So, it has been awhile since this site has received some updates in the form of a blog post, so here goes!

As can be seen in the top right corner of this site, my big race is coming up quickly! As part of my training plan, I decided to enter a smaller race as a “warm-up” for the year and had a lot of fun doing so!

It was the 4th Annual Pi Delta-thlon (a unique race experience) and experience it was! I managed to convince Susan to come with me for packet pick-up the day before the race, she wasn’t too impressed with the campus of MTSU. I wasn’t too impressed with the one ways and lack of signage for the pick-up. We finally managed to find the rec center and were trying to find a parking spot. I was behind a card and figured if I followed him I wouldn’t have a chance. Unknown to me, the way I turned was a one-way, but slipped into a spot just before the car that was in front of me rounded the car (hehe, sneaky, but it worked!)

On the way back home, Susan mentioned how long a drive it was to get to Murfreesboro, which I responded with, yeah I plan on leaving around 5 AM to get set up for the race. She rolled her eyes and I figured I was flying solo for this race. I tried getting to bed early, but was pretty excited for my first triathlon of the year, I couldn’t sleep and 5 o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.

As much as I wanted to use my new bike, I opted for my roadie. I had cleaned, de-greased, re-greased, lubed and put new handle bar tape the day before the race and that definitely made for a smooth ride.

I swear there is no time when I-24 is free of traffic, even early morning on a Sunday! Although I do wish my commutes to work had similar volumes of traffic… I got to the rec center and started unloading. I aired up my bike tires and took it for a quick spin around the parking lot, making sure I didn’t mess anything up the day before… I headed off to transition to get set up (not realizing I forgot to leave my bike shoes unbuckled… again!!) >:(

After I got my number written on my arms, I headed back to the car for a powerbar and some water. I always like looking at the attractive…er…fast looking bikes and seeing how everyone has theirs set-up. It was getting close to 7:30 and I figured I would check on my spot and make sure no one messed with my stuff.

When I racked my bike in, I was the first and only one there, now the rack was completely full and people were trying to cram bikes in all around me… My stuff seemed to be out of the way and I figured I’d take a look on how traffic flow was going to work during transitions. The mount and dismount lines for the bike were quite a ways away, I should really learn to leave my shoes on the bike and slip them on/off while riding, but I think I’d need tri shoes to do that safely! 😉 I did managed to run with my bike and not fall…

After getting the flow down, I figured I should probably do a few laps in the pool to warm-up. I was probably the only one to shower before hand, but at least I followed the rules. 🙂 The water was cooler than what I typically train in and it actually felt kind of nice. Shortly after my warm-up someone came over the megaphone and said something and the lifeguards were getting everyone out of the pool.

Counting is a tough part of the race. During sign up we all entered our estimated swim time, which seeded us accordingly. The lowest numbers have the fastest predicted times and the highest numbers the slowest. I’m pretty sure no one after the first few people were in correct order. I was 226, found 224 and stuck by him near the back of the line.

After we had been waiting for a very long time and the line not moving much, a lady came up and said they were already in the high 200’s. Well we decided to head to the front, which was good because I was ready to go! I knew I was going to overestimate how long it would take me to do the 300 meters, but I wasn’t sure how fast I was going to be compared to everyone else. Well, #224 started right in front of me and I had passed him before we got to the second length. I passed quite a lot of people during the swim, at one point I even managed to swim under someone!

The swim seemed to go by really fast and before I knew it, I was climbing up the ladder and jogging off to T1. When I got to T1 I had troubles getting my socks on (need to bring the white ones instead of the black ones…) and found out my bike shoes were still buckled. With all the trouble I had, I still had a pretty decent T1 time! I was on my bike and cruising.

I had not looked at the elevation profile for the course, but compared to what I train on, it was super flat. There were a couple of hills, but nothing compared to the monster hills around our house. I managed to pass a few people on the bike and the only guy that passed me, I was able to catch and pass him back. Near the end of the course, there was an intersection where police were guiding traffic.

I thought I saw someone turn left at the light, but seeing as how there was another cyclist in front of me, I decided to follow her. As we approached the intersection, she yells “Which way do I go?”. There was no response from the police, and I’m thinking, crap what do I do now? As we get to the other side we both turn towards the police and she asks again which way to go. The response was, “back to the rec center.” Oh wow… that’s helpful. Then another officer said he didn’t know. The cyclist spotted a couple sorority sisters in pink helmets and asked which way to go, and they got us on track, totally costing me like 2 minutes on the bike… 😉 As we were getting closer to the transition area, I really wanted to pass this cyclist. She seemed to be just out of reach until I really stepped it up on the straight-away back to transition. I managed to pass her, but she beat me out of T2. -.-

That little maneuver on the bike really got my heart racing and I wasn’t sure what that meant for the run. I managed to finish the run without taking a walk break and passed a couple people in the process! Although it wasn’t quite the advertised distance of 3.14 miles (due to construction) I still managed a good pace and as I crossed the finish line, I was thinking, dang I could have went faster!

Although that one intersection posed a problem and apparently the criss-cross of the transition paths caused some people problems, it was still a great race! I had a lot of fun and managed to finish faster than my goal time of 1 hour 15 minutes! 😀

Looking at my training log a couple weeks ago, I noticed my bike training has been suffering a little. I re-arranged my schedule to include 3 bike sessions instead of 2 and cut my 3 times running down to 2. So far this has helped me get a lot of time in the saddle (T.I.T.S) and get adjusted to my new bike. Training has really ramped up and I’m super pumped for the race coming up in May.

Two weekends ago I had taken my bike up the the Ashland City rail trail and stopped by Cheatham Lake on the way back. It’s a nice park with a swimming area and I figured what a great place to get some open water swimming (OWS) in. Last week-end I pulled out the wetsuit and we headed down that way.

The Jimmy John’s sandwiches we got were pretty disappointing and it took me awhile before I was ready to hit the water. We were watching the kids “play” in the water… for about 2 minutes before they realized how cold it was and ran out. The water temp was around 63 degrees F. It didn’t seem too bad, until I was neck deep and water was getting into the wetsuit. A few times around the buoys though, and I was actually pretty comfortable. I almost ran into some people and darn near went head first into a buoy, but managed to avoid any collisions. I guess people were pointing at me, and I felt super “cool” making my way to the water in my wetsuit, but I got a pretty good work out in and found out its a lot easier to get out of a wet wetsuit then a dry one!

For Easter, we visited my folks in New Madrid. My mom is making progress and definitely had a lot of improvement since the last time I saw her. As always, I got to have a learning experience as we tried to get the dining room ceiling finished before dinner was done (we put some tiles up, but weren’t quite able to finish in time). Apparently tiles from the same dye lot can be different colors and my dad has about 150 tiles he won’t be able to use.

We took a box of tiles home to see how the color looks, and it’s pretty darn close to the fake tile linoleum we have now. We had been thinking about tiling our kitchen and now it seems like I got a new home improvement project that will be happening once I get the deck done…