The final stretch at Turtleman!

On Saturday I did the Turtleman Triathlon. It wasn't a sprint or olympic distance, more of somethihng in between. The day started off pretty nice. Ellie woke up with me at 5am and helped me get the car loaded. I think she fell asleep soon after I left. The weather was cool and the water calm. As soon as I got there I ran into tons of people I know. Since I got someone else's spot the race directors put me near the end to start. I started number 933 out of 1000 people. Normally it goes by age, so I started with a lot of kids nearly half my age! We went off every 3 seconds, so I started almost an hour after the elite wave!

The water was pretty mucky to start out with. There were a lot of weeds and it was pretty shallow. Since I was so far back I had to maneuver around a lot of slower swimmers. I was out of the water in just under 23 minutes or 1:24 per 100 yards. My swim felt really good and really relaxed. Right in the middle of the swim was a sand bar. The water was really shallow, probably not even up to my calves. Wetsuits were allowed, but I am sure they should not have been! They measured the water at 77.999999. Wetsuits are not allowed at above 78 degrees.

T1 was a little long since I was near the end of the transition area. As usual it took me a little too long to get my wetsuit off - I still need to cut the legs shorter. In this race you were able to get right on your bike in the transition area. This was probably because there was a hill going right out of transition. The bike was really flat, but again, really crowded for me. We were on the roads and only a portion of the road was coned off so it was hard to pass people. There was a 19 year old drafting off of me the whole time (someone told me this on the run). I am not sure if this person got a penalty. I think most of the USAT officials were off of the course by this point! I did the bike at 21.3 mph or just over an hour. I am told that race wheels will make this even faster! I felt good on the bike, but knew I did not go as fast as I could. My legs did not burn at all. I think it was somewhat due to the fact that the course was so crowded and there were so many people to pass. I guess a good part of being in the back is that you can start picking people off one by one!

T2 went well, better than I normally do. Again, we had to run up a hill to start. The run was my usual trot. It is fitting the race is called turtleman, because I was definitely a turtlewoman! I did 8:53 min miles or just over 45 minutes. I have come not to expect much from my running as far as speed goes. I can run forever now, just not fast. I have not trained speed work at all this summer, mostly because I have been training for Ironman and partly because I have only been working out for 5 and a half months. I wish I would have started running as soon as I signed up for the IM last September, but there is nothing I can do about it now besides work on it in the off season. I did the whole race in just over 2 hr 12 minutes. I placed 7 out of 57 in my age group and 36th out of 287 age group females. I placed a little better percentage wise at Waconia for my age group, but out of overall females I placed better percentage wise here at Turtleman.

I have 4 weeks left until Madison, 2 weeks left until taper. It is great the the Olympics are on, giving me that little extra inspiration in the home stretch.