Red Bank Olympic
May 15, 2011
A random race that I decided to do on a whim…
1500M SWIM --- 40km BIKE --- 10km RUN
Marc had told me about this race a few weeks before race day, but I had decided not to sign up for it for multiple reasons. It wound up on the last weekend of Finals week at school, and I didn’t know how much time I was going to have to train. As the date drew nearer, weather.com said that there was a good chance of rain that morning and I really wasn’t in the mood for a triathlon in the pouring rain.
So after a quick email to the race director to check and see if I could sign up race day, I decided to wait it out til that morning.
Well, much to my surprise, the rain let up and it was barely drizzling that morning! So, with Marc by my side, we trudged over to the registration tent in the mud and I signed up to do a cold and drizzly Olympic distance triathlon.
Swim= 21:47.5 – 5th Fastest overall out of the water and 1st Female swim!
This swim was fantastic. I did really well and I was way out in the lead for the first wave of female swimmers. I had to plow through a bunch of the older men in the wave ahead of me and I got to some open water. Unfortunately, my goggles were getting really foggy and I head to clear them a few times because I had to find the buoys on my own.
Lesson learned: wear goggles that won’t fog if I plan on getting out front in the swim.
T1= 0:39.0
Probably the fastest T1 of all time lol
Bike=1:17:25 – 52nd overall bike split
Average power = NA
Funny story: This bike time was a full 4 seconds faster than my Tuscaloosa bike split.
Good thing I’m improving slowly but surely lol! But in all seriousness, I really need to work on getting that bike split down. I was much more powerful last year and I need to start bringing the power back up.
Some random girl kept following me on my tail and I was getting really annoyed in the first 10 miles or so. At one point, after slowing down a little on a hill and downing a Gu, she came right up on my butt and I yelled, “You can pass me, you know!” And her response was, “I’m trying! But I only catch you on the hills then you speed away.” … Just as I was speeding away down the hill. Whatever. I ended up running the 10k 5 minutes faster than her anyways. I don’t like it when people draft in a race.. especially a smaller local race like this where no one else is around.
But overall, the course was beautiful and went through very typical New Jersey hills. It was very peaceful that morning and other than the wet asphalt, I enjoyed the ride!
T2= 0:45.6
Run = 51:21.6 – 79th overall run split
Run pace = 8:15 min/mile
The weather for this race was exact opposite of Alabama. Thank goodness for that. It was overcast and cool, allowing me to set a blistering pace and keep it up there even though my heart was going to burst out of my chest.
One memorable moment of the run… One of my favorite things to do while doing training runs or jogging is jumping up at low-hanging branches/trees because I’m short and it adds some small challenge to the run. Well just as I was picking up my pace and running really fast, I jumped a couple times to hit a few branches and some guy behind me said, “Oh, great, she’s playing games now!” hahaha. I had heard this guy close behind me for a while and he was getting frustrated in a joking manner, so he finally passed me. Lol, I love funny people during races.
Most memorable moment of the run… come up to about 5 minutes from the run finish and turning around to find Marc. It was a long straight-away stretch and I could see him sprinting! I wanted to cross the finish with him so badly… but alas he yelled at me to keep going and get a good time. So I dogged it and amazed myself as I looked at my watch and realized I was somewhere just over 51 minutes. Huzzah!
Overall time = 2:31:59.5
Well still no bueno compared to Westchester, but it was a nice 5 minutes faster than Alabama thanks to that run time.
I ended up 36th overall in the race including the guys and snagged the 2nd overall Female! I was really happy with that. And my run splits rarely make me happy, but that run time made me absolutely ecstatic. I couldn’t stop talking about how happy I was with it on the car ride home.
Mucho thanks to Marc for dragging me to the race that morning!
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