Happy Mother's Day! (Race Report)

Yesterday as is my favorite Mother's Day tradition I turned off my cell phone and participated in the annual Jay Benson Triathlon. There were a ton of people that I saw yesterday, being as it is a rather large local event, including DP (of course), SW TriGal, Tiger Lily, and Natalie. Sweet Baboo was head race official, and Bones was assistant ref.

I started out in the third wave (40 minutes after the first wave took off) because, as you know, whenever you have heavy, older runners on a warm day you should put them last so that it's as hot as possible and the water is as warm as possible. Happy mother's day. My run wasn't all that bad, about 11:02 pace, but I felt pretty good about it.

I didn't feel so good about the bike, though. I clearly need to work on that! I averaged 16.1 mph, slowing down pretty dramatically toward the end. Toward the end of the ride, my friend Sarah blew by me, shouting words of encouragement, and then I KNEW I had to get a move on because the swim was her best event. I hit T2, and it's a long T2, and I ran past her in transition, hitting the pool and swimming my guts out.

The first 50 meters felt pretty good, and then it was all downhill from there. Or uphill, as As another teammate, Cathy, said later "There's no way that wasn't and uphill swim. Where did that current come from??"

I backstroked, side stroked, breast-stroked, and crawled, staying ahead of Sarah's swim cap until I finished, staggered across the timing mat, and then nearly fell over in the chair while they got my timing chip. Holy. Cow. No placing - but I finished.

So that my mother's day! I did my first triathlon of 2009, and my first one since August of 2008. I watched DP's people do the kiddie triathlon, dumped the requisite amount of guilt on the youngest kiddo who, I would hasten to add:

Will. Graduate. It is fundamentally unchangeable.

After the triathlon we had a bit of a cookout with other Outlaws, and then Baboo and I snuck away to watch the new Star Trek movie. WHICH I loved.

and after a week of houseguests, things are getting back to normal again. At least, they will be, for about 5 days until the next batch descend upon me for Mini-Baboo's graduation.

and now I will sleep.

Add later: Now here's what I can't figure out. I'm beginning to suspect that some competitors ran in the wrong wave, an earlier wave that took off 20 minutes before. This was the first year that they had a third wave, and a friend of mine said that she wasn't told as packet pickup that she was supposed to be in a particular wave. Take a look at the results, a couple of the master's Athenas ran a 20 minute, and a 16 minute 5K? Does that seem right? Am I just being weird? Even the overall winner didn't pull off a run that fast.

Note a bit lower, where the runner of the "midtown mavins" team did a 10-minute 5K. Amazing! I call B***S**t

Of course, none of this matters for my placing; none of it affects it. But it points out a glaring problem with CCR timing. They need to have timing mats at the start line.

Meanwhile, I'm comparing all my times and I'm definitely slower than the last time I did this race.

Time to get to work...


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