Lake Stevens Triathlon

Despite finishing 2nd overall, I did not have that great of a day. This triathlon day was the perfect example of one of those times that you may face when nothing is going your way. All you can do in a situation like this is keep a good attitude, give it your best and let go of expectations. Simply put your head down, give it your all, and see how things turn out…

The drive to the race took longer than expected. I get to races early, as you know from my previous posts, if I am running late then I feel rushed. If I feel rushed then I am cheated of the enjoyment of being at the race just taking my time. From there pre race seemed to go down the same path. In being late my usual transition spot was taken, dang it, I had to suffice with a new setup.

I continued to set up in T1. I realized I forgot something in the car; I went back got it and made the walk back to transition. I forgot another item and retraced again. Then I saw a lady pumping up her tires with a hand pump…hello did you not realize you needed a working bike when you signed up a month ago? I felt bad and let her use my nice pump. Yep, you guessed it she broke my pump. She over twisted the valve head, busted.

Goodness “just get me to the swim start.” I shivered until the swim start, thankfully making it there with everything. As I was treading water I transitioned to a belly float at the count of 1, bang we were off. In the first hundred meters a flailing arm dunked me under. That same flailing arm knocked my goggles sideways.

It was it this point that I was really just a hot mess trying to right my goggles and my path. All I could do was make the best of it and continue. I set my speed as “full” and my plan of attack to “aggressive.” At the turnaround I made my way back into the lead group of swimmers. It became very congested around the buoy and I had no patience for them. I swam through the pack, knocking people out of the way and going over someone’s back in the process. Even steven for goggles getting knocked off.

On the way back my aggression eased with my bedlam at the buoy. I made my way up to the lead swimmer, drafted for a few strokes and moved to the lead. People can dunk me, hit me in the head, and knock my goggles off, but guess what, I am leading the swim into T1.

T1 came and went and I was on the bike course. Immediately I noticed a brake rub. What the heck!?! I spent 5 minutes right before the race making sure this wouldn’t happen. I am guessing it was a latecomer that bumped my brake while trying to stuff their bike into the full rack. I remedied and continued. I rode hard to the turnaround and took time checks to second and third. I didn’t have much of a swim gap to start the ride so everyone was pretty close.

The course was very hard with hills and twisty turns, but I managed to hold the lead coming into T2. I was very surprised and energized the volume of the cheering crowd. It was pretty cool to have them cheering for me. 2nd place came into T2 right after me so the race was close.

The run turned into a dogfight between 2nd place and me. He was able to catch me on huge hill just before the run turnaround. I was doing my best to fight to stay with him and was able to limit my gaps to only the time lost on the big hill. I spotted third place about a minute and a half back. It was satisfying to see it was a fellow racer who had beat me two weeks before. I knew my gap was larger than his was when he beat me (his margin of victory was 10 seconds). That is a great feeling to even the score.

Everything leading up the next paragraph feels great because I did my best when things did not go super smoothly. I hung onto second and won my age division. I don’t want to sound negative because I love triathlon, and to say a day of racing (and 2nd place) is a bad day is pure old-fashioned communism.

However, my heart hurts because I was beaten by 19 seconds… Looking back I know I should have had another 20 seconds of heart and fire inside of me to go for the win. The only bad thing about the day is that I have to live with the fact that I didn’t chase him down.

I am sure I was tired at the moment in the race, and I did run hard (~20:10 five kilometer equivalent) but as a “finisher” with an excellent sprint, I let myself down. And now I have to live with that over the winter. Maybe that is exactly what I need for motivation for a good hard winter of training. I just know post race something in my heart was telling me I missed an opportunity.

Aside from that I am happy with the race, just being able to race is a treasured feat. The bad stuff before and during the race just make the story better. I would do it all over again tomorrow if I had the chance.