Monday, May 11, 2009

Triathlon weekend

This is my year for PRs! (personal records) I took 30 minutes off my marathon time and now I've taken 20 minutes off my triathlon time!

DH did his first ever 1/2 ironman tri in under 8 hours which was his goal. He was tired and still gets stiff if he is still too long. His race was Saturday. The lake was cold enough to be wetsuit legal. Wetsuits are great (so I'm told) because they increase your buoyancy and so you swim faster. Swim was 1.2 miles. Then the bike was "brutal" cause of the head winds. Bike was 56 miles. Then the run was just plain long. I think he ran the first mile or 2 and then walked the rest. The run was 13.1 miles. But he finished!!! It was hard waiting on him at the end. I kept adding up the times he should be doing and coming up with "he should be here now!" and then it was at least an hour later that he showed up. Also it was HOT! It got up to 90 degrees Saturday! We talked to people who do 1/2 irons and they were saying they've never raced in over 75 degree weather.

Then my race was yesterday. The 90 degree heat Saturday made it not wetsuit legal on Sunday. Under 78 degree, it's wetsuit legal. Then 78-83, it's this weird region where you can where one but you essentially you will be disqualified with a time. Then above 83, no wetsuits. It was in that middle temp. The water was cold waiting to start (in water start) and I was rethinking my choice of not wearing a wetsuit. But once I got swimming, I didn't need the wetsuit for the warmth, but if would have been nice to have the buoyancy! The water was sooo choppy! I swallowed more water swimming that I drank on both the bike and the run together! I also decided that as long as the kids are young enough to need me to sign a permission form, they will not be doing an open water swim! You would take 3 strokes and not move at all and then you'd move a minuscule amount. Swim was 1/2 mile. It felt like forever! But I passed 4 people from the wave in front of me! (So you don't have 750 people swimming at once, they have waves of maybe 50-75 people starting a few minutes apart. My wave was 8 minutes behind the wave ahead of me.)

Then the bike - 2 loops around the lake. I was in the last wave to start the swim so it was hard to tell who was who. Many people passed me on the bike, but was it was hard to tell if they were on their first loop or their second loop. On the second loop I passed about 6 people, 4 in the last mile. Bike was 14 miles.

Then the run. I didn't have that feeling in my legs of "NO! We are not doing any more today!" that I've had in the past. I just kept running. I didn't run fast. It may be my slowest 5 K ever, other than other tris. But I kept thinking, "you don't have to go hard, you just have to go." I past 2 people near the beginning of the run and then 4 towards the end. One towards the end liked my outfit (this one in bubbly blue with matching top), mentioned it and asked if it was from Skirt Sports. I gave her a big thumbs up. Then a few hundred more yards, someone who was finished told me "Get your skirt on!" which is a Skirt Sports thing. It was cool! Down to the finish line where I actually had a kick amazingly enough! Under 2 hours total time! oh, and the high for the day was 75! Much better day to race.

Then since I had raced masters novice (over 40, beginner) and 1/2 the people in my wave had wetsuits on, I made dh stay for the awards. (Everyone in your category is in your wave. There are other categories in your wave as well. Mine was novice women, masters novice women and women under 15.) I figured there was a chance I could place! I was 6 minutes over the third place time. Oh well.

If I read the results page correctly, I was the third person out of the water in my division, 11th off the bike and 9th finishing the run. Those are just the parts of the race. I was 10th overall but 3 of those wore wetsuits so don't count. I finished 7th out of 16!

I got back in the lake since the showers were all marked "men". I wanted the sweat off me as much as I could for the drive home! Dh and I covered all the windows in the truck, opened 2 doors and he held a towel over the gap while I changed. Then drove home.

All in all a good day! Oh and then we went out for dinner for mother's day.

Friday, May 1, 2009

I think I caught up

In and amongst doing everything else, I think I have finally caught up on my reading! The 52 books in 52 weeks reading that is. I've been reading a lot of fluff but it has been engaging and enjoyable. The kind where you want the tv off so you can lose yourself in a book kind of engaging.

On that note, sort of, I want to recommend the series Ranger's Apprentice. They are "young adult" books. To old for my boy, age 8 But my girls are reading them and I think enjoying them. They aren't historical fiction but they are loosely based in England. Nothing has the right name but when one of the other countries is Skandia and a possible invading country's people are called the Scotti and the main physical setting is on an island... Well what else can you say. It's not a Christian book either. The other peoples definitely have many gods. The main group... well it's just not talked about too much. Time wise the setting is back in the age of knights and chivalry. Horses are the main form of transportation. There are 2 curse words in book 6 that will bother the very conservative. They do bother me and before my kids get this far, I'll have to buy the book so I can white it out.