Lake Stevens 70.3 Race Report

It's hard to figure out what to say when your "A" race is over.

I feel like I should ascribe some sort of deep meaning to it - like, this was about overcoming obstacles or breaking new ground or pushing boundaries - but those cliches really don't hold any truth for why I spent the last six months training and what this was about to me.

In all honesty, I did it because I could. And I enjoyed it because I did. It's that simple. When I started to consider doing a 70.3 event, a friend told me I'd better make sure I knew why I was doing it, because when it came down to training hard, pushing my body beyond what I'd made it do before, I'd want to give up - and in those moments, I needed to have a reason to continue.

Well, I can't really think of a reason, other than to stay fit and have fun. Since I achieved both of those goals, I was successful.

And even if my results weren't what they are, I would still think I was successful. But I have to be damn proud of what I did today and how my body performed.

So, first, the setup: Danielle and I drive in 98-degree weather to Lake Stevens (average high temperature in the summer: 80). We pick up our packets and discover the race directors changed the plan: we can rack our bikes Saturday! So we did, then left Lake Stevens to eat a HUGE dinner at the Olive Garden (we couldn't even eat dessert we ate so much other food).

We stayed in a hotel fairly close to the race site. Upon checking in at 9 p.m., we spent about an hour preparing our transition bags, filling water bottles, and loading up our race belts with GU and, for me, Jelly Belly Sport Beans. We were in bed and asleep by 10.

I woke up at 3:47 a.m. and allowed myself to stay in bed until the horrible alarm went off at 4. We got up, I showered and made coffee, and found that we'd been sleeping in a 54-degree room! (It was lovely under the blankets, but sucked to get out of bed).

I ate most of a bagel with Nutella (because Danielle told me the Tour de France riders required it, and I figured it was better than peanut butter) and a banana, and of course my morning coffee. With a bottle of water each to sip on, we took off to Lake Stevens.

We arrived about 5:25 a.m., got great parking, and began the first of at least 7 trips to the porta-potty. Each. I don't know what it is about race morning, but I go at least as many times as I go all week before I race. But that's good, I guess.

We set up our transition stations (we were both really close to each other, and the porta-potty) and didn't do any of the pre-race warmup that I had wanted to do: no testing of our bikes, no jog, no jump in the water and swim. I hadn't been nervous, but at 6:48, as the race director was calling all athletes out of transition and down to the water, and I was still in the potty line, my eyes just filled with tears. To look at all those hard-core looking athletes, with those amazing bikes, and to think that I could be in their company - who the hell was I? What was I thinking?

A kind woman in the porta-potty line said something to me to calm me down, and Danielle and I walked down to the water. The race director had announced that the water was 77 degrees - this was worrisome to me, but I couldn't spend too much time thinking about it. He also had announced that it was going to be a hot day - no morning cloud cover like the previous day. Thanks.

As a last-minute random thing, I bought No Fog stuff for goggles. I hadn't trained with it, but I figured, if it works, great, and if it doesn't, well, my goggles usually fog up, what could be worse?

I put my goggles on before the first wave even started at 7 a.m.; my wave was at 7:06. No fog! And amazingly, I didn't have any fog for the entire swim.

It was a deep-water swim start; we jumped off the end of a dock and treaded water until the gun went off. I pretty much knew I was going to have a perfect swim (for me) right from the beginning. People spread out so much so quickly that most of the time, I felt almost alone in the water. The few times that people bumped me or I bumped people I didn't even miss a stroke (even the one time towards the end where it felt like someone was pulling me under by my legs - I kicked and swam away). The swim was really uneventful; I caught up pretty quickly to the stragglers from the previous wave, but a few minutes later the fast folks from the following wave overtook me - and later, some of those doing the Olympic (shorter swim, duh) overtook me too. But no big deal - I just kept a nice, straight line, an even stroke, and felt good the whole way. And warm - I could definitely feel the sun on the back of my wetsuit, and the second half of the swim was slightly uncomfortable with the warm water and full suit. But it was my choice to go with full buoyancy instead of a cooler swim, and given the results, I think I made the right choice.

Swim time: 40:13

I felt like I was really taking my time in T1, but my time says 2:14. I guess that's because the transition area was just so close to the water. I took off the wetsuit (I didn't even have enough time while running from the water to get it off both arms!), put socks, shoes, helmet, and race belt on and was off. I realized while in the water that I never took my cycling gloves out of my transition bag (to get them ready), but I decided not to get them - another good decision (I only wanted them for the extra padding for my hands, but I didn't need it at all).

I had a strategy for the bike. It is a 28-mile loop, rolling hills with a couple of steeper climbs - but everything steep is fairly short. My strategy was that for the first loop, I would take it slow and keep my heart rate around 150. I also decided I would switch my computer to show cadence, not mph. This was a fabulous decision. I shifted around to keep my cadence above 90, and was paid the ultimate compliment of the day on the first loop when a guy passed me, "Hey, great job! You're spinning just like Lance!" Me! Spinning, not mashing! Yay!

My nutrition plan was to eat three PowerBars and drink water with Nuun. I also had endurolytes in my Bento Box. I started eating around mile 4, and pretty much every time I was going uphill or flat I took a bite. I also drank pretty much constantly - I had my aero bottle plus two more 25-ounce bottles with me, and when I would drain the aero bottle, I took one of the other bottles and dumped it into the aero bottle. I did make one mistake: I couldn't fit the entire tube of Nuun in my Bento Box, so I just brought along two extra tablets. Well, the dampness of my half-eaten PowerBar in the box caused the Nuun to start dissolving, so eventually I just had to dump both partially-dissolved tablets and go with plain water. I thought if I started to cramp, I'd start taking the endurolytes. But I never did.

At mile 14, there was a water bottle station - unfortunately the girls manning the station weren't close enough to the road for me to take the bottle while still in motion, so I had to stop briefly to give them an empty bottle and take a full one. Then at mile 28, there was supposed to be another water station, but there were so many people lining the street and people waving and shouting that I got kind of freaked out and I thought I was going the wrong way, then I realized what those people were shouting about but by then I wasn't ready to transfer a bottle, so I just went on without. It was okay - I had a full aero bottle and one additional 25-ounce bottle then, so I knew I could make it 14 miles to get more water.

Um, something stupid I did: there's a right turn you have to make to stay on course towards the end, and I almost missed it because a car was turning right, and I didn't think cars should be going where I was going. But I recovered and re-passed the folks who passed me when I made the widest right turn ever.

I did the first loop in 1:38 or so; I was hoping to negative-split the ride, since I was so conservative going out. Alas, around mile 35 I realized I had to pee. Very, very much. (I also started experiencing the knee pain I had on STP last weekend, but I told my knee very firmly that I was spinning today, not mashing, and the pain had no right to intrude on my good bike ride, so go away right now. And it did.) But about peeing, I thought about waiting until I was in the transition area after the bike, since the porta-potty was so close to my transition space, and I seriously tried to go while on the bike. But I couldn't do it. I decided at mile 40 that I was going to stop at mile 42 - the water station - and pee in the porta-potty there.

I jumped off my bike at the porta-potty and seriously peed for more than a minute (yes, I timed it. Yay heart rate monitors!). But when I came out, a lovely man came up to me with a pitcher and asked if he could refill my aero bottle! A girl gave me a second bottle for my cage and I was off, and now I had people to pass since my two or three minutes stopped gave them opportunity to catch me.

The rest of the ride was so much better once I peed. It made a huge difference in my focus and concentration. Seriously.

Let's see, other random things that happened on the bike (not exactly sure when these things happened, it's already a blur):

-- I dropped my chain twice, both times on the second loop (once towards the beginning, once around mile 52, darn it)
-- My max speed achieved was 44 mph, but I'm not sure where, since I was monitoring cadence
-- I did get to ride in my big ring a lot, despite the cadence rule (above 90!)
-- On most steep hills, I passed people. On most steep downhills, I either got passed while going down or right after. However, when there were good rollers, I often kept enough momentum to get most of the way up the next hill without working.
-- I nearly crashed looking at my front tire because I was sure it was flat. I was able to catch myself before the fall, but my HR went up 10 bpm for a while. It wasn't flat. It never was. In fact, my bike performed perfectly - the operator could still learn a few things about shifting out of her big ring, but the bike did its job beautifully today.
-- I loved passing people on way better bikes than mine. I kept thinking about Lance saying, "It's not about the bike." That said, I'd love to have a beautiful Cervelo. :-)

Bike time: 3:23:03 (so no negative split - 1:38 approx for loop 1; 1:45 for loop 2. But that included the almost-fall, the dropped chain x2, and the potty stop. So maybe it would have negative split; who knows.) My bike computer says this was an average of 16.2 mph.

The run. Ah, the run. By now it was up in the 90s with no cloud cover. I didn't have a fast transition; I went to the porta-potty again, so did it in 2:17. I switched to running shoes, dumped the helmet, put on a visor and my fuel belt, and was off. I carried in my hand a little tube of sunscreen which I slathered on my arms and shoulders during the first mile, then wasn't sure what to do with the darn thing. Then I remembered I had a pocket in the back of my tri suit (DUH - I'd been using it for my PowerBar garbage on the bike, you'd think I would have remembered) and I stuck it in there.

The race email we got a few days before the race said the run course was "fast and flat." Sure, if you don't include ALL OF THE HILLS! You do the course twice: there's a loop where you go uphill longer than you go downhill, then you go up over a freaking mountain (okay, fine, just a hill), all the way back down the other side, then back up just to go back down again. Then you do it again.

I was feeling fine. Nothing hurt - no muscle, no joint, no knees, no tummy, no cramping, NOTHING. But I didn't want to run. I just didn't. And for a while, I couldn't make myself do it - especially when the silly little shuffle I was doing let me talk myself into believing I was more effective walking than running anyway. So I walked - probably for 1.5 miles or so - and a 60-something year old Ironman named Paul egged me on to run again, so when I hit the downhill part of the loop, I did. And from there, I pretty much only walked water stations with a couple of short exceptions. The damage was done; I was on a 12-minute mile pace and I didn't care too much. I'd done the math, I would definitely come in before 7 hours, so why did it matter?

Well, I came down the first little hill at the end of the loop and saw my car (that my husband had driven up in) parked on the side of the road, and then I came into town and saw all the people cheering and so happy for me, that I just said to myself, you better run, girl. This isn't a walking race.

But man, running up that hill was torture! However, running back from the turn-around point wasn't so bad - it's shorter in that direction - and an angel of a woman who lives at the very top of the hill came outside to hose off the runners. It was lovely. She stayed out there for a long time, too - she was still there when I came back up the hill the next two times. There was another place on the course where volunteers were spraying down runners with a hose - oh it felt great. Also, there was actually a breeze - and more shade than I expected! So really, I have nothing to complain about. It was hot, hotter than I'd trained in (maybe next year I shouldn't do all my training runs at 5 a.m.?), but I still felt good.

Around mile 7.5 or 8 I started to get cramps. I had been eating whenever I felt like it, which wasn't as much as I probably should have, but I'd already had one packet of Jelly Bellys and one GU. I opened a second packet of Jelly Bellys and walked until I'd eaten them all. (I was drinking both water with Nuun from my race belt and plain water at every water station - plus taking a second cup of water-station water and dumping it somewhere on my body - shoulders, head, neck, back). I guess the salt in the Jelly Bellys worked, because the cramps went away as quickly as they came on.

I think around there was also when I began to really feel fatigue, mostly in my quads. My knees started to protest again, but I told them to be quiet and they could have their pain later, when I was done.

I had seen Danielle when I was around mile 6; I guessed she was around two miles behind. It's not that I wanted to beat her in the race - it's not about that at all. But I definitely used her behind me as motivation to keep going. If I had walked more, she would have caught me, and I would have thrown away a good swim and good bike by coupling them with a run time that was way worse than I know I could have done. I didn't expect to do a 2-hour half marathon like I can when I'm only running; I did hope to do 2:10 or 2:20 at the very most. So to know I was at least two miles ahead of Danielle, and to know she was running the pace I could run, kept me moving. I know she wanted it that way too.

So I also saw her at mile 12 and she ran up to me, slapped my hand, and told me how strong I was looking. Frankly, I don't know how I looked, but I figured it was awful - I could feel how gritty my skin was with salt and sweat and I knew that despite my attempt to sunscreen, I was burning. But she really looked strong!

Which was a pretty big change from a lot of people around me. One guy, a really athletic-looking 24-year-old, was walking. I caught up to him and just knew something was wrong, so I said hi and asked how he was doing. He said he needed salt, so I gave him a packet of Jelly Bellys. This was around mile 11, so I knew I wasn't going to take in another pack myself. It made me feel good to help, but I was disappointed that I didn't see him start to run.

I had told Danielle that I was going to go out conservatively and when I got to mile 10, if I had enough gas left in the tank, I would run the last 5k like a 5k. Well, I didn't have enough left for that - at mile 12, I wasn't even sure I had enough to do a good sprint to the finish line. But I did - when I came back into town, I was running alone and so many people were calling out my number and cheering for me, yelling "Way to go girl!" and other positive things - so I found it, and I turned and sprinted to the finish. I saw John take a picture as I crossed, and suddenly it was over!

Run time: 2:26:13 (approximately 11-minute miles)

TOTAL: 6:33:57; I'm confused about age group place, but I think it's 15 out of 22. I don't know what my overall place is; I think it's 290, but I'm not sure out of how many. And it doesn't matter - in my mind, I kicked ass.



One other note: The guy who challenged me to beat him did 6:14:36, so he will not be doing the Kirkland sprint tri in a skirt. I had seen him twice, once on each loop, so I pretty much knew I was behind. Strangely enough, it wasn't my run that caused me not to beat him - he beat me in the swim by 3 minutes and the bike by 15, and the run only by 2. So...actually, it was my run: had I run the entire time, I might have been able to do it. I was at 4:06 before the run; I would have needed to do just under 10 minute miles to come in at 6:14. But that doesn't matter either: I ran my own race for pretty much no reason, and had a great time doing it.