And now I am a Tinman!

On Jun 30th, 2012 I have become a Tinman!

I raced at the Tupper Lake Tinman half ironman triathlon on the weekend.  This was my first time at this event but I have been wanting to do it for a little while as I have heard good stuff about this race.  So I went down to Tupper Lake, NY with two other friends in hopes of becoming a Tinman!

This race turned into a training race for me as I did not taper at all for it.  I ran 30km on the Monday before the race and did a hard bike on Thursday.  We left Friday morning for the Saturday race.  I brought Limey with me sans race wheels so I can get a power reading for the 90km effort.  So Limey was a little heavier than the her normal race weight.  Tupper Lake is a small town just outside of Saranac Lake and about 30min away from beautiful Lake Placid.  Therefore, the terrain was very similar to Lake Placid = hills!

Saturday morning I had my boost and a bowl of oatmeal as my pre race meal.  We got to the race site with plenty of time and I set up my transition area.  Jumped in the water for a quick warm up and was ready to go!  My plan was basically to swim hard, bike hard, and see what I had left for the run and try to run hard.

The gun went off and I started swimming.  I have been trying to start more aggressively this year in my swim starts as I pretty much suck at them.  I positioned myself more or less up front and in the middle.  I tried swimming hard but I just found myself hyperventilating a bit and almost panicking.  Ugh!  I had to pull myself together and calm down and then I was able to swim strong.  This all out sprint at the beginning is not working for me very well.  Once I was controlled I was pulling the water and passing lots of people.  I was feeling great and strong in the water.  Got to the turnaround ready to head back to shore only to be met up with a beautiful and bright sun which was blinding.  I felt like I was swimming blind and had no idea where to go.  I could not see a buoy and could not see the shore.  I just continued swimming in the general direction hoping I was going the right way.  Then I was able to see a couple of other swimmers in front of me so I pushed to catch up to them and sighted off of them.  I just tried to see arms in the water and I aimed for that.  A few times I wandered off a bit and had to go back and follow their line.  Eventually I saw the swim finish and I must have zigzagged all over the place.  I came out of the water in a decent time of 34:47 when I crossed the timing mats and was 2nd in my age group.  And it looks like I was 3rd or 4th female out of the water!  Woohoo!

Got out of transition as soon as I could and jumped on the bike for 90km of fun! ;)  I started the bike focusing on my pedal stroke.  And then I quickly noticed the huge headwind we were faced with.  It is a pretty hilly bike course and the wind just taunted us.  I pushed hard throughout the bike and my goal was to get off the bike in front of my two friends who are stronger cyclists than me.  As the wind slapped us in the face and we climbed the rolling hills, I continued to push hard and focused on other cyclists ahead of me as targets.  Since the bike course was an out and back we then got the luxury of some tailwind on the ride home.  Some of the hills were now much easier to contend with as the wind was at our backs.  I wanted so badly to average over 30km/hr for the bike I really started pushing hard.  I was at about 28km/hr at the turnaround.  It also helped that I saw my friends about 1km behind me so I knew I had my work cut out for me.  I managed to come in under 3hrs for the 90km and clocked in at 2:58:10 and averaged just over 30km/hr!  I also came off the bike ahead of my two friends, where one of flatted and the other rode just 4sec faster than me.

Now came the run.  I struggled right off the bat.  I was running well over a 6min/km pace and thought to myself it was going to be a long day.  Not only was the run HOT with little to no shade, we also had to run on grass for a little cross-country and then sand and railway tracks.  I laughed at the sandy part!  The first loop of the run consisted of long hills in open traffic and was just not fun.  I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.  I thought this run was a straight out and back but then I was getting very confused.  We tuned off the main road and started doing a loop and then I was questioning whether this was a two loop run course and I was really dreading that!  I did not want to run up those long uphills again.  So when we headed back to the finish area and turned off to head towards another direction I was relieved not to run the first loop again.  It did not bother me that I was so close to the finish line and had to run away from it again.  By this time I had some running legs back and noticed I had managed to drop my pace.  I was then focusing on keeping this momentum going and keeping some sort of strong running form.  At times I was getting a little worried of overheating as I was really feeling it and got dizzy a couple of times.  I actually thought I may  collapse but just soldiered on.  I was making gains and started passing some people.  And my one friend who is a much faster runner than me never did catch up to me.  I saw him at the final turnaround with less than 1km away from me and we were at the 14km mark.  I was just waiting for him to pass me but he never did!  Yay!  I was running fairly well at this point and managed to run a third best half IM time of 2:05:24 on a pretty challenging course.  This run course was being compared to the Muskoka 70.3 run.

Final time was 5:41:17.  Ten seconds off my PB for a half IM but this was a much more difficult half IM than Steelhead where I got my PB.  I was 10th in my age group and  placed 26th woman overall out of 128.  I also got a sunburn even though I lathered myself in sunblock.  The following day we headed to Lake Placid and rode the Ironman bike course minus the out and back section for a total of 140km!  Not too shabby!  Not a very fast ride but very pleased we did this the day after the race and on another windy day!  All in all I had a great weekend and had lots of fun!

6 weeks left to Ironman!!!!!