
Coming off the bike and out of T2, which was uneventful and routine, I knew that a lead can shrink very quickly on a run, despite it only being a 5K, so it was time to go and take the run 1 mile at a time. This was right around when I realized that winning was truly a possibility. Being in the lead on the run was pretty neat since I essentially got a pacer, with the person riding the bike 'slowly' in front of me as I ran for my life. Well, not really, but you get the point. This is where not knowing the who/what the competition really hurts, because I had no idea who was a good runner. My mindset was that if anyone was going to catch me, I was going to make them really push a lot harder than they wanted to to catch me. Without wearing a watch or mile markers on the course, pushing the pace the entire time is what I had to do. After the first turnaround, I had definitely lost time and that was okay, cause it gave me a little more motivation to pick up the pace a tad more. Once I got to the second turnaround, I had put more time on the field and there was a change in position for 2nd, but that didn't scare me, as I knew I was so close to the finish. I was soon able to see the finish line, and as I came down the finishing chute, I broke the cardinal rule of racing to never look back, but I wanted to make sure that there wasn't going to be a sprint finish, which there wasn't! I came across the line in 1st, with probably the biggest smile on my face that I've had in a long time, a wire-to-wire victory!
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| always repping TriCats |
For full results and splits, click here! Thanks again to Tom Manzi for putting on a great race despite the challenging weather conditions!
P.S. about a month ago on the IM Boulder Bike course, I tried HOTSHOT, and 10/10 would NOT recommend. If you don't believe me, ask Alex or Laura.
