One Year

Yesterday I raced in the 8th Annual PT Solutions Women's Sprint Tri. This race marks one full year that I've been doing tris. Last year, this race was my first ever triathlon. It was really interesting coming back with some more experience under my belt.

There were several girls on my rack who were doing their first race ever. I tried to give them advice as best I could (it wasn't my first race ever, but I'm not exactly a seasoned pro!). I remember how nice everyone seemed and how intimidated I was, and so I tried to pay forward all the advice and reassurance I got from folks last year. I also ran into some friends from TnT- it was great to see them!

Swim: It's a short swim, and my time was pretty similar to last year, but I was amazed at how much more comfortable I felt in the water, and swimming in a pack. 2011- 10:09/2010- 10:42

T1: Nothing major to report. 2011- 1:39/2010- 2:11

Bike: Here is where most of my improvements were made. Some of the improvment was due to having a better bike. Last year I was doing it on my mountain bike. This year, I had a better road bike. But I've also been putting a lot of time in on the trainer, and working on my biking. So it's really nice to see some concrete evidence that it's been worth it. The bike itself was relatively smooth. There were a couple spots where folks got super bunched up. At one point there is a steep hill, where the road is not closed to traffic. A few people were having to stop and get off and walk their bikes up. That plus cars trying to pass made for a huge log jam. I nearly had to get off myself for the sole reason that I couldn't get around the slower folks. A little frustrating. I was able to get through however, and passed folks. It felt really great to pass tons of people and only have a few pass me. 2011- 46:58/2010- 1:03:19

T2: Nothing much to report here either. Had a long run back to my rack in bike shoes. 2011- 1:36/2010- 1:14

Run: It wasn't very hot, but man was it humid. Even on the bike, I didn't dry off at all. And sweat was just dripping, and not evaporating. I felt like I was overheating big time, even though the temperature wasnt' that hot. I did improve on last year's time, but last year's time was awful. And I've had much better tri 5k's recently. I felt like I could've done a little better on the run, but with the conditions, I'm not too upset about it. 2011- 35:47/2010- 38:10

Overall: 2011- 1:36:07/2010- 1:55:34. An improvement of nearly 20 minutes. I'm still not quite where I'd like to be, but I can see the improvement coming, so that's what counts.