My last race of the season! Wait, I thought IMC was my last race of the season. Well it was supposed to be :-) I decided to sign up for this race 2 weeks into my recovery from IMC. What was I thinking?! I had been meeting with some new athletes with whom I will begin working in October and they were all doing the race, so I figured what the heck; I will just do the sprint, go there and support them and watch them and it will be fun. I thought to myself, “no pressure, just go and do the race and don’t worry how you do.” Well as the race got closer I was not liking this idea so much. I started to worry about how I would do, how fast I could run etc etc… I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to do well.
We really lucked out as race day was beautiful…perfect weather! 
I really enjoy this venue it is the same as the Cascades Edg, a race I do every year. My prep for this race after IMC was 5 spinning classes, one 2:30 ride with Jeff, maybe 6 runs and two swims; 1-600 yd swim and the other one was spent breast stroking across the lake. The day before the race we spent all day working on the house. Then, that evening, the boys had their football games… I was sitting in the stands eating a hot dog at 8:00PM the eve before the race ..thinking “this might not be such a good thing to eat right now”, but oh well :-) BTW both boys teams were undefeated woohoo… Alex had 7 sacks in one game and in the last game caused and fumble couldn’t have came at a better time….WAIT this is a tri report.. back to the race.
I arrived at the race and I met up with Jess. Jess was training for the Portland marathon and will be jumping into tris next year. She volunteered to do the swim and run for team relay. While getting set up I saw Sharon and Blake. Sharon announced to everyone around that I am going to win this race…WHAT? NO,NO,NO,! I saw Jo Ann. She was soo thankful it wasn’t raining. Char and Jason (this was their first Tri) were ready to go . They seemed very calm… I was a mess at my first race. Jess and I did a little run warm up then it as time to head to the water.
So standing there waiting to go I was looking at the buoys and I decided that, instead of starting to the far right, I would go straight in the middle… it looked shorter. This is exactly what I did at Canada... now you would think that I would have learned…no I didn’t. The same thing happened… we were all going through this narrow area, I think everyone went out way too fast This time Mike has it all on film…it is so interesting to watch. About 150 yards out all these people stopped …I mean it, they just stopped. Then you had all the other swimmers trying to go over them, it really looks awful. The swim was a pure suffer fest for me. Not because of the contact; just the lack of swim training over the last 4 weeks. I did survive :-)
Transition went well...then off on the bike. I have no idea where I was. SO here I go …I’m not wearing a HR monitor and my power meter battery is dead so this was all RPE. I knew I couldn’t push too hard on the bike or I would really die on the run, given the training I had done in the past month. I actually felt pretty good on the ride.. this surprised me. Toward the end of the bike I was going back and forth with the two girls who would end up finishing ahead of me in the end. I had no idea who they were, which worried me, as the three of us were coming into transition together and I knew I was going to have to run with them.
As I came into T2 I heard someone say to me “2nd female…” yea but the other two were right behind me, and I mean RIGHT behind me. I heard Mike yell “Two minutes!” as I ran through transition so I knew then that it wouldn’t be likely that I would catch Patty, who was in first. I have been watching her times throughout the season and I know we run about the same pace in a sprint. I came out of transition at the same time with the other two girls…Ugh! I knew this was going to hurt. I stayed right behind the girl who was ahead of me for the first lap…then she slowly got away. This was hard…my body did not want to move this fast and to be honest mentally I was just not in it. I was hurting.. I just was having a hard time keeping the legs moving; they just did not want to move fast. After the race Mike asked how it went I told him “I didn’t have ‘IT’” I know what “IT” is and I know when I have “IT” and I definitely didn’t have” IT” today :-) To me having” IT” means I am on physically as well as mentally present and ready to race. This day I didn’t have that mental edge on the run that I needed to run to the best of my ability today.
I gave in to that little voice that said, “you aren’t as good as those girls, look at them! Why keep killing yourself?” ...The little voice won today …I will not give into that little voice next time.
So that was my last race of the season …I had a great time after the race visiting with everyone. The food was fantastic and I am now more determined than ever to get to work on my swimming J
