Get ready---this will be long for a sprint report!
First the important stuff. Pics are
here.
So if you go back a few days you see that on Friday, I pretty well cooked myself (figuratively and literally) that day. I was oh so tired Friday night, but stretched pretty well, and didn't need to do too much after that--I had Infinit mixed up that was leftover from my bottle-making tragedy prior to Horribly Hilly, and so all I needed to do was load and set the coffee pot timer.
The plan for Saturday was a 1/2 hour recovery swim and 2:30 ride "at any intensity that feels right." Uh-huh. Yeah. OK. That's what the piece of paper said.
I had wanted to be swimming at 7AM, but I was a little late getting started, due to the fact that I let myself "sleep in" until 5:30 and wanted to have my breakfast somewhat digested before I started swimming (unlike on Friday).
I'd thought I'd swim easy for 1/2 hour, but as soon as I jumped in, I was like, fuck, I have a sprint race tomorrow I should do some short speedy stuff. So first I just swam 500 all out (what is "all out" for me that is), then I did 300 easy, then 4x100 hard 20"RI and 4x50 hard 10" RI, with a 100 easy cooldown. OK, FAIL on easy swim, hey but it was short, so no worries, right?
I got lucky in that the Farmer's Market was staged at the Y yesterday because of the annual summer festival in Downers Grove called Heritage Fest (I may yet walk down there today OR NOT), so I picked up some tomatoes (Florida--Illinois' fruit won't be here for a few weeks yet, but it is the best, I SWEAR), some focaccia (which substituted for the pizza I should have eaten on Thursday but didn't, and the pizza I should have eaten Friday night but didn't because I was too tired), and this olive muffaletta stuff that I absolutely adore--it's like giardinera on tasty steroids--mostly olives, some onions, some peppers.
I had wanted to leave home by 8:30 to ride, but slacked and didn't get going until almost 9:30. No worries--it wasn't as hot as Friday. I went riding in panties again, but with a tank top on so I wouldn't burn my back up. I was plenty comfortable, and while I started out sort of easy, I just sort of got a mileage number in my head (50) that I wanted to knock out. I rode east in my "hood" ride area through Westmont, Hinsdale, Western Springs into LaGrange, and then joined up with the Salt Creek bike path. It is nice and shady in there, and I was laughing while going 20MPH on it. I made a wrong turn at one point, but it was good because I still ended up with 47 miles of riding at a pretty good clip.
Oh my fucking God were my legs toasted after that. Needless to say, it was NOT a recovery ride by any stretch of the imagination, but I had things to do. I made a quick lunch, mowed the lawn and then headed to the bike shop to pick up LGL--she'd been tuned up and zebrafied:
Look at her! Is she a thing of beauty or what? While at the LBS, I started thinking I want a new tri bike, and would love the Pinarello Montello. Sadly, though, we looked up the frame sizing parameters and they don't make one small enough for me. I am going to look at Colnago next. I don't want Joe average's tri bike--but I would like something as light or lighter than LGL.
After bike shopping, I did some dishes, stretched, got Bitchie all set up to race, including cleaning off the shit left over from her tuneup and my rides on Friday and Saturday, got my race gear together, loaded the coffee pot, and tried to get to sleep early at 8:30.
No such luck. I just laid there and tossed and turned. I swear I sleep better before an Ironman than I do before a stupid sprint! I remember scrolling through all the crap that has happened to me in the past 3 years, thought about all these things I should be doing or could be doing, but then just gave over to the fact that I didn't really need a whole lot of sleep. I heard maybe one thunderclap (I guess it rained a little), finally got to sleep and was having "the dreams" of being late for a race, etc.
I woke up just before the alarm went off thinking I maybe had another hour to sleep, BUT NO! So I got up and thought, yikes my legs are fried, this is going to suck today. I had 2 cups of coffee, grabbed a can of Ultra Violence for the road, and an hour after waking was on the road. It looked to be a beautiful day--no clouds, and temperatures in the 70's for racing. My PERFECT race weather!
I got to Twin Lakes a few minutes later than planned, but was still one of the first 25 or so cars there, so I had plenty of time to set up, take a few dumps (a pre-race tradition!) and mill around and find people I know. I had several women say to me, "You look fast!" I don't know why they say that--sure Bitch looks fast, but I don't think that I look particularly fast. Anyway, my response was, "I don't know about today." And I didn't. I had reconciled myself to just going out and having fun, and I was looking forward to it.
OK, on to the actual race. For my swim wave, I started far left and then angled into everyone. I had no idea if I was doing a good pace or not, but I did seem to pass a lot of people. I guess I did my usual MOP effort there, but it was still fast for me. Like 12:30 for 700 or 750 meters, not sure what the actual distance was.
I got out of the water and had 1/2 my wetsuit off, got to my bike, lots and lots of bikes still on racks (!), got the suit off quickly and got ready to bike. I wasn't going particularly fast, but not slow either. I headed out to bike and thought, "Fuck, this is going to hurt."
Because you know why? No matter how I feel, it's a sprint, biking is my thing, and I will make myself hurt just because I feel it's my obligation. I must not have had that great of a swim, because I immediately started passing all sorts of people, in my wave, and earlier waves, lots of guys, and never found a pack to draft off of. No worries--several guys tried to suck my wheel, but I dropped most of them once we hit some wind around Harper College. I am tiny and my CdA is quite low (and I was wearing the aero helmet to boot), and so I can cut through wind pretty well for a yard gnome.
I remember after about 5 minutes into the bike I'm like FUCK THIS FUCKING, FUCKING HURTS! And yet I couldn't make myself ride easier. Why bother? It's only 14 something miles, I can handle it. The only times I slowed down a little was when I thought I needed like 3 seconds to recover or swig some Coke out of my pink pirate bottle. And I just kept cranking, and since I kept passing people (yelling at those who were in my way), I thought I must be having a decent ride.
When I got back to transition, I was methodical about taking stuff off and getting into my running shoes. This was the first time I wore my black racing flats in a race, because this is the first sprint I've had in them. They felt great! I feel like I am barely moving, but not really feeling the pain of the bike ride. Earlier in the day, I thought I'd be happy running 9mpm, and here comes Mile 1 I wonder what I'm doing? 8:38. Huh? I don't do that. Oh well, just keep the pace and don't look at the watch.
Well, I kept going, taking short walk breaks at the aid stations, and when I got near the finish line, a friend of mine, Kevin, was there to run me in. And he's yelling at me and now I am hurting like a sonofabitch, but hey I did this at Rockman, I can do it again, and then I'm across the finish line and done!
And I have no clue how many miles I'd run. I thought each mile was short because I just kept running a little faster each mile that was marked, and the website had said it might be 4.9 miles, someone else said it was 4.3, but I guess they measured it at 4.5. Whatever, I felt like I had had fun, and I even passed like 8 people on the run, so I was OK with however I'd done.
When they posted results up on this van, I walked over, and I was like WTF??? 20th overall??? And I just didn't believe it. OK, so maybe this isn't a big race, and maybe there wasn't a lot of competition, and maybe blah, blah, blah, but WHAT??? So of course, I thought maybe I should hang out and see if anyone comes ahead of me, but I doubted it because of the elapsed time since I had finished and people in later waves probably being overall slower.
But even though I checked at least 5 times, the results never changed, I was 20th overall and 1st in my AG, and this was after all the shit I had done before this in the week!
And sweetest of all, that was the fastest I have ever run 4.5 miles or whatever it was, if it was measured accurately, and I am very happy, as you can see from the last pic in the set of me in my car.
I don't really care what this means as far as IMLP or anything else. I am just taking it for what it is. I did OK today. I guess I have won my AG in all 6 races (aside from Triple T) that I have done this year, including a 1/2 IM. I'll take it.
Now I just wonder what I could do with a proper taper...
