Music City Triathlon

Last tri of the season.

The schedule called for 10 miles with 5 at half marathon pace. Lana and I replaced it with the race.

My strategy going into the race was to swim and bike at a lower effort so that I could run the 10K at 8:30 pace. No racing for me.

We got to Nashville Shores and it was cold. There was a sign at check in that said “water temp 44 degrees, wetsuits legal”. Boy was I glad I threw mine into my car at the last minute.

We did the normal packet pick up, body marking and transition setup.

Transition was very crowded and I did not like the way I had to set up. Everything was backwards.

We made our way down to the beach. They explain the swim route. Boy did it look long. We were told after the race that it was in fact long.

I was in the 8th wave.

I lined up and waded out into the water when instructed.

3,2,1..go

I was off. Like I said I was going easy. I got passed by everyone in my age group, or so I thought. Then came a wave of men. Great, I had a 3 or 4 minute lead on them. But worse was when I got passed by the wave of females. I stopped twice during the swim to look around and see if there was anyone behind me. I finally made it to the beach again. 1.5 k swim time 32:17

As I was walking, yes I said walking, up the beach to transition, I wasn’t feeling so good. A little dizzy and stomach cramps. Then I heard Ashley, my swim coach, yell for me and ring a cow bell. I thought “I can’t let her see me walking”, so I jogged the rest of the way to transition. T1 time 1:50

I ate a Gu as I got on my bike. It started raining. I was cold. I pushed on but not hard. It stopped raining at about mile 4. The stomach cramps were getting worse. I thought to myself “I wonder how bad it would hurt to crash my bike and take a DNF.” I didn’t want to have to blog about another fall. At mile 14 I threw up in my mouth. At mile 16 it started to rain again. I finally made it back to transition and TriSonq yells from behind, “I almost caught you”. I don’t even want to know what wave he started in. 40K bike time 1:14:07

The bike rack was very crowded. I had to scoot bikes over just to make room to get mine back on the rack. Guess that is the price you pay for taking so long . I had left out a Gu to take on the run but with the tummy troubles on the bike I wasn’t risking it. T2 time 1:20.

The run starts on grass. Then we moved onto some rough pavement then it was up hill. There was a spectator walking down the hill and he tells me “keep pumping those arms, and your feet will follow”. I made it to the top and said to the guy next to me “man that was hell”. I made it to the first mile marker. I had forgotten to hit the lap button so I had no idea if I was on pace or not. My toes were frozen and it wasn’t until the first mile when they thawed some that I realized I had mud between my toes. At the second mile marker I saw that I was on pace. The third mile marker I was still on pace. My stomach was feeling better so I grabbed some powerade at the turn around. I started up the hill and the girl next to me starts talking to me. She was running a rely and had on a Garmin. She told me my pace up the hill was 9:00. We talked all the way up the hill and this year I didn’t walk any of it. It was great to have the push. I drank another powerade at mile 4 and was at little off pace, due to the hill and the two walking drink stops. I got to mile 5 and saw a woman in a blue tri suit. I pushed to catch her. Finally on the down hill I passed her. We ran the final mile together pushing each other. 10K run time 53:21, 8:35 pace.

Total race time 2:44:29

I was almost a full minute behind last year’s time, but last year I had a different goal. It is hard to look at the results and see 11th out of 19 but I achieved what I set out to do. And I think that I made a fair trade on my 10 mile LT run.

Huge congrats to my training buddy-Joe had an awesome half mary on Saturday. 1:44:25. Way to go!!!