I wasn't very vocal about doing this race because I got sick during race week and for a while wasn't even sure I wanted to race... I still wasn't feeling 100% when boarding my flight to Houston on Thursday and actually started feeling a bit worse on Thursday evening and on Friday. I was still coughing on Saturday and was pretty tired from just doing some short pre-race workouts and some walking around to take care of pre-race logistics. Fortunately, come Sunday 4:30am I was finally feeling pretty much OK. I still had a bit of a cough but no real sore throat and I could mostly breathe through my nose.
As usual, when I am not with Justin, I was cutting things a bit close on race morning but it all turned out well in the end :-) I got into transition with 25min to spare and was out of there in another 10min or so. By 7am I was ready to head to the start. My wave didn't go off until 8am though, so I waited until 7:15 to drop off my morning clothes bag. In retrospect, I could have waited another 15min but I didn't want to stress myself out for the second time that morning, so off I went. There was no swim warmup, so I just stood around like everyone else, moving my arms and shoulders every few minutes to keep loose and warm-ish before the swim. Finally, after about 45min of waiting, our wave was let onto the dock. By that time my hands went a bit numb, which I didn't realize until I started swimming a few minutes later and wasn't really able to catch water effectively. Oh well - I might bring some throw-away gloves next time it's 50F and overcast and there is a long wait at the start...
The water was nice and warm - around 73F, so I got the feeling in my hands back after a few minutes. The start was a bit hectic - I tried to get onto some fast feet in my wave but probably failed, especially after getting kicked into the face :-\ I got into a decent rhythm pretty quickly and felt good, except a mild urge to cough. It looked like I was passing quite a few people in the preceding waves, so that was encouraging but it also felt like I was veering off the course a bit because of the chop and waves. I might have been sighting to much too (every 6-8 single-arm strokes), which I think slows me down but it's better than going off the course. I was out in exactly 35min, which I was not very happy about but oh well - I did not have very high expectations for the race anyway - it was mostly to practice for Ironman Santa Rosa in 5 weeks.
T1 seemed slow, especially the run out of the water, which was quite congested and most people were walking... At least there were wetsuit stripers :-) Because of the cold weather (50s the whole race) and moderate wind (10-15mph), I decided to put on socks for the bike. I think that was a good decision, even if it cost me a few seconds.
The bike was very flat and mostly straight. After a few miles with some turns, we came onto the main road that we took for almost 50 miles. I got right to work and settled into a power range that I hoped for. The course was pretty busy but most people were staying off to the right and were not drafting, so passing them did not feel that bad at first. There was a bit of a tailwind on the way out, so it was FAST - I passed the halfway point in 1:09. The way back was not as fast (about 10min slower), even though I was pushing a little more power than on the way out. Also, it started raining about 1/3 into the bike. I was happy I made my sports drink a bit more concentrated than usual (about 1.5x normal for both bike and run) because the weather was not very conducive to drinking a lot. I still got through my first bottle a bit before mile 40. I definitely wanted to use the other bottle too but my hands were too numb to grab it :-\ For a few miles I contemplated whether to stop to pour contents of my frame bottle into my inbetween aerobars bottle. In the end I decided to carefully pull over off the road at one of the access roads. I could barely take the frame bottle out of the cage with both hands, so it was definitely a good decision to not attempt to do so while riding. I quickly dumped all of its contents into my front bottle and off I went. The new batch of Infinit energized me but I was also getting tired of all the passing and watching out for people swerving, riding 2+ abreast and/or close to the center line. I got safely back in 2:29, which was right where I was hoping to be.
T2 went by pretty quick. I decided not to put on clean socks for the run, even though the ones from the bike were a bit wet because I felt like I was doing well and I didn't want to waste time.
Even though my feet felt frozen for the first 2 miles of the run, I was running faster than expected - a bit under 7min/mile. I kind of wanted to pee but didn't want to waste time, so decided to hold it in unless it became unmanageable (which it didn't). I was passing people left and right, which was fun :-) The course had 3 loops with lots of twists and turns, including a few out and backs, which got a bit crowded during loop 2 and 3. Still, I kept ticking away 7min miles (plus/minus 5s) and was feeling good except for some coughing. My legs were getting a bit tired and sore on the last loop but I did not have any bad (injury) pain - yay! I was very glad when I crossed the finish line in 4:40:13 (around 1:31 for the run). I felt very good about my bike and run :-) I was slightly disappointed for not going a few seconds faster and breaking 4:40 but 4:40 was still a 4-minute PR for me, so I'll take it! Also, I ended up 3rd in my age group and 6th out of all age group women, so not too bad, especially given how the week started out.
Overall, I'm glad I made the trip to Galveston. Not only did I have a decent race but I got to see my friend Yi (who graciously let me stay at her place for the first and last night of my trip, took me out to eat some good food and showed me around Rice University). Also, thanks to traveling solo for this one, I now feel more confident about packing my bike and building it back up, which I haven't done for quite some time. I'm also proud of safely navigating through Houston traffic since last time I was in Houston, the driving seemed pretty scary, even with Justin navigating me.
Big thanks to my coach Mary Beth for all the coaching so far and for the encouragement when things didn't go so well this week. Also, thank you to GGTC for lending me one of their bike cases. Thank you to Yi for being a wonderful host and friend. And of course, thank you to Justin for putting up with my negativity in the past few weeks, for helping me get things ready for the race and for taking care of Gabby and Milo while I was gone :-)
