St George Tri

The St George Triathlon 2008 will be remembered for the wind and the whitecaps and PW (personal worst) swim times. 1500 athletes were signed up for this race. I raced the Olympic or Intermediate distance (1500 m swim, 40 k bike, 10 k run).

SWIM The women intermediate distance were the 3rd wave to go after 2 waves of male athletes. It was so cold waiting to go into the water, even with a full wet suit on. We huddled and chatted until we were called up to get timed in with our timing chip. I did a tiny bit of warm up in the water. The water was so choppy that I chose to swim breast stroke for most of the swim. Someone said that they pulled 28 people out of the water. I haven't been able to verify that number, but I saw some of the men being pulled out before we even started. The water was so bad that the race directors canceled the swim for the sprint distance racers, turning their tri into a duo.
Mentally I didn't even really race the swim. It's hard to keep focused when water is rushing into your mouth and you can feel the water recede, knowing that a tall wave is coming right at you. I've never attempted an ocean tri and wonder if that's how the swim is.

BIKE I felt sluggish in transition as I tried to strip off my wet suit, but was able to get on the bike and focus. There were several spots where the wind howled as we rode, and one spot where sand pelted us just after the "Beware of Drifting Sand" sign. At the first turn around about 10 miles into the race, I turned too wide and went into the sand where I slid out onto my elbow and hip.
I thought I was doing fairly well on the bike as I didn't get passed by many women and actually passed several men. There were a few guys I played tag with-- I'd catch them on the hills and then they'd fly by me on a turn. The vast majority of my riding has been indoors and I don't have technique down. Anyway, my biking turned out to be my weak point as always.

RUN The run was 90% on the sand. I passed lots of people on the run although my time was average. I finished 23rd woman out of about 100 finishers and 155th over all out of 335 finishers. I didn't feel like I had trained enough for this race-- I still feel like I'm working on technique for the swim and the bike-- but I had a lot of fun. While I was racing I kept thinking, "I love racing. This is fun, miserable, but fun."

As I crossed the finish line, my friend was sitting in an ice bath. They had some metal tubs full of water and ice that were full of water bottles they were handing out to finishing athletes. One tub was empty and she was sitting in the ice water to help her legs. I was extremely sore and tired and decided to try it. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I sat in there for a few minutes before going over to the medical tent. They painfully cleaned my wound and were debating on whether or not I would need a stitch on the cut on my elbow. I went over to Amber, a teammate who is an ED doctor, and she came over and finished cleaning it and put a butterfly bandage on it.
After the race, the wind died down, the water was calm, and it was warm enough that you actually felt like swimming.