I have a really great post about New York City in the pipeline but am so far too self conscious about it to publish. I mean, it may or may not be great, but writing it made me almost cry. Anything that makes anyone almost cry in its creation has some inherent value.
But I digress. This is about the indoor triathlon that took place a little over a week ago. As usual, I really should have trained more for it than I did. Still, though, it turned out well and was probably my best indoor triathlon performance to date.
Let's start with the race itself. I really like the series, but one frustrating aspect about this one was that there seemed to be no benefit to arriving early to sign up for heats. I signed up for a slot between 4pm and 5pm, arrived at 3:20 and didn't start until 4:45. I mean, I don't have much to complain about here. I got a time slot that I registered for and I followed instructions to show up 40 minutes early. Unfortunately, I still had to wait an hour and a half. To be fair, it wasn't an unpleasant hour and a half. I walked around the complex, did some spectating, went across the street to an adorable grocery store/deli and ate a biscuit and had plenty of time to return and get ready. I even had a little time to sit poolside with other members of my heat. But let's get to the important stuff:
The Swim - I got a little overzealous in my warmup efforts. Instead of doing one lap, I tried to fit in two and by the time I realized I might be cutting it close, had only 10 seconds to get myself back to the wall before the race started. Oops. Oh well.
Another exciting and different thing about this swim is that I incorporated flipturns for the first time in a competitive setting! Not many of them, because my flipturns aren't wholly reliable. I think I did four or five of before I thought I should just focus on my technique. I also worked on my kick, which I felt was much stronger due to some kick and stroke-only pool drills I did. I'd like to think that the two of these together contributed to my 17-length performance. This is tied with my current indoor tri PR, although it's worth noting that it was also tied for the worst swim score in the entire women's field.
The Bike: I always do decently on the bike. Unfortunately I had some problems with my shoe coming unclipped from the pedals. This happened two times and it might not sound like that big a deal, but it necessitates a full bike stop and loss of all momentum. I probably lost close to a half mile just trying to recover from this issue. Still, though, I came out with a respectable 17.96.
Protip: A guy in my heat taught me and another girl that the red resistance dial on a spin bike also functionas a brake. Breaking news to me, and a preferable alternative to letting the bike slow to a stop, which can take FOREVER.
The Run: This is always my best score. And finally, finally I achieved last year's goal of running 2.5 miles in 20 minutes. No allowances for the fact that it takes the treadmill a little bit to reach target speed or that I missed out on about 3 seconds for what I can only assume is my slow response time to the official saying "start." No. 2.53 in 19:57. Done. It wasn't even hard. In retrospect, I probably could have done at least a tenth of a mile better.
I think I can attribute this largely to my lunch runs, which consist of running for 26 minutes in an attempt to break whatever my current distance record is. Right now, it's 3.3 miles. The important part is that I've accustomed my body to running this fast. Last year, this was a challenge. This year it's something I do on a regular basis.
So there you have it. That's about as concise a summary as I can provide. After scoring and all, I came out with 99 points, which put me in 16th place (out of 23). Not great, but considering it was extremely competitive, also not bad. Here's to even more improvement in 2013!
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