I felt I was as prepared for this race as I could be. My goal for the swim was under 40 minutes. I've been doing open water swims all summer, almost all of them around 1.2 miles, so I knew I could do a 0.9 mile swim. The bike course was 27 miles, a little long for an olympic, so my goal for the whole race was under three hours. I set my alarm for 4:15 a.m. We had to catch the 5:25 a.m. Grand Isle ferry to Vermont. I had time to force-feed myself a little oatmeal and brew some coffee to bring along. I had packed my gear and bike into the car the night before, so I just had to dress and eat. We were out of the house by 4:50 and at the ferry dock in plenty of time. I didn't sleep much the night before, and my nerves were in high gear. I let my husband drive; in retrospect, it would've been better if I drove. It gives me something to do and focuses my attention away from perseverating on the race, especially the swim. My stomach was bothering me, and I had a minor breakdown of confidence before we got to the race site. I hate those long, early morning drives on race morning. Too much time to think, and no outlet for my nervous energy. Once I get to the race site, I'm much better. I pick up my race packet, get body-marked, set up my transition. I like to take my bike for a quick ride to make sure it's in the gear I want. In this case, it was good that I did, because I had racked my bike by the handlebars, and discovered that the brake levers were stuck on the rack. When I returned with the bike, I racked it by the seat. I saw my friend, Mary Duprey and her family, and we talked for a bit. Mary's daughter, Tori, was doing the sprint race, her first triathlon. And Tori's boyfriend was doing the olympic along with Mary. We discussed whether to wear our neoprene socks. Zebra mussels are a huge problem in Lake Champlain. They are an invasive species, and besides all the problems they cause for indigenous lake life-forms, they are razor sharp and can cut your feet to shreds. I have a scar on my little toe from brushing a zebra mussel a couple of years ago that required a few stitches. We heard the swim start for this race had changed because of a zebra mussel infestation. We elected to wear our socks. I had time to do a warm-up swim. I'm glad I did. The water was a little chillier than I expected, and I swam long enough to get over that breathless feeling. We got refreshingly short race instructions--thank you, Rayne Herzog!--and we were back in the water waiting for the gun.
(I think that's me all alone in the center of the picture.)
Despite what I said after the Lake Placid mini-tri earlier in the week, I decided to position myself at the back and off to the side. I wanted empty water ahead of me, and I needed to have a successful swim. In other words, a panic-free swim. The race started, and off we went. I started out slowly to let myself re-acclimate to the water temperature. It was a triangular swim from the boat launch. There were only four buoys for the entire course; two for the sprint and two for the olympic. We swam past the sprint buoy to the first olympic buoy, made an acute angle turn to swim across Shelburne Bay to the other olympic buoy, then made a right-angle turn towards shore, swimming past the sprint buoy. The swim across the bay was a long stretch that truly needed at least one buoy. It was hard to sight across that stretch, that far buoy was so far away. The bay is shallow and weedy in spots, but I felt secure the entire time. I passed three people before the turn and felt like I was completely alone for the swim across the bay. I had to sight and correct often, and by the second buoy, I was feeling tired. About halfway from the buoy to shore, I heard a voice and stopped to discover that I was a little off-course. A very nice man in a kayak was alerting me to this fact, and I asked him if I was last. He said, "Oh, no, you're doing fine!" (Turns out, only three people finished after me.) It gave me a nice boost and I swam to shore without any other problems. When my hands touched bottom, I stood up to walk in. Problem was, I was still a ways from shore. The water got thigh deep again, which is very tiring to walk through. My feet touched shore at exactly 40 minutes. I hit a button on my watch, which turned out to be the stop button and not the lap button. I ran up the launch, a steep little hill, and to my bike. I had a good spot in transition, less than ten feet from the bike out. There's only one timing mat for this race, so T1 is part of your swim time, and T2 is part of your run. The bike time is the only pure time. As I sat to peel off my wetsuit, I realized that my watch was stopped, so I restarted it and hit the lap button to advance it to T1. I struggled getting my wetsuit off, because I had put the socks on over the wetsuit. Bad idea. The swim was hard for me, and I was feeling a little spent. Finally got the wetsuit off, shoes and helmet on, ate a mini-Larabar, shoved a gel in my pocket, and went. Turns out, my transition was only about a minute. Seemed like an eternity.
The first five mile lap on the bike was my slowest. There is a climb out of transition, and the first few miles are generally uphill. Plus, I had never changed the bike on my Garmin 500 from my road bike to my tri bike, so it wasn't registering my cadence. I fooled with that for a few minutes and finally got it fixed. I had the Garmin 500 on the bike because it's hard to see my watch when I'm aero, and I want to watch my numbers. Need to work on a better system. In any event, after five miles, I felt recovered from the swim, had everything working, and I started to hammer. The bike course is a couple of miles out, then two clock-wise loops with climbs on the 6:00-12:00 side, and some incredible downhills on the other side. There was also a charming little covered bridge, very New England! After the second loop, we turned away from the return to do a five mile out and back before returning to transition. I passed everyone I came to and felt like I was making up for the time I had lost on the swim. It was a nice downhill stretch back into transition, so I eased up a bit on the power, and spun a higher cadence to loosen up my legs. I had hoped to finish the bike in about 1:20:00. I ended up with 19.5 mph average speed, which gave me a 1:23:00 bike split. I don't think I could've gone any harder and still have legs for the run. I did another fairly quick transition, about 1:45. When you head out for the run on this course, you have to run away from the finish line, all the way down through the bike racks, and back up that distance again, but outside the finish line/timing mat.
Again, the course is an uphill run out of transition. Thankfully, there is a turn after a half mile or so, down a cinder road which comes to a T, then a turn on a paved road for an out and back. The course is a mix of roller-type hills and flat sections. Whenever my watch beeped the one mile splits, I was happy to see times in the low to mid 8's and even high 7's. I passed everyone I came to once again, and this time, no one passed me on the run. I just tried to keep a steady pace, and stay focused on my form. It was getting warm. I carried my hand-held bottle, and grabbed water at the aide stations mostly to pour on myself. I felt strong and steady for the entire run, and was cruising the downhill back to the finish line. I saw 2:58:30-something on the clock, and kicked it up a gear to make sure I finished under three hours. I was ecstatic to be done and to have accomplished my two goals for this race--in control on the swim and an under three hour finish. When we got results, Mary had finished second overall, so I knew I had a chance at age group. I was second place, but was awarded the age group win due to Mary's overall finish. I won a medal and a beer glass. The t-shirt for this race was an extra $20, I think, but I ponied up for it because I heard it was a nice shirt. I wasn't disappointed, it's a nice tech shirt with an awesome graphic. They also do a raffle after. The grand prize was a wetsuit, which Tori won. I won a $25 gift card to Fleet Feet. I had a $10 off certificate from another race, and combined the two to get a new pair of Brooks Ghost 6 running shoes. Great day, I need to put this race, the sprint at least, on my yearly race schedule.
Race stats: Swim-40:01, T1-1:07, Bike-1:23:23, T2-1:47, Run-50:54. Total official time: 2:57:12. 19/20 women on the swim, 5/20 on the bike, 7/20 on the run, 8th place overall.
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