Drowned Rat

Blue Lake Olympic Triathlon
Fairview, OR
1500 m Swim/40K Bike/10K Run

The Short Version

Worst Swim Ever but the only time today that being wet felt natural
A soggy, muddy "cup of coffee"
Sexy Wheels, Baby!
Another soggy, muddy "cup of coffee"
Imagine that. This run sucked more than the last time where I *only* had to run a 5K after riding hard.

Overall Time: 2:51:35 (289/404 OA, 12/18 AG 35-39)
Swim: 33:39 - BLECH!
T1: 3:45
Bike: 1:12:56 (20.4 mph) - Mama's getting a new set of wheels!
T2: 3:19
Run: 57:55 - This one REALLY hurt!

Breakfast Report: Oatmeal w/ dried cherries & brown sugar, coffee, Gatorade
Fashion Report: Black tri shorts, blue Sugoi shimmel, black Transition Girl skirt for the run, LIT visor
Race Nutrition Report: Vanilla Gu & water before the swim and on the bike, Heed on the run
Post Race Libation: Deschutes Fat Cap Cream Ale

The Long Version

Race morning and it's raining...again! It feels like Groundhog Day....or the Pacific Northwest. One of those days where you wish you had just looked out the window and then gone back to bed. But no, I was up at 5 AM eating oatmeal, drinking coffee, and studying the radar on Weather Underground wishing against hope that the orange and yellow blob wasn't right over the Portland Metro area and wasn't moving so damn slowly towards the north. Maybe Weather.com had a better image. Nope, that one looked worse. In short, it was pouring....hard. This was going to be fun. Well, like I told myself when I signed up for the race two weeks ago, mostly against my better judgment, "Go big or go home!" Time to HTFU and deal. In any case, there was no way I could ask Chad & Nathan to come out and spectate in this mess so after Chad helped me get my bike on the car, he returned to the warm, cozy house and I hit the road to play with the fast kids.

Blue Lake is probably the flattest and fastest course you'll ever get in Oregon and this particular race was the TriNW Championship. Eep! I probably should have checked that before I hit submit. The one saving grace about the raging downpour in June was that the fabled Marine Drive cross/head winds were pretty much non-existent and the rain was relatively warm. Let's just forget the fact that the sky grew darker as I drove over the West Hills heading east. Because of the recent torrential rains, the park closed the usual grass parking field in favor of the paved lot 1.5 miles away. I dropped off my bike with security and then went to park the car and catch the shuttle back to transition. The extra logistics left me with about 15 minutes less than what I would have liked before the race so I was a bit rushed. I yanked on the bottom half of my wetsuit, sucked down some Gu & water, and then squelched my way through the mud down to the beach. I saw a coworker, T, on the way whose son, J, was doing his first tri ever today. T was a trooper and came out to cheer him on. After a quick greeting, it was already time for me to head to the starting corral.

I headed down the beach and got help zipping my suit up the rest of the way up my back. I zipped up my left ankle zip and then yanked on the right ankle zip. Wardrobe malfunction! The zipper came off the teeth. Crap! Now I'm going to have all this flapping about my right ankle. Nothing I can do about it now since my wave was about to head off. Then I yanked on my swim cap and essentially tore a huge chunk off one side. Oy! Another wardrobe malfunction. I stuffed it on my head the best I could and got my goggles on as I waded into the lake feeling completely rattled and off my game as the horn sounded to send my wave off. And so began the worst swim of my triathlon life. With my brain dwelling on my flappy right leg and my destroyed cap, my usual MO of settling smoothly into my swim did not happen until the second to the last buoy, approximately 1200 m into the swim. My usual mantra of stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe, stroke, stroke, sight instead became a self-talk to calm myself, forget what happened, and get back in the moment. There was a point where I wanted to flip on to my back and just chill. And I would have if it were not for the coming onslaught of 35-39 males in their green caps so I soldiered on. The next wave started passing me sooner than usual but it was still gratifying to see that I did chick several guys in the wave before mine. After what seemed to be an eternity, my hand finally touched bottom and I stumbled out of that god-forsaken lake, ecstatic to be done with the swim.

I ran as fast as I could without slipping through transition and decided that I would just grab my bike shoes and put them on at the mount line given how transition was now resembling the world's biggest pig pen. Good thing too. As I was mincing my way over to the mount line, a guy carrying his Cervelo and wearing his cleats slipped, twisted too hard trying to recover and pretty much threw his bike five feet in front of him while falling on his a$$. Oops. I got my shoes on, clipped in and it was time to ride. My original plan to ride as if I didn't have to run afterward was up in the air now given the weather conditions but the road conditions were good despite the downpour so I decided to go for it. Today's mantra was to keep the rubber side down and pray I don't flat. I settled in, pushing my big girl gear and worked on passing all the fish in my wave. I played leap frog with a woman for a few miles before I finally dropped her around the airport. Dodge a puddle here, dodge a puddle there, watch the flat carnage, collect road-kills and before I knew it I was turning back into the park into a huge puddle that almost made me come to a grinding halt. It was that deep! I glanced at my watch when I left T1 and saw 38:xx and when I crossed the T2 mat, it read 1:50:xx. Woohoo! Sexy wheels, here I come. Now there's this little run that I have to deal with.

Oh the run, the run, the run. Do you really want to know how much it sucked?

T H I S M U C H!!!!!!

I wrestled some socks on since I already knew I was going to chafe badly in spots due to the rain. Who needed blisters on top of the chafing? Then I went slip-sliding through the mud and muck before getting to the multi-use path on Marine Drive. The path that was so potholed in places that some of the puddles were 2-3 inches deep. And it hurt. Oh how it hurt. Lead jello legs, cement block feet, I had it all and squishy, wet shoes to boot. Not that I didn't expect it after the ride I just had but I squished along as solidly as I could because the actual criteria for sexy wheels was a 20+ mph split followed by a sub-1 hour 10K and I want to go shopping this summer! I saw S1, who was doing the Du relay with her husband, coming back in as I was heading out around the 2 mile marker. Then S2, another fellow Lizard, passed me at the turnaround. I figured she'd run me down eventually in any case. I splashed back to the park, took care not to fall down the steep, muddy embankment, and feebly kicked it in to the finish. Needless to say, I didn't stick around long after finishing. I talked to T & his son for a bit before I packed up my stuff and got out of the elements. J put in a 2:24:19 performance and would have been faster had he not flatted on the bike. Oh to be young again....

Another race down and despite my sucky swim and painful run, I'm extremely happy with it. After all, I rocked the bike!