travels, races, and other musings

I raced the Couple's Triathlon this morning. In this event, teams of two both complete the race, then the two times are added together for a cumulative time. Awards are given based on combined times and ages. They had female friends, male friends, mixed, etc. I raced with a friend I met in Texas Iron named Emily and we won our age group (females with a combined age of 59 and under)! I really have to largely credit Emily because she's really fast, but it was a great race and fun to be out there with friends. (There were a lot of Texas Iron folks out there today, including Coaches Jamie and Andrea.) I actually didn't feel totally fabulous about my race when I finished. I had difficulties finding a good rhythm on the swim and the run was hideously hard. But I did meet my goal. I wanted to come in under or around 1:30 and I came in at 1:30:08 so that was good. I don't have it in me to do a full race report. I'm physically and mentally a bit drained and exhausted a...

Pre-Race Another morning that began at 5 AM. Oh. Yay. You know the drill: breakfast, load-up, drive, arrive, get body-marked, unpack, set up transition, use port-a-potty and wait around until my wave goes off. While I waited for my wave, I talked to cam_ray and some of the other TxFe people there. I might sing the national anthem at Dilloman triathlon. cam_ray even said she'd pay me. I ate a Stinger gel about 20 minutes before the start. I've found that as much as my tummy doesn't want it, a stinger or a few blocks before a race really does help it feel less ucky. Swim The swim was long. We all knew it because these distances are the same as The Rookie Triathlon and we knew how far we swam at Rookie. My time at Rookie was just about perfect for my usual race pace so I'm pretty sure that swim course was correct. We could actually see the buoys migrating around the small lake. Well, I guess we all (in theory) swim the same distance, even if it is long. We got i...

On July 4, 2005 I ran my first race - a 5k. Last year, I went back and I ran a 5k again. It seems to be a tradition now because I ran another 5k this 4th of July. This year it was a different race (the last two years was the Marathon Relay, this year was the Freedom 5k). Luckily, the Freedom 5k used most of the same course as the Marathon Relay so it's a good way to compare my progress over the last couple years: 2005: 36:09 - 11:38/mi 2006: 34:53 - 11:13/mi 2007: 27:56 - 8:57/mi In two years, I've knocked over eight minutes off my 5k time. Seven in the last year alone. Not to mention, today's race was also a PR by almost 2 minutes. My previous 5k was in December at 29:50 (9:39/mi). I'm definitely improving! I don't really have much to report about the race. I made a conscious decision not to worry about going out too fast or negative splits. There was a recent article in Runner's World that a good 5k strategy actually appears to be to go faster for the ...