sarasota

Almost a month ago now, I, rather spontaneously, did my first race of the season. I had almost decided it wasn't worth writing a race report at this late date; however, just this morning, I was inspired by the blog of Dan Wilson. This Australian triathlete is now perhaps my favorite triathlete based entirely on the hilarity of his race reports. (See particularly his report re: whether or not to wear socks in a 70.3.)

I doubt that I can make you laugh as many times as Dan made me laugh this morning, but I’ll try to keep it on the short side and minimize the snores.

At the beginning of March I went to Florida to spend Spring Break coaching and training with Marymount’s triathlon team, but was not intending to race at all. However, after having a few weeks of pretty spectacular workouts and coming to life in the Florida sun, I decided to see if I could still sneak my way into the ITU race in Sarasota.

I arrived on the line--or the pontoon, rather--shockingly calm and ready to go, not to mention free of sunburn, having spent the week obsessively drenching myself in sunscreen before every single exposure. I think I was actually paler after that week in the sun, much to my chagrin, and was ready to make the sacrifice worth it in this race.

As it’s my area of least experience, the swim always provides plenty of room for learning. This supposed-to-be-750-meter-but-actually-850-meter swim provided 100 meters more experience than expected. I actually swam okay, but made a couple tactical errors that left me leading a chase pack and exiting the water about 20 seconds behind the second pack.

So I jumped on my bike in chase mode and hammered solo into a decent headwind after the group. Just about when I’d had enough of that, I was joined by my new Canadian friend, and, half-way through the bike leg, we managed to latch onto the second pack.

We entered T2 still about a minute down from the leaders. My bike refused to steer properly so I managed a rather impressive (in my opinion) cyclocross carry through transition and took off on the run, ready to take down as many girls as possible. The run was hot! But I managed to put that from my mind because running people down has to be among the best feelings in the world.

I crossed the line in fifth, happily sun burnt and just in the money, wishing I had 400 or so more meters to run….but pleased.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a single picture to show you for my efforts. Apparently, the only time college students get off their phones and stop instagramming is when they watch their coach race--and as I appreciated their cheer support, I guess I can’t complain too much.

They did capture our happy post-race beach trip, in which all the childhood swimmers sat on the beach while the rest of us frolicked in the glorious waves (and I regretted my sunburn as I was pummeled by sand and salt).