Author Archives: Shayla

For those that remember the disaster that was the 2010 Austin Olympic Triathlon (you know, where I totally freaked out in the swim and ended the race by being pulled out of the water), I wanted to make sure I was totally prepared in 2011 with wetsuit swimming and cold water.

Doing the Lonestar Sprint Triathlon in Galveston was one of the ways I would hope would get me ready since it would be cold enough for a wetsuit swim.

Friday
I took the day off and left really early and arrived in Galveston at 11am.  Got to packet pickup at noon, and got all checked in.  I was a little bummed because I couldn’t buy anything at the Expo.  All the merchandise either had the M-dot (Ironman) logo on it or said 70.3.  Since I was doing neither, I couldn’t buy anything.  I just can’t buy anything or wear anything from a race that I didn’t do, don’t want to be a poser.

Heather, Ingrid and I then set out to get in a swim.  The whole reason for getting in early on Friday was to get in the water.  I had no idea what the water temp was going to feel like, and I’d never swum in salt water before, either.   We get down to the water, wetsuits almost on, and we’re told there is no swimming.  After a tiny bit of internal panicking, we decide to find another location that isn’t within Moody Gardens to go for a swim.  We find a place where some scuba divers were and get in the water.  A little more panicking as I realized I forgot my goggles.  As a contact lens wearer, I can’t swim without goggles.  Ugh.   Heather was nice enough to let me borrow hers, and I got in the water just long enough to see how the water temp was, how the wetsuit fit, and how the water tasted (yuck!).

Afterwards, we headed back to ‘the coach’ where Heather was staying and relaxed for the rest of the day:

Race Day

Transition opened at 5am.  Since I was staying next door, getting to the race site took 5 minutes tops.   Of course I was up before my alarm went off, and as soon as I woke up, I realized I forgot my throw-away flip flops! Yikes! I hate walking around in my bare feet, and I knew transition was quite a ways from swim in.  The only thing I had were my $90 Keens, and there was no way I was going to leave them behind.  (Thankfully, Heather agreed to take my Keens when I was done with them.)    As I was getting the rest of my gear packed, I also realized I forgot my chip strap at home.  I had taken the nice neoprene one I have out of its safe keeping place, but forgot to bring it with me.  A little more panicking because I wasn’t sure if they would have spares available.   At this point I was starting to have a lot of negative thoughts about the race if so much had already gone wrong and it wasn’t even 5am yet!   I get all my stuff in the truck and drive over to transition.

In the athlete guide, we were told we’d be able to park right next to transition, but that wasn’t the case when I arrived.  They weren’t letting anyone in the transition parking lot and made us park in the parking garage instead.   Since I had so much stuff, I just walked my bike from the garage to transition.  As soon as I got to transition, I realized I had forgotten my wetsuit back at the hotel!!!  AAAHHHHH!!!    By this time the traffic into the race site was backed up, so I decided it would be much quicker to just ride my bike back to the hotel and get my wetsuit.  But, of course, I had left my hotel key in the truck, so I had to ride back to the parking garage, then back to the hotel, got my wetsuit, then back to transition.  Oy!  By the time I got back, Heather was already up and helped calm me down and made me realize that I still had plenty of time as it wasn’t even 6am yet.  Whew!   This is where always being early really paid off.   I had plenty of time to calm down.

Got my stuff set up in transition, and thankfully, Elle let me use her chip strap.  Whew, one less thing to worry about.

Made my way over to the swim start and put on my wetsuit.  Did a little moonwalking per special request. :)

Swim
Headed out to the swim in.  We had to jump from the pier into the water, which was maybe 5 feet above the water.  Everyone was just jumping into the water, but I was a little worried about what would happen to my goggles since I hadn’t practiced jumping from the pier.

Being a scaredy cat, I sat down on the pier and just plopped in.  It wasn’t terrible and my goggles didn’t move.  Whew!  We had to tread water for a full minute.  Normally, that would be a long time, but being in a wetsuit and in salt water, I was pretty bouyant and it wasn’t hard at all.   Before I knew it, we were off!   As in every race, I stay towards the back and on the inside of the pack.  I like swimming as close to the buoys as possible because I don’t want to swim any more distance than I absolutely have to!   Even though I had some wetsuit swims under my belt, this was still very uncomfortable.  I haven’t figured out how to breathe in a wetsuit and I had a hard time breathing normally.  The wetsuit is so tight on my chest and around my neck, it feels like I was choking.  It was hard to make a lot of forward motion without stopping.   Half way through the swim, I realized the water probably wasn’t that cold and I could have done without the wetsuit.  But, I didn’t panic, and just did the best I could.   I was so happy when it was time to get out of the water, I really didn’t care about what happened the rest of the race.  Compared to the swim, I knew the rest would be cake.
Swim time was 16:11, which was a lot slower than I had hoped, but I wasn’t the slowest in my age group, amazingly enough.  22 out of 42 in my age group for the swim.

T1
Since I decided to use Sandra’s wetsuit for this race, taking off the top part was a piece of cake.  And this was my first experience with wetsuit strippers and that was fun!

I know I should work more on my transition times, but they help me catch my breathe, so I take my time and sit down to put on my socks.

T1 time was 5:33. Yup, slow.

Bike
It was a pretty windy day.  Thankfully all the bike rides I have been doing this year have also been in the wind, so I knew exactly what to expect.  Good thing, too, because if I didn’t know what to expect, I probably would have cried.  I was also excited that I only had to go 12 miles!  I could do anything for 12 miles on the bike!

As we started on the bike course, there was a no passing zone.  NO PASSING ZONE?!?!  WTF?!?!   I’d never heard of such a thing before, and it was a little annoying because I was ready to ride and the woman in front of me wasn’t going very fast.  Ugh.  I still don’t know the reason, but I can only speculate it was because of the condition of that stretch of the road.  It was pretty bumpy and uneven, but still.   In case you didn’t already know this, but Galveston is FLAT.   Within the first mile of the bike, we had to go up a “hill”.  Lots of people slowed down, but this was really just a bump.  I didn’t even have to gear down, and just got out of my saddle for about 5 seconds and I was done with the “hill”.

Yes, that says BIG NASTY.  I cracked up, because that’s really how “big” the hill is as I am standing at the bottom of the hill taking the picture.  Maybe a 15-20 foot climb for about 50 yds.  Could be less.    After you get up BIG NASTY, you’re on the seawall, and it’s an out and back for about 5.6 miles each way.  There was a strong crosswind the entire time, with and angled head-wind going out and an angled tail-wind coming back.  I felt good on the bike and passed a few people going out and a lot more coming back.   But, even though the course is flat, it’s still on the difficult side because flat means NON-STOP-PEDALLING.  With no hills, there is no downhill for recovery.  You just pedal, pedal, pedal until the end.  Oh well, there was a tad bit of recovery down BIG NASTY.  :)
Bike time was 49:05 for 12.5 miles, 15.3 mph average pace and 21 out of 42 in my age group. (During the race I felt good about the bike, but never looked at my watch, and was a little disappointed about my time after I found out.  I really thought I had done better than that.  At least I didn’t know that during the race.)

T2
Again, a little slow, but I need to catch my breathe and take some shot bloks before the run. T2 time was 3:23.

Run
This has always been by far my weakest leg.  I never was a runner, and never liked running.  But, I’ve been working hard on my running all fall and winter.   I was excited to see my hard work pay off.  I started running at the beginning, and for the first mile or so, it was rough.  However, since I had actually been doing my brick workouts, I knew this feeling was to be expected.  I walked through all the water stops and got water at every stop.  I did have to stop once to tie my shoe (I know, I know, I really need to ditch the laces!), but other than that, I ran the whole time.  At mile 2, my legs started feeling a little better, and I decided to pick it up a little.  Coming up towards the finish, I was happy to see my teammates and Coach Jen cheering me in.  I love this part!   Coach Jen even ran along side me for a little bit, and I picked it up a little more to the finish.

Even though I was wearing my Garmin, I had it set to multisport mode, and I had no clue what my running pace was.  I thought for sure it was on the really slow side because it felt like I had been out there on the run course for-ever!  I would soon find out that my unofficial run time was 39:59! That is pretty fast for me, especially after a swim and bike.   Officially, the time ended up being exactly 40:00 for a 12:40 pace and 35 out of 42 in my age group. I was super excited about this, you have no idea.  I’m pretty sure this is my fastest 5K time, ever!  Sure, it’s slow to most of you, but I seriously expected to do the run no faster than a 14:30 pace.

Post Race
I was surprised we got a medal, and the post race food was great with pizza, beer, bananas, cookies, pretzels and other stuff I didn’t eat.   I’m pretty happy with the race overall.  Even with all the crazy mishaps that happened before the race, it turned out to be a great day and a great start to the the beginning of what I hope to be a great tri season.  I’ll be working more on my wetsuit swims and definitely more on my running.   I have a lot of room for improvement and hope to have enough willpower and determination to get it done.

[caption id="attachment_213" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Del, Kim, me, Bob after the race."][/caption]

Total Time: 1:54:09
Age Group W35-39: 30 out of 42

Thanks to all of my Trizones teammates and the Trizones coaches for all the encouragement along the way.  Sometimes they have more confidence in my abilites than I do, and without them, I wouldn’t be where I am now.  And last, but not least, thanks to my husband, Corey, for always being supportive with my crazy, new lifestyle!

Stay tuned….