Well, that was a whirlwind of a trip!  Flew in Thursday night, prepped & rested Friday, raced Saturday, flew home Sunday.  Luckily we didn’t have time to get used to the beautiful, sunny weather ’cause New England is really showing us everything she’s got!  Anyway!  Here’s the report:

The Swim

We hit the Pacific at 6:43 am, and with the air temperature hovering around 40°, the water felt tropical at 59°!  We had just over 3 minutes to warm-up, and then we were off.

I went out as hard as could, spinning my arms like a pinwheel in a hurricane, and battled for a good set of feet.  By the first turn buoy, I settled in and felt good.  Then the mid-swim thoughts started: Where am I?  I don’t see anyone ahead of us.  Is that because they’re 3 minutes up?  Does this feel good because I’m going too easy?  Or is it because my stroke is stronger than it’s been? As I ran up the ramp out of the water I saw the clock: 29:59.  Whaaaat??!  I swam high 28 last time! It took me until about mile 10 of the bike to realize that that was the total race time, including the 3 minutes the men had started ahead of us.  Phew!  Cool!  That was a good swim!

The Bike

After a silly-slow transition, I hit the road ready to rock the bike.  My goal power felt very easy for the first 15-ish miles.  Then the wind started to pick up.  We hit one point that was slightly uphill and very exposed – holy headwinds!!  There was a little caterpillar that was trying to cross the road – not only did he have bikes with which to play Frogger, but the wind was so fierce that it caused him to log-roll perpendicular to his intended direction.  Poor little fella!  (It literally made me laugh out loud! )

The last section of the bike course was FAST.  I really tried to push it and stay super-aero through there.  At the same time I was wondering how my legs were going to feel once I got off the bike, having gone after a significantly higher power number than in past races.  We will see…

The Run

My legs felt great!  My goal was to go out at 6:10 and hold that as long as I could.  I had to keep pulling back, and still went through the first mile at 6:05.  I was actually getting concerned that there might be something wrong with my Garmin, so I really tuned into how I felt and how it should feel.  Sure enough, it got tougher!  Heading back after the first turn-around I realized that there had been a relativley significant tail wind on the way out.  Said tail wind did not make the turn when I did, and made for a lovely little head wind on the way back.   During the first leg of the run I counted 17 girls in front of me.  By the end of the first loop, I’d gotten it down to 13.  The second loop was tougher than the first (simply because I’d already run 6.55 miles!), but I was able to hold my pace – finished with a 6:10 average and only 9 girls in front of me.

1:37 off the swim, 7:50 off the bike, 1:49 off the run.  Not too shabby.

The Treats

Following the race we treated ourselves to some mexican deliciousness:

I had myself some fabulous nachos, a chicken sandwich with avocado, and some french fries with plenty of ketchup.  And then there was dessert…

That there is a “love it” sized Cold Stone sundae in a waffle bowl (they didn’t have any of the chocolate-dipped bowls ) made up of the following: chocolate cake batter ice cream with a brownie, white chocolate chips, and walnuts (gotta get some Omega-3’s in there!) mixed in, and peanut butter, fudge (room temperature – they didn’t have “hot”), and whipped cream on top with half a Twix stuck in for good measure.  Oh, yeah!!  I really outdid myself this time .  It took well over 2 hours to finish…  Seriously.  The longer you make them last, the less time there is between sundaes!

The Plans

Up next: IM Utah!  We’ve got a couple weeks of heavy training left, a little taper action, and then race day four weeks from Saturday.  Hold onto your butts!  This is going to be a quick 4 weeks!