Monday, September 10, 2007

L.A.

This past weekend was the L.A. triathlon. Very cool race and I will be back next year. I ended up 9th overall which is not the result I was looking for but hey...I did what I could on that day and that's that.

The swim was pretty rough. I'm not really a fan of beach starts and diving through the waves since it actually kind of scares me. I made it out into the ocean o.k. and I found myself swimming with the lead group. I told myself to do whatever it took to hang on to that front group. I managed to stay with them until the exit when a wave caught me off guard and I got pulled under. Not fun. I stood up and hopped, skipped,jumped and crawled my way to the beach. At this point I lost about 15 seconds to the front group. Oh well...I do now know that I can swim with those girls so there's no excuses!

The bike course had us riding down Venice Beach Blvd, Hollywood Blvd, and Sunset Blvd. It was a gradual uphill course ending with a few rollers. I never felt 'on' or that I was in the right gear the whole bike leg. It either felt too hard or too easy and I just didn't have any power. I feel like my biking is going well right now but I just didn't have it that day. The last couple miles of the bike were interesting as I noticed my handle (aero) bars getting lower after each bump in the road that I hit (and I have to say there were a lot of bumps in the road). By the time I got to T2 my handle bars were almost pointing straight down to the ground (note: make sure bars are tightened before race!).

I knew the run was going to be questionable going into this race. I was off the bike in 7th place and knew there were some pretty fast runners behind me. My heel really hurt for about the first two miles of the run or so but after that it was all warmed up and felt pretty good the rest of the run. The run course was fun but there was a steep hill that we had to run up twice (I didn't walk though!). I ended up getting passed by two strong women on the run and placed 9th overall. Ofcourse, only top 8 received money. Bummer.

To my surprise my heel feels really good today. I'm looking forward to start increasing my mileage in running and see if I can give Dallas and 70.3 Worlds a good race.
acm

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