« Bay Area pool tour 2007 | Main | I must smell like a flower »

Sentinel Triathlon, take three

Yesterday was my final swim-bike-run race of the season, the Santa Cruz Sentinel Triathlon. I did this Olympic-distance race last year, two weeks after Ironman Wisconsin, on very tired legs. And I did it two years ago with a wee bit of a cold. So I had no idea what to expect from racing it healthy and relatively fresh.

My plan was to survive the swim, go as hard as I could on the bike, and then do what I could with the run. I was a little disappointed with my bike effort at Big Kahuna two weeks ago, where I felt my average HR was lower than it could have been. But I have no problem pushing myself on the run. This race is basically the same course as Big Kahuna, just shorter distances, so I know it well.

The swim was just fine, although it was brain-numbingly cold as usual. My time was 28:14, which included a nearly minute-long run up the beach to the timing mat. I swallowed enough of the polluted, 58-degree seawater to make me worry I might puke or suffer other dire GI consequences, but my stomach handled the brine without complaining. (Note to Dave: I told you drinking all that pickle juice would pay off.)

I did push myself quite a bit harder on the bike, averaging 6 bpm higher (and 19.2mph). I had a minor mishap, losing the upper half of the straw that allows me to drink from my aerobar-mounted bottle, meaning it was very difficult to drink water during the ride. But somehow I managed to soldier on with a stumpy straw. Time: 1:16:52.

Heading out onto the run, I searched and searched for the first mile marker. Nine minutes, 10, 11... was it possible I was going that slowly? When I hit 15 minutes, I realized there must not be any mile markers. Doh. (They were there last year, according to my race report.) At least I was able to get a small kick out of this: In our final club track workout of the season, which was last Tuesday, we ran relays during which we were not allowed to look at our watches. Heh.

During the run I knew I was doing well, but I didn't do the math until I was less than a mile from the finish. At that point I looked at the total time on my watch and saw 2:38. Before then I really hadn't thought about what my total time would be. My previous best was just under 2:56. For sure I'd come in under 2:45. But by how much? That last half-mile or so was hard and very, very fun.

I finished with an overall time of 2:43:39. More than 12 minutes faster than my 2005 time. Definitely my fastest Olympic-distance race. Much, much faster than I expected -- I thought 2:50 would be ambitious.

Even without mile markers to pace myself, I averaged an 8:24 pace for the 10k, with a time of 52:21. That's just about 4 minutes slower than my best standalone 10k. Not too shabby.

Better yet, I won the Athena division. And got a $100 gift certificate to a running store.

And even cooler than that, if I had raced age-group instead of Athena, I would have been 9th out of 47. Whoah. A friend pointed out that if there hadn't been two pros racing in the 30-34 age group, I would have been 7th. Holy crap. I'm just not used to placing so well in a big triathlon.

For the stats geeks, I was 60/267 women and 389/837 overall.

I have a few more races planned for the fall, and I'm hoping I can carry this momentum another six months to the start line of Ironman Arizona. This is going to be a fun winter!

September 24, 2007 5:01 PM