70.3 to sprint = a whole new game of suffer fest!

A week ago I emailed my coach, Liz Waterstraat, with a pleading email asking if I could please do the Naperville Sprint Triathlon (the next weekend). I’ve really been slacking on my training lately- to be completely honest I have been feeling a little burnt out since Eagleman.  Usually it takes about 10 days to feel somewhat back to normal after that kind of distance, but this time it really just hung around – I had NO motivation for ANYTHING for 8 weeks solid, then I worked in some workouts here and there. We did make a big move in that time and maybe I have just been exhausted from all the changes, but regardless I have not been staying consistent with my training. ANYWAY, I emailed her last week and she (maybe a little TOO enthusiastically) told me to go for it! So on Monday I signed up for a race the coming Sunday.

In comes the Naperville Sprint Triathlon. Naperville is about 1 hour from home, so instead of waking the kids up at 4:15am when I got up, Nate stayed home and took them to church. Naperville is the cutest little town with street parking only. For a race this size (1,530 including all events), it was pretty hard to find a parking space on any of the side streets – I grabbed the first one I could see and ended up wearing my bag and riding my bike to the transition area.

Check-in was either Friday or Saturday – there was very limited check-in the morning of the race and you had to notify them in advance AND pay $30. We made the trip Saturday (basically that morning my coach asked me if I had picked up my packet yet, so I checked the guidelines and oh, guess we’re going to Naperville today!) and I picked up the things I needed. They were out of small shirts so they gave me a medium – definitely too big for me but fits Nate like a glove. At check-in we were given our numbers, stickers for the helmet/bike, swim caps, wristband, and timing chip. I heard those chips cost $50 so you definitely don’t want to forget that little guy at home.

The transition area was set up well with numbered racks (way better than finding your own spot!). There were a lot of new athletes so there was a little bit of a learning curve teaching how to rack properly, but I didn’t see anyone purposely trying to be rude about it. I racked my bike, set out my transition area, and walked over to find a restroom and then warm up. The restrooms are next to the transition area and packed, so plan ahead if you are going to use it before the race.

Warmup done, I walked down the slope to the swim start on Centennial Pool Beach. This is super cool. They have built this pool that is huge like a pond and made one end of it like a pool and the other is super deep like open water. It was a self-seeded start, so you had to place yourself in the group you thought you should finish with – I seeded myself in with the 7s but in reality I was in a group of 5/6s. I got sloshed around in there quite a bit – couldn’t find my own line, men kept swimming over me, every time I would take a breath I would get a big splash of water in my mouth. I had to pause and breaststroke to find myself again, then start swimming. It was pretty uncomfortable.

Out of the water and up the hill, totally forgot about my flip-flops at the swim exit (donation!). I thought it was a quick transition, but the timer gave me 2:30. I have to wear socks so that slows me down, and there was a lot of land to cover getting from swim through transition to bike (0.2 mile).

Bike was SUPER fast. This is a tough group. The road is pretty flat and completely blocked off, so there is tons of room to open up and crush it. My legs felt fresh and I was able to follow my race plan pretty easily. My Garmin registered a max speed of 27.8mph and I averaged 19.4mph. It was awesome!! I felt for a little while that something was off with the bike but just kept pushing – turns out I had a leak in my rear tire. My tire was completely flat when I got home this afternoon. Not sure if I rode it flat or if it was just really low.. guess we’ll never know… 😉

Off the bike and on to the run. I had a crazy fast transition for me – 1:34! Slowly getting better at this (in my 4th season!). My run felt GREAT. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt like crazy, but my legs felt good, my mind was in the right place, my lungs and heart were working hard, it was a great run. The first two miles I kept around 8:45-9 and that final mile I pushed out an 8:30/8:45 mile. Fastest 5k by far (though the course was a little short).

Overall I was really impressed by how my body responded to the quick pace of it all. I can absolutely tell what an astounding difference there is between when I wasn’t working with Liz and how I am doing now. No question.

I was a little bit inconvenienced by the fact I finished around 8:20 but couldn’t go back in transition to even get my phone until 9am. I didn’t have anyone with me and with Nate being home with the kids I couldn’t call to see how things were going or give him an update. Not sure how I could plan around that in the future. I also wished there had been something of a little more substance food-wise, like pizza (even at 9am!) – they had granola bars, bananas, oranges, and grapes, but not much to fill the ravenous hunger that is created by a triathlon! I ended up drinking my Tailwind Recover and stopping on the way home to grab some lunch (at Taco Bell of all places…).

I ended 10th out of 76 in my age group (top 13%), 52/589 females (top 8%) and 262 overall out of around 1200 triathletes.  Not a bad showing!! The absolute highlight of this race today was watching my coach stand atop the podium as the overall female winner. She works so hard with all of us student athletes and it is SO well-deserved when she comes out on top!!  Such an honor to see that from her!

Well, I’m off to catch some very overdue zzz’s. Until next time!

-B