Today I was challenged both physically and mentally, unfortunately I didn't come out on top or at least how I wanted to come out...I knew I was tired coming into this, being my 10th race of the season, and my workouts the week leading up to the race should have been a warning. I still decided to sign up for this race to simply challenge and push myself further and gain more experience with the Olympic/longer distance. I was actually hoping to do another Half Ironman after doing Chisago at the end of July but didn't find any races in this distance in the cities area.
The swim went fairly well, I felt pretty good throughout the whole thing, and managed to get a 30:01 which was about a minute faster then St.Paul, which was the same distance.
The bike was where it all fell apart for me. As I like to say...I didn't have any legs left, even going straight/no hills, I was having difficulty keeping a 20mph pace, which normally would have been easy. Not today though. I did make it through, but I knew that my legs were done. The burning feeling in my legs was definitely that fatigue I was hoping to avoid in this race, but I wasn't able to fight through it today like I was able to in some of my earlier season races. After knowing that this was just NOT going to be my race, I just tried to keep positive and do my best (which was very difficult to do). After coming into the transition off a very tiring bike, I was in at 1:13.28, 20.3mph average. Knowing that this was my time, I knew I had overdone it...
The run was not as bad as the bike, and I really did try to have fun out there while trying to clear the lactic acid out of my legs after the bike. My run was once again not the best. After coming off a 6:34 pace for the St.Paul 10K, I ended up coming at a 7:04 pace, 43:44 time. My overall time was a 2:29.42 (6th overall woman, 3rd age group), which was about 10 minutes off my time from last week for an Olympic distance.
With that said, I will remember coming into transition and hearing Jerry O'Neil, the announcer saying, how uncomfortable I looked going out into the run. He was absolutely right, today's race was fun but very painful!
Key take away: good test on how one race could go so well while another race could go not so well. Once the body has had enough, there is really nothing you can do but fight, fight, fight through fatigue =) *OR 'just rest and not do as many races/training next season =)
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