Mississippi College Open Track Meet Race Report

How do you become a fast triathlete? You break down each sport and train to become a fast swimmer, a fast biker, and a fast runner. Sure, you CAN be stronger in one discipline and you CAN do well overall, but in order to be a truly fast triathlete, you have to train specifically in each discipline. This means put on your big girl panties (or big boy panties...) and swim with the swimmers, bike with the bikers, and run with the runners.

Sometimes that's easier said than done. At this point, I've been doing tri's long enough that I no longer have some of those anxieties that I had as a rookie. But it's funny how we can suddenly feel like a new-b again when we get thrown into a situation that's out of our element. For example: dreading that first ever swim meet, wearing a sleeveless jersey to a bike race (BIG no-no), wearing a BLANK jersey to a bike race (if looks could kill...), doing ANYTHING at a bike race and not being surrounded by an enterage...

Kyle found an open track meet held by Mississippi College- open meaning anyone can enter, not just collegiates. This was going to be a great opportunity for me to get an updated accurate 5K time. Not to mention, I would be running with collegiates, so this would be the competition I needed to push to a new level. I have to admit I was less than excited.

1. I would be racing against girls who run in college. Do I really want to go to a race and get my butt handed to me? I'm not saying I have to be the fastest, but I also don't want to be the old lady starting my last lap when everyone else is already finished.
2. I've never competed in a track meet. EVER. I've done speedwork, and that's miserable enough. But seriously, 12.5 laps? NO THANK YOU!
3. I just don't like 5Ks! They hurt. And I'm a wimp.
4. My hip hurts like I'm an old lady. I've been dealing with some IT band pain ever since the Girl Power Tri. Kyle made me go out and do speedwork the Wednesday before the race, and I had to stop short because of the pain. I honestly wasn't sure how the race would affect me.

I took it easy the days leading up to Friday evening (Thursday and Friday), then we closed down early and drove to Jackson for the meet. I checked in, picked up my race number, then asked the race organizer to take my $20 check. He said "Oh, don't worry about it..." I got to race for free! Awesome!

The nice thing about a 5K on a track is that Kyle was able to read off my time for each lap, so I knew exactly what times I needed to hit to stay on pace. We realistically predicted that I would be between 20 & 21, so my goal was to hit 1:38 per 400m.

There were four of us in the race- I was the only unattached runner, the other ladies were from Montevallo. After the start gun, we took off and I found a nice position in third. One girl took off and ended up completing the race under 19 minutes. The second girl and I were about the same pace, so I tucked in right behind her for the duration of the race. Her coach at the 300m mark was yelling out commands and I found myself listening to what he had to say as if he were talking to me also.  Kyle was at the 400 and yeld out all of my splits, which I really found helpful. I felt pretty good through the first mile- it wasn't until I hit the halfway point that things really started to hurt- Burning legs, tight chest... it's all part of the game,  I guess. I was really happy when it was over, and super pumped to have pulled out a PR of 20:37, amost a minute faster than my PR set in February!


A huge thanks to one of my sponsors, Swiftwick Socks!
 Here I am sporting them at the meet. LOVE THEM!



USAT hosts the first Draft Legal Collegiate Event!

THREE CHEERS FOR USATriathlon! They are officially moving in the right direction!

Today USAT made history by hosting the first draft-legal collegiate event in conjunction with Collegiate Nationals. This is a HUGE step for triathlon in the U.S., and I give major props to some of the leaders at USAT for their push in making this happen.

Most age-groupers have no interest in draft-legal events, and that's ok. HOWEVER, the U.S. is behind in international competition, and it's all the direct result of our failure to develop young, talented athletes. How do we develop young, talented athletes and prepare them for international competition? We give them opportunities to compete in the same race format that they will be racing in for international events (DUH!). How many events are draft-legal? A VERY small percentage. Basically, unless athletes get into the sport at a young age and compete as a junior, their window of opportunity is extremely small. There are only a handful of races that are actually draft legal.

RESISTANCE TO DRAFT LEGAL:
There is a lot of talk about draft legal tri's, and a lot of it is negative. I was extremely disappointed to read some of the comments posted on USAT's facebook page about the draft legal event. Things like "not a triathlon, more like a helpathon"
"draft legal?? That's not a real triathlon!"
"Drafting takes away from the strong rider. I have seen the Olympic tris and they suck. Tri is a individual effort sport. No one should benefit from someone else's effort. I will never support this format in any sense." ^^ I simply copied and pasted from facebook, so that's THEIR grammatical error, not mine. Shows you what kind of audience we're dealing with...
"Draft legal is for the weak"
And it goes on and on...

Here's is my heartfelt opinion. In 2009 I attended USAT age-group nationals, just after I started doing tri's. I had the opportunity to watch the Pro's race- ITU format. I was amazed at the talent, and I could not deny their abilities. The bike has ALWAYS been my strength, however, this experience was humbling to me, as it made me realize that in order to be truly competitive, you CAN NOT rely on one strength. Rather, you must be well trained in all three disciplines. That means GET TO WORK! On a side note, it seems that a lot of the complainers out there are strong cyclists who feel insecure about their other disciplines, particularly swimming.  

So to all the naysayers out there, I have to ask: Have you aver actually watched a draft legal competition? I probably don't even have to ask if you've ever participated in one... If your definition of a 'real tri' is going balls to the walls and hoping your strong discipline will make up for your weaknesses then sure, you can call yourselves athletes. I would argue that draft legal selects for the real athletes who work hard to be well rounded. Drafting is only a fraction of the competition. To stay in the race, you must have a strong swim, be able to hang with the pack (or catch up if you are a weak swimmer), and have a competitive run. Please don't underestimate the quality or strategic discipline of this race format until you have actually experienced it.


COMING SOON!
Fortunately, the ITU format seems to be growing with the growth of triathlon in general. There are a few ITU races that have popped up in the south recently, and I'm super excited to announce that the West Point Lakes Triathlon has opened up a brand new F1 draft legal challenge for juniors and collegiates!

This  race is dear to my heart as it was my first Olympic distance tri. When I found this out, I immediately saw this as an opportunity to get another draft legal race under my belt without having to drive FOREVER. I previously had the Liberty Cup in Richmond on my race calendar just for the experience, but with Lagrange being right outside of Auburn, West Point Lakes is definitely more convenient.

I contacted the RD a few weeks ago an pretty much BEGGED him to let me compete with the collegiates. I think he might have been hesitant, and I understand why. I'm no longer a collegiate, and I'm 26. Is it really fair to let someone in my situation race with a bunch of college kids? Am I just trying to clean house? Will I be taking away from their experience if I do well?... To ensure that I'm wanting to do this JUST for the experience, I offered to forfeit my placement in the competition. The bottom line is I NEED this experience. Draft legal racing is a completely different game than time trial racing, and I feel I  would be better prepared strategically with one good race under my belt. The race committee agreed to let me in, so THAT'S IT! My next race is the West Point Lakes Collegiate Draft Legal Challenge on APRIL 27th. I'M EXCITED! Oh, and just a heads up, I have every intention of sporting my Auburn kit! WAR EAGLE!


On a side note, although I'm super excited that draft legal is growing, I also LOVE the individual race effort. If this offers any comfort to the folks against draft legal, the time trial format will always be around because it caters to the masses. So you don't have to like it, or even try it, but please, be courteous to the athletes competing and respect it- we are all tri loving geeks!

Girl Power Tri Race Report

Super cute awards: Martini glasses
 filled with chocolate!

After the tragedy in Clermont, I knew I needed to set a new goal, AND SOON. It's easy to doubt your abilities and feel incompetence when you experience failure, so the best way to get out of your own head is to just 'jump back on that horse'. My next race: the Girl Power Sprint Tri in New Orleans.

This was a super sprint tri: 300 meter pool swim at the University of New Orleans, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run. It would be FAST- all out for 45-50 minutes. Since I've been focusing on the shorter distance,
 I felt like I could have a good race and earn a little redemption. The entry fee was only $50, and the top 5 finishers won prize money (I have to confess, I expected to at least pay off the entry fee at this one). I verified with the RD that the time trial start WOULD be based on swim times, not order of registration (which seems to be a fad in the MS/LA region...), registered, and convinced fellow Timex Factory Team member and training buddy Ginger Spansel to join me in the season opener! It was going to be a fun Girl's trip!

We left Hattiesburg EARLY the morning of the race. Actually, 4 a.m. is feeling less and less grueling. You would think between collegiate rowing and all these early morning training sessions I would be used to it. I'm getting there slowly but surely. We arrived at the race site by 6a.m. among the few other early birds. We picked up our packets and guess what our numbers were?! 17 (Ginger) and 18 (me)! We were both relieved to have low numbers.

I have a defined routine that I like to go through before every race, starting with being on site when transition opens, then packet pick-up, bike prep, transition set up, inspection of transition area, inspection of pool, run warm-up & dynamic stretches, re-examination of transition space post late arrivals, potty breaks, etc, ending with a warm up swim.  What a relief that Ginger is the same way! We were practically attached at the hip going through our pre-race routines. It was definitely de-stressing to have someone there to just talk to about everything, especially an experienced vet!

In the online race instructions, we were informed there would be no warm-ups allowed at the UNO pool. We checked on the outdoor pool to see if we could sneak a warm-up in that, but it was locked. After our run warm-up, we went over to the indoor pool and discovered people in the pool WARMING UP! We definitely needed that, but we were running short on time. We jumped in and did a 300 warm up with a couple of 50 builds before being called out.

As we got out and tried to locate our starting order, the RD announced that this would be a "seed yourself start, so talk to the ladies around you and figure out what order you need to be in". This turned into a fiasco. Can someone explain what the point is of asking for predicted times if you aren't going to use them? At least if a handful of people lie on their registration forms it KIND OF keeps things under control on race day- I mean, they get swam over, but that's their problem. You ask people on race day, and all of a sudden their brains turn to mush and they think they're Janet Evans. I predicted it would REALISTICALLY take me about 4:30 to complete the swim, which is not slow, and there were a FEW dozen girls claiming to go under 4. We jumped in line in that "under 4" group and asked the girls behind us what they planned to swim the 300 in, their response: "I think I can do it in under 4.... What pace is that?" Ummmm, NO. If you don't know what pace you need to be swimming to go under 4, you're not going under 4. Period. The end.

SWIM: 4:46  1:27/yd
I have to admit that I was a little anxious for the swim. The ladies in front of us actually looked like swimmers, but the 20 people behind us all going under 4 made me nervous. We held our ground and ended up starting at about where we would have been to begin with. The swim started on the left side of the pool and we snaked to the other end. The first and last lengths were double wide to allow for passing and congestion. I was surprised to not run into ANY of that. The swim was super smooth- I didn't catch the lady ahead of me, and no one caught up to us. I was happy we spend a new extra minutes after masters practicing our flip turns under the ropes, because that would have slowed me down a bit more than it actually did.

T1: 1:19
The run from swim to transition was long, but that was nice because it helped me get my bearings. I passed a TON of ladies in transition because I think I was #4 heading out on the bike.

BIKE: 27:03  22.2mph
I guess in a normal triathlon there're always a few people ahead of me to follow- MEN. This was weird... I'm not used to being in the lead and not having anyone in sight to follow. There was a point early in the ride that I was on a ramp that circle around and opened up to a fork. There were 2 cars up ahead chatting, BUT NO ONE TO DIRECT ME WHERE TO GO AND NO CONES OR ARROWS!!! I hit my brakes almost came to a complete stop and screamed "Where do I go?!" I saw a rider moving off in the distance and committed to the left. There were a lot of places on the course like this- lots of traffic circles and windy roads with splits and not really clear direction of where to go. Next year it would be nice if there were volunteers on the course, or perhaps some of the drivers of those cars blocking off traffic could get out and direct racers...? Seems like a good/ obvious idea...

I had a pretty good bike, considering the conditions. Going into the race I had a goal of averaging close to 23mph. Before the start, however, we were informed the wind had JUST picked up and we would be dealing with an 18mph headwind from the north with gusts of 25mph. Heading out (north) I was pushing pretty hard and hovering between 18-20, but coming back (WITH the wind) my speed settled around 25. I saw Ginger right after the turn around- she was still right behind me. Not too bad after a long winter break... the lady's tough. I passed one person on the bike, putting me in 3rd at the start of the run.

T2: 0:38

RUN: 14:11  7:06min/mile
The run was painful. It always is. Before the race, Kyle told me to not go crazy from the get-go, but3rd overall finisher on the spot!
to take about a quarter mile to loosen my legs up and get into a rhythm. That took a conscious effort, but I'm glad I did. I think the whole time I was beating myself up about how weak my running is and how much more of a focus it needs to be in the coming months. After the halfway point, I started to pick it up a bit, and finally found my legs with the last 1/2 mile- I think I was just happy to almost be done! I heard my name on the loud speakers coming in the last turn, and it was pretty cool being announced as the

 

FINISH: 47:55
As a whole, I was very pleased with my performance. It's always easy to look back at the results and pick at ways you should have shaved more time, but I think I have a strong, solid foundation going into the season, and I've come a LONG way over the winter. If anything, this was exactly what I needed to stay in gear and move forward. ALSO, I'm stoked to have won $300- my race season is now funded!





Thanks Ginger for the companionship at this
one, and a super big thanks to fellow Timex Factory Team Member Patrick Lewis for stepping in as our personal paparazzi!