Starting off the day I was running behind. It was entirely my fault, but it added to some stress. While I wasn't in any way thinking that I would place, I was hoping to have a good day. I had taken the past two days off because I was super sore. I'm sorry to report that this wasn't from some super impressive amount of swimming, biking, or running but instead (perhaps pathetically) because on bike to work day on Wednesday, I spent from 1-4 pm (or a cumulative of 90min- 2hrs) in a dance rehearsal for a company skit. Here I found myself using my muscles and body in different ways that pathetically left my quads and hip flexors laughably sore for about 60 hours. Yes. I know. I can do a 65-mile bike ride, but please don't ask me to dance. Lame.
I showed up about 35 minutes before my start time. Not ideal, but it is what it is. Setting up I asked Joel what time it was only to hear that I started in less than 10 minutes. I quickly clipped in to get maybe 5 min of warm up time. I found myself rolling up to the starting like 2 min before my start time. A race organizer was yelling "Andrea?" about to cross my name off the list as a DNS. Luckily I pulled into the back of the women's cat 4 line just in time for him to line me up with the rest of the racers - 3rd wheel to start. Great.
Starting out I felt very nervous. I had trouble getting onto my bike with the man behind me holding me up...purely, I think, because I was a little jittery. I went off and could tell that the course was going to be cruising. I had to find a balance between working hard and overdoing it. I knew that if it felt this good going out that it had to be rough riding on the way back. I told myself to use the course to my advantage and take the speed. Soon enough, the woman directly behind me passed me. She had made up 30 seconds in a little over a mile and I'd done my first mile at 27.2 mph (and was onto my second during which I averaged 28.7). GEEZ!
Coming into the first half hour, I was averaging 23.7 mph. My goal having been 19, I knew I was doing well but that it would soon come to its end once I got stuck in the opposite direction. Not sure at the time if it was tail wind or a false flat, I knew it was something.
I trucked along, pushing myself to maintain a hard effort. I was cruising at about 22 and then we turned around. The wind, while I've experienced worse, was pretty trying. At one point it blew me straight across the road and back. Coming into the hour mark, I had dropped down to 21 mph and could tell it was only going to go down from there. Knowing there wasn't much left, I told myself to push as hard as I could. The pain was only temporary, no running afterwards, and so I could just subject myself to it. It felt like almost the entire field had passed me at this point so the other people didn't matter - it was just me and my race.
I finished up in 1:14:28 which is right at the 20 mph mark. I was really happy with this because my goal had been 19, my secret goal had been 20, and if I were below 18, I would've been seriously disappointed.
I still did finish dead last in my category, but someone has to do it. I also noticed the top 2 women in our category beat all the women in the category above us that is supposed to be "harder." In fact, our top 8 women had times that were comparable to those in the category above us.
While in the rankings, my race was only ok and I am glad that I at least kept 20 so as to not totally embarrass myself against women who were holding 25 mph for a 40k race, I'm still pretty happy with the race itself. I was able to hold a pace equal to some of my best triathlon paces (and TT paces, for that matter). If that were a triathlon course, I couldn't have maxed out in quite the same way, but it was still reassuring.
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| Captured by the race photographer who was all up in our faces |
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