Chocolate Shoestrings: Podiumed is a word, right?

OMG I can't believe it's already Thursday and I still haven't written a race report from this weekend. Life has been hectic.... but for an amazing cause this weekend... hang on till the end!

Let's dive right into the spontaneous triathlon I did this weekend; the Hermosa Day at the Beach Sprint Triathlon. The triathlon consists of a quarter mile swim, a ten mile bike, and a three mile run, so its a nice and quick sprint tri.

Now why did I sign up a day prior? Well, that comes out of not knowing my schedule, good old procrastination, and $$. Haha. I'm glad they let lazy ppl like me sign up a day before :)

On Saturday, the day before the race, I prepared by doing a brick workout of 20 mile bike and 3 mile run. I felt good and strong; chased it with a protein smoothie, foam rolled for a good 20 minutes, packed my bags, and went to bed for the 3 am wake up call.

Sunday Race Day:

3 am wake up. uggggh. soooo early......

Ate a yogurt with a banana, chugged some Starbucks canned coffee on the drive over. The one thing I don't mind is early morning driving. For some reason, I find it very soothing. There's just a hint of light in the sky, and you basically have the whole road/freeway to yourself, and the radio has very few commercial interruptions. But I digress.

I packed my bike in the car, and took off at 4 am. I had no trouble finding the race location, though I had never been to Hermosa before. I arrived early enough to score a SICK parking spot, right next to transition area. Though I had to pay $6.25 (ouch! Poor grad student alert!), it was nice to have my car and Transition area within two minutes of each other.

Packet pick up went smoothly, and I went to rack my bike.

Score! Sweet Transition area alert! I was VERY pleased with my rack location. It was the rack closest to bike in/bike out.

Now why does this make this a sick location? In my opinion, there are four separate transition runs.

Running to bike after swim
Running with bike out of T1
Running with bike into T2
Running out after bike

Out of those for instances, #2 and #3 for me are the most cumbersome. Trying to shuffle out of transition quickly with a bike is much harder than just hauling your own booty. Because my bike rack was the closest to bike out/bike in, the distance I had to clumsily haul my bike along was greatly reduced. Plus, it made finding my rack REALLY easy!

Anyways, back to the pre-race report. I was really stoked to find a friendly face in the crowd; my friend was a volunteer there, and she did my body markings and took this lovely photo for me.

Hanging out with my wetsuit half on cause it was kinda chilly. PS I rented a Blue Seventy Wetsuit.

The transition areas. Doesn't it just scream southern CA to you? I thought it was so pretty, as the sun started to come up and all the palm trees that were lit up gave off this slight glow. :)

The race started at 7 am with the swim. By the time my wave went off, it was already a gloriously gorgeous day out. The sun was out, the sky was clear, and it was so beautiful. I was in one of the last waves of swimmers, with the individual females 25-34. The swim waves were organized extremely well, and they did an amazing job announcing how much time there was in between waves.

Speaking of waves..... WAVES. That's exactly what we had to tackle going into the ocean. Holy bejeeeeeeeeshus it freaked me out, standing on the beach, with these seemingly huge waves coming in. It's a relatively calm ocean, but the waves were breaking real good. Like, if you were standing in the water, the waves would break over your head. I watched as the swimmers braved the waves. I've never really experienced swimming INTO the waves, and the lady gave me invaluable advice to 'duck UNDER the waves' as they came in.

When it was finally my turn to head into the water, I kept that in mind, and that advice literally saved my sanity, cause I was kinda freaked out by the big waves. I actually maneuvered them just fine, but GOODNESS! They really drain your energy! Trying to swim out against the waves was taking a toll on my energy levels. SO I had to slow down, and really focus on taking long strides and relaxing my body. I had no trouble with crowding or swimming off course, but man, the waves made it tough for me. I was so glad when we were finally swimming back TOWARDS the beach again, and I could just riiiiiiiide the big waves back in. I definitely body surfed back in. LOL.

Running into T1, I had a loooong ass run, but managed to take my wetsuit off pretty quick and head out of T1 without too much hassle. The bike ride was pretty uneventful.... it was three loops around the neighborhood. I really really booked it on the bike. I haven't told you guys yet, and will in a later post, but I've been working on my bike a lot. I think it helped tremendously on this bike. The 10 miles were over before I knew it. Sorry this part is boring, but it really was uneventful. I just kept my legs going and going and going. Nothing too exciting happened.

T2 was ok. just changed my shoes and took off.

The three mile run was along the beach on the paved bike path/walking path thing. It was a nice and flat out and back course..... except there were tons of dogs and walkers on the path that we had to go around, which was really annoying. I saw one dog taking a pi$$ right in the middle of the course, and another one taking a dump right in the middle of a REALLY narrow section.

I know you can't stop ppl from using public roads like that..... but it was really annoying. Why can't you just quickly carry your dog across to the other side, instead of leisurely letting them go potty while hundreds of runners are almost tripping over your dog? grrr

Anyways. My Garmin actually worked this time, but I didnt want to look at my pace. For some reason it felt really slow, and I was kind of struggling, and not having that super duper high I was having in Long Beach Tri. What kept me going, strangely enough, was that song 'Stronger' by Christina Aguilera. Weird I know. I haven't heard that song in ages, but it was going through my head.... "makes me that much stronger, so thanks for making me a fighter...!" haha. That really got me through most of the run. I also channeled all my inner rage and anger and stress into the run. Thankfully, it apparently translated into speed, and I finished the run in 22 min 34 sec or 7:30 pace. wow. I didnt even know I could run a sub 8min mile! lol

After the race, I got some food, water, milled around the transition area, and decided to go back to get more food. hey I was hungry! Since I was kind of embarrassed about bee lining right back to the food, and then hightailing it back to my car, JUST for shits and giggles I decided to look at the results posted on the wall.

I found my name..... and a '3rd place' next to my name.

WTF?

OMG I GOT THIRD PLACE!

NO effffffin way!

Really?

REALLY?

Wow.

ME?

I seriously like, quadruple checked that it was, indeed my name next to that 3.

It was.

AWESOMENESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You bet your ass I stuck around an extra hour for the awards ceremony!

I mean, it is most likely the one and only time I will podium. Podiumed is a word, right?

And another perk about the awards ceremony, is that by the time it was over, they were desperately trying to give away all the leftover food. You bet your ass this poor grad student took full advantage of that. They said 'take it' and I said 'sure'. haha

Here is the pretty medal! WOO HOO!