I felt a little out of sorts while starting the swim, I knew I wasn’t pulling correctly or finishing my stroke, for some reason I am always in survival mode at the beginning of the swim, just trying to sight and what feels like, ‘just failing around’. However by the time I got close to the first turn buoy I was in a rhythm and felt good. I figured once I made the turn I would be settling in and could just ‘push, push, push’. However, once I turned the sun was right in my face and I couldn’t see a thing. I had tinted googles but they didn’t help at all…I couldn’t see the next turn buoy at all. I mean, I could see the shore/beach and knew I needed to swim somewhat parallel, but that was it. Ugh. So I swam and followed other people and was not super trusting of their path, but it was better than nothing. I knew at this point my pace was slowing since it’s hard to push yourself to swim fast when you don’t even know if you are going in the right direction.

So, I just kept chugging along, and I swear, it wasn’t until I was 5 yards away that I could actually confirm where the turn buoy was, it was that hard to see. Once I found it I thought ‘hooray!!!’, I made the turn and tried to ‘push, push, push’. As I was busy pushing (or my swim coach would say ‘gliding! focus on gliding!’), my watch beeped signaling I was at 2k. Oh boy. The beach/finish was waaaaay further away than 100yards, so I figured I had either done a crap job of following people or the course was long, either way, it was going to be a slow swim time. When I finally got to the exit I looked at my watch and saw 42 minutes and thought ‘ouch’. Des Moines was 36 minutes… that’s… a big difference. I hustled out of the water, got help from the wetsuit strippers to get out of my wetsuit, ran into transition and was out fairly quickly on my bike and ready to ride.

I am not going to lie, I was riding a little fired up from the slow swim, but after about 10 miles I made peace with it (such a waste of energy, but I was so irritated) and focused on my planned bike goals. The weather and temps were great and the road conditions were fabulous. In fact the roads all had a wide, clean shoulder so we were able to ride there and stay out of traffic, it was great! I focused on my nutrition and power plan, I grinded a little on a few hills I probably should have spun up but other than that, all according to plan! I rolled into transition feeling good and ready to run!

After a semi-quick transition (there was a rock in my running shoe and I had to take it back off to dump it out), I made the second game day decision and hit the porta potty before starting the run as I really had to pee and figured it would be better to just go now. Except I hadn’t prepared and as I dashed into the porta potty I struggled big time getting out of my tri kit sleeves, wasting precious time! I eventually did get it sorted out and hopped back out, but might try a different strategy at Kona to save time, lol.

So finally I was off to start the run! It usually takes me the first couple of miles to settle into a pace, so I tried to not pay attention to how terrible the first few miles felt and just keep moving forward, but by mile 3 I was like ‘this is awful, why does this feel so awful?!!?’. My body felt heavy and slow and awful, nothing specifically, just overall ugh. At the next aid station I decided to try pickle juice since I wasn’t sure what my issue was, but maybe I needed some salt after my stomach issues earlier that morning, so I drank half of a dixie cup of pickle juice. In hindsight, that was A LOT of pickle juice, but at the moment I was desperate. Well, that did not fix the issue and instead created a fire in my stomach…uhoh. This was going downhill fast. I decided to rummage through my emergency ‘kit’ in my handheld water bottle and took out 2 peppermint tums in case those might help settle my stomach. I have taken them in the past with not much success but again, I was desperate. Within a few minutes of eating them the burning in my stomach magically faded away! And I was starting to feel better! Maybe I did need sodium but the pickle juice was too harsh? Next time I’ll stick with my Base salt (not sure why I didn’t do that first) and avoid the pickle juice.

Once I took the magical tums, I was able to pick up the pace a little, but sadly it was far from my low 8’s goal pace as I was stuck in the 9’s, but at least I was feeling good. Once I hit the turnaround at mile 6ish I felt a wave of extra energy as I knew I only had one more loop and was going to be done soon. I could handle 6ish more miles, and I was going to finish and not feel crappy! On I ran, feeling like I was flying compared to how crappy I felt before, when in reality my pace was still only in the mid 9’s. I also wonder (was thinking about this post race) if I was subconsciously holding back because of my right hamstring issues I’ve been having and the fear of pissing it off if I ran too hard, as I spent a month after Des Moines nursing it back to being semi-healthy/less pain since that race pace really seemed to irritate it.

Finally I had a mile left and felt so much relief to be so close to the finish. This race wasn’t any sort of break through race or PR, but I felt that I had learned a few things and was going to finish the race. Honestly those are pretty important in the grand scheme of things! As I crossed the finish I saw I was just a couple of minutes over 5:40, not terrible given my swim and struggle during the run! In fact it was good enough for 2nd place in my age group and 6th female! I also managed to have a kind female athlete take post race photos of me on the podium (they only did live awards for overall so it’s just solo me on the step, lol), so I actually have a post-race photo for once (I forget them a lot of the time)!

I will say…. the 8+ hour drive home might have been more challenging than the race! I would not recommend 🙂

Up next is my last big block of training before the big race… I am actually looking forward to it because I have some serious nervous energy about the race so it will keep me busy and burn off those nerves!

Happy Friday!

MiTi 70.3 – Pre-Race