Rye, NY
September 25, 2011
Second race of the NECTC 2011 season!
1500M SWIM --- 40km BIKE --- 10km RUN
Intro
I had a special guest come with me to this race again… Mama Nauman!!!
She wanted to come out and watch this race like last year, so she flew out on a Thursday night and hung out with me til we left for the race on Saturday morning. I cooked some food and we walked around Hoboken, it was fun! We made a tourist stop on the way to Rye, NY, on Saturday at the Rockefeller Lookout point off of the Palisades Parkway.
The rest of the team met up with us at the Expo around noon on Saturday and we went on a nice Team Warmup ride and then some of us went for a swim or a jog. Luckily we had time to drive the bike course for all the noobs because it’s such a difficult course and knowing the details and where to push it is critical.
After that we made our way to the lovely Marriott down the freeway and settled in for about an hour. We then went to dinner at Bertucci’s.. of course we had to have Italian food! They found a huge table for our whole team which was awesome and we consumed copious amounts of pasta amongst us all. The team meeting was short and sweet and we were all in bed fairly early!
Westchester is a super early race, so we were up and out of the Marriott as fast as possible in the morning to get to the race. We never even saw dawn until we started putting on our wetsuits!
Swim= 20:07 –1st female swim split in NECTC, 5th fastest overall female swim
Last year’s swim time was an amazing 18:40 and that difference could have been due to a number of factors.. but I think it was because I was a week into the swim season at that point last year and was much more in tune with my swimming abilities.
To be honest, I thought I was flying in the water! But that was probably because I was blowing by all the old men in the wave before me.. oops. It’s all relative!
T1= 1:15
Bike=1:09:43 – 2nd fastest female bike split in NECTC, 8th overall female bike split
Average power = 190
Average speed = 22.37 mph
Bike HR Avg = 180
CLAIRE’S CLIMB = 2:04
My computer said I did 25.27 miles where as last year I clocked in at 24.89 miles. Last year I finished at 1:08:33 with an average power of 192. Minor minor differences. I couldn’t tell you why I was a little slower this year, but I wasn’t at my full taper yet so I was hurting.
I also could have sworn I was going to be over 200 watts, but I guess the back half probably brought down my average a bit.
4th fastest female Clair’s Climb Prime!!!
Last year I did the climb in 2:17 because I don’t think I was really trying. This year I hadn’t planned in trying until I came right up to the start line with some serious momentum and just decided to hammer it out for fun! There was a lady that I had been going back and forth with the whole time and she was just a bit ahead of me at the start of the Climb and I could tell that she wasn’t trying so I thought I’d make an effort to pass her at that moment. I eventually got to her and passed her at the top!
T2= 1:13
Run = 47:38 30th overall female run split
Run pace = 7:40 min/mile
Run HR Avg = 182
I came blistering out of T2 and ran the first mile around Playland at 7:18 because the lady that I had been going back and forth with on the bike had passed me and I wanted to keep with her if possible. Unfortunately she got away and then during the third mile, the terribly steep climb cramped my style and made me come to a complete stop at the top of the hill because my inner quads had cramped so badly. Luckily I was still able to keep that mile under 8 min, but it was painful and the rest of the race was a struggle to keep around 7:45 pace.
The Columbia girl passed me around the end of mile 2 and the Army girl passed me during mile 5 which was pretty frustrating. I just tried to stick with the 3rd place finish and bring it home as best I could.
Overall time = 2:19:53
3rd overall female in NECTC and 7th overall female in the race
In the 20-24 Female age group category I was 2nd overall to the Army girl because she’s 24. Gabby was right behind me with a 2:26 but she wasn’t in the NECTC so she received the first place award for the age groupers. For some reason they didn’t include the NECTC kids in the age group awards like they did the year before.
I was about a minute and a half slower than last year, and I have to admit that I was slightly upset about it because I really wanted to kill this race after having done so well the year before. But as luck would have it, the cancellation of Buckman really threw off my training schedule for the 10 days before this race and I had to compromise.
Overall, I still love this race course and it was a blast!
Pre-Race! |
Post-Race! |
If you want to read the team race report written by the lovely Aaron Perelman, CLICK HERE to get to our Stevens Tri website!