Kelly’s Austin Tri Report
After a pretty horrendous week in Canada, and a slow recovery from what I am going to say was Swine Flu so that I will now officially be ‘immune’, I began to feel more like myself this past weekend. Well, I actually started this a few days ago, so now this would be LAST weekend… Labor Day weekend. Derick and I went out for a ride on Saturday and I tried to stay on his wheel for about 15 minutes. Seeing that it did not cook me too terribly bad, I decided… ‘ah, what the hey! I’ll race Austin Tri on Monday!’. I had a hard time not doing this, especially seeing that I was not able to ‘sit back, relax and watch it’ with the extreme fatigue and feelings of elation I had hoped for from the previous weekend (ie: not finishing Canada). So, Sunday at the pro panel, I decided to enter and hope for the best! See what the post-sick body would give me.
This was a completely unplanned race, so for some reason, I don’t see it worthy of a ‘full on’ race report. I have to think that those get so old sometimes… so, I’ll just do a brief synopsis of the event. I got up Monday morning pretty easily, along with Derick who was racing too!, and we meandered down the hill to Auditorium Shores for the 7am start. Nice morning, but muggy and warm as you could imagine. However, that is Austin and we are all used to it. We were off right at 7:00 AM (from what I heard from Dan with High Five Events, it was PROMPTLY at 7:00!) and we began a-swimmin’. I quickly got into my typical no-mans-land (or, let’s call it “Kelly’s Land”) and proceeded to swim the 1500 solo. I know I like my ‘space’ but I also know that having a bit of a draft would help me. Nevertheless, on about 80% of my races, I swim solo. Go figure. After about 5 minutes, I thought, “Oh no. I feel weak. No snap. This was a bad idea,” to which I countered my thought, “Suck it up Sally. You came out here to race, and you’ll race; you’ll love it and you’ll do fine.” Guess you could say I am pretty hard on myself, especially when racing! The ‘game face’ definitely comes out.
Out of swim behind speedy girl Sierra Snyder, and onto the bike, whereby she and I seemed to leapfrog one another for about 1.5 of the 3 laps. She is one strong swimmer-cyclist! Watch for her in Kona. I was feeling rather decent, though I will say pushing myself extremely hard (I think I was taking out my anger about Canada out there!) and thinking “It’ll either be great or I’ll completely blow up.” Derick passed me about 1.5 miles into it and was looking great. I could still see a few women behind me, but was not sure if they were gaining ground. Come to find out, they were…I came off the bike still in first! But, Des was right on my heels. She had a solid bike, as did Mina Pizzini from Dallas. They both gained about 2 minutes on me on the bike. I kind of expected that, so I was not too surprised.
Onto the run! And I was so excited, I forgot my gel! But nothing to do at this point, I was well on my way out of transition and I could hear Des’s ‘pitter patter’ of feet behind me. I know that she has been doing a lot of running, and she is already speedy so I had no doubt that she would be strong on the run. We exited transition and took the long run on the grass, out onto the road and began lap 1 of 2. I actually held her off for about 2-3 miles, then she passed me to which I think I responded, “It’s yours. I don’t have another gear. Go for it.” By no means was I giving up, but I was truly shocked that my body was giving me this much after the past week, and I knew that I was not physically up for a head-to-head battle of a race. I was pleased that she only had me by about 30 seconds at the finish, so I was good for a solid 2nd place, right ahead of fellow Austin-er Terra Castro, which was great to see her right there as well.
Hmm…no race report? I guess I got carried away. I guess my biggest message from today was, don’t be afraid to JUST RACE; because it is fun and it makes all that training ‘mean something’! I knew that I was not going into this optimally (rested? yes… but a bit weak? yes…) but I just wanted to get right back on the horse from Canada. I knew that this was a ‘backyard’ race, and I love to support Jack and Adams, so in my opinion watching it would have been so much harder. And, it was not easy racing it! I am so glad I did it, and pushed my worries of “Am I well enough?” out of my mind. To top it off, Derick finished in a solid 6th place among a very strong field of men! So fun to have him out there racing. Congrats to all those finishers out there on Monday, it was a hot day and no matter what time of the morning you were out there running, it was hot and challenging.
Take home lesson? Don’t be afraid to JUST GO RACE! Throw aside your doubts, worries or fears. We’ll always have them, but best to just jump into the game and give it what you’ve got. If we never push ourselves out of our comfort zone, we’ll never know what we are capable of doing. Racing is a chance for us to get some reward from all the hours of training. And you know what? Even if it does not go as well as you may have hoped, remember that you still gain fitness from it; especially when you consider that you were likely going harder than you’d of ever done in your training. And to that point, take the recovery just as seriously as you take the race itself.
