Race Recap: Silicon Valley Super Sprint Triathlon

Until the Silicon Valley Super Sprint a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t done a sprint triathlon since my very first tri in 2012 — and I had no intention of doing one this year. Silicon Valley was the training race for the group I captain, and I have learned that I don’t like doing the same race as the group. (I want to be available to problem-solve for everyone else without having to deal with my own shit.) My grand plan was to race the Olympic distance at Silicon Valley on Saturday and then cheer my brains out for the sprint on Sunday.

But then this became the year with no water, and the Silicon Valley races moved north to Half Moon Bay — and when that happened, the sprint and the Olympic got scheduled for the same day. And, unlike at Napa last year, the Olympic started first, so if I did that, I wouldn’t get to see my group race at all. I didn’t want that, and I didn’t feel like getting up at 4 a.m. just to cheer, so, fine. I would do the sprint (er, “super sprint”).

I know sometimes it’s cool to be all “I had no goals or expectations!” about a race when you totally have goals and expectations, but I honestly did not have goals or expectations for this race. Okay: I had a thought that it would be nice to bike something close to 30 minutes, but other than that, I just wanted to not literally fall on my face like I did at my last sprint.

Pre-Race

The thing about moving races to alternate sites is that nobody has a damn clue what’s going on. The reconstructed course in Half Moon Bay had a point-to-point bike route and two transition areas. I could have made race morning easier by picking up my packet and setting up T2 on Saturday, but that would have meant at least three hours of driving, and, no. I was driving two friends, and our initial idea was that we’d drive to T1/packet pick-up, get our numbers, drop off the bikes, drive the 9 miles south to T2, set up our run stuff, then drive back to T1 and finish getting ready for the swim before transition closed. Writing that out makes it sound insane. It was insane. And it’s not what happened. Once we saw what we were dealing with, parking-wise and transition-area-wise and time-wise, we went straight to our Plan B of putting our T2 bags on a truck, which, we were promised, would deposit them at T2 in some sort of order by rack number. Well, we didn’t have a rack number in T1 — all three of us ended up in these un-nmbered overflow racks at the very back of transition — but several volunteers assured us that the bags would make it and, really, what were we going to do?

At the beach, it was foggy enough that it was hard to see the buoys. For at least a half-hour, the fog would lift a little bit (“Hey! It’s that yellow thing!”) and then roll back in (“Nope, lost it again.”). The Olympic waves started and the swimmers almost immediately disappeared into the mist. At that point they announced the sprint start would be delayed at least 10 more minutes to hope for better conditions, so I killed time braiding people’s hair and feeling glad I’d worn socks down to the swim start to keep my feet warm as long as possible (seriously doing this at every race from now on). About 20 minutes before my new wave start time I finally couldn’t take it any more — and by “it” I mean “waiting to pee” — and went down to splash around in the cold, dark water until it was time to start.

Swim – .35 mile (600-ish yards) – 13:51 – 13/89 women, 3/20 AG

The fog hadn’t cleared much, but it was a straightforward enough course that I didn’t have much of a path to plot. I remember thinking at one point that I was actually managing to move in a relatively straight line, but I screwed up my Garmin at the start, so I have no perfectly triangular map to prove this.

But then the third leg took ages, and I was convinced I was off course and at the back of my wave. At one point I saw a jetski heading toward shore off to my right and thought, “Can I draft that?” And then I realized I should probably just put my head down and swim harder. I hopped out of the water, got the top of my wetsuit off, looked down at my watch, saw something like 00:00:03, and was like, guess we’re gonna figure that out later.

T1 – 4:35

It was a pretty long run up the beach, down a road, down a little bit of rocky path (mostly carpeted, thankfully), through the entire transition area to my rack, and back through the entire transition area to the bike mount. I managed to actually run most of the way and to stuff my things into my “swim clothes” bag with less ineptitude than I displayed at Vineman, so while this number is nothing impressive, I consider it a win.

Bike – 9.5 miles – 31:15 – 16/89 women, 5/20 AG

How are you even supposed to ride the bike leg of a sprint tri? I settled on “hard, but not so hard I can’t eat or drink or talk or breathe,” which may not have actually been hard enough.

The first couple of miles of the bike course took us out of the park, and I remember a bit of a headwind and a bit of a false flat. As soon as we turned onto Highway 1, though, all that wind was at my back. One weird thing I noticed pretty quickly was that nobody was passing me. Usually the bike leg is a constant chorus of “on your left,” especially if I’ve had an even halfway decent swim. This time, I only remember one woman passing me, plus maybe a handful of guys. I was tempted to thank the tailwind — but then, we all had the same tailwind.

Around mile six, I started leapfrogging with a man in his 50s. I’d pass him on the “hills” (slightly more uphill flats); he’d catch me on the “descents” (slightly more downhill flats). After the first round, we started some good-natured heckling. I passed him twice; he passed me once; and when I finally got by him for good, he hollered after me that I’d be seeing him on the run. This is far from the first time that I’ve found myself being exactly the same race speed as a 50+-year-old man, so I think I’ve found my ideal training partner demographic …

T2 – 5:02

Because I didn’t have my swim time, I wasn’t sure how I was doing overall, but I felt like I was having a solid race. That all went out the window as soon as I got into transition. There was a poster with bib numbers and rack numbers, but my number wasn’t on it. I asked a volunteer where I was supposed to go, and he said, “You’re definitely somewhere in these four rows” and pointed me to the right. I then spent the next several minutes stalking up and down the rows, looking at every bag and not finding mine. (At some point I had the wherewithal to dump my bike on a random rack.) Meanwhile, at least three female teammates came into, and left, transition. I was pissed.

Finally, I asked a different volunteer if I was definitely in the first four rows on the right. “No!” she said. “You’re right there!” and pointed directly at my bag — on the left side. Obviously. I grabbed it, dragged it over to where I’d tossed the bike, switched shoes, mayyyyyybe said something a little snotty to the first volunteer (sorry, dude), and headed out. It was probably my fastest transition ever except for the part where it was one of my slowest transitions ever.

Run – 3.1 miles – 27:14 – 15/89 women, 4/20 AG

I got on the run and I was angry and I was flying. I looked at my watch and saw I was running sub-8 pace, and I knew there was no way I could hold that, but I decided to go with it as long as I could.

To the extent that I could think at that speed, my only thought was: If I want to make up for the bag situation, I have to catch all the women who came in after me on the bike. Of the four I knew, I was fairly sure I could outrun one of them, I knew one was usually faster than me, and the other two were wildcards. Game on.

I spotted the first one somewhere in the first mile. I passed her but spent the rest of the race running scared; I’ve started faster than her before at workouts only to have her shoot by me at the end. The second, I passed early in the narrow trail out-and-back. The third just after the turnaround. And then there was just one.

I really didn’t think I was going to get her. I let myself be OK with that, because she wasn’t in my age group anyway. But as I kept running whatever pace I was running at that point — mid-8s? — I realized I was slowly getting closer. A handful of yards, then a handful of feet, then — right as we went to cross Highway 1 — we pulled even. A few steps later, I was in front.

One last motivator: I spotted a yellow jersey ahead. My guy from the bike! I was slowly gaining on him too. “You were right!” I said as I pulled up. We ran shoulder to shoulder until I pulled further ahead on the cruel final hill up to the finish.

Overall – 1:21:57 – 15/89 women, 4/20 AG

I knew I’d finished under 1:30, which I felt great about, but I didn’t think it was anything remarkable; so many people from my group were already done. I cheered in the remaining finishers, then got in line for a burrito and started listening to the sprint awards. The woman I’d passed closest to the end of the run ended up third in her age group, and mine is usually more competitive, so I assumed there was no way I was placing. Naturally, I’d just taken a giant bite of burrito when they called my name for 3rd place in women’s 30-34.

I was, honestly, stunned. Since someone in my AG had won overall, the awards went a little deeper for the rest of us, and my 4th place was actually 3rd AG — or, as it turned out, 2nd AG, after they confirmed the times the next day and discovered a DNF that bumped another woman in 30-34 up to the overall awards.

Being on the podium was surreal. Me, winning an award, for sports?

It wasn’t a big field, and it wasn’t a big race, but I’m still proud. I don’t think I’ll ever be “good at” racing sprints — I was still able to do the rest of my planned longer run later in the day, which suggests I maybe didn’t exactly leave it all out there — but to be momentarily good enough to win something for it was strange and exciting and fun.

The day before the race, I’d been driving around my neighborhood looking for parking for nearly an hour, damp and cold from open-water swimming and full of stress about how much I still had to do to get ready and what time I’d have to go to sleep and how early I’d have to wake up, and for the first time in a while, I found myself wondering: Am I enjoying this? I love being a captain, I love helping people through their first triathlon season, but was I still loving doing it myself?

This race proves that yes, I do still love it. Yes, I am improving. And yes, maybe I even have some aspirations to get faster and stronger and maybe make this podium appearance not a one-time-only thing.

Race Recap: Berkeley 10-Mile

Oof. Hi. Last week was one of those insane work weeks — the kind where I worked more in four days than I usually work in five and exercise seemed like something that some alternate version of me used to do. It’s over now — and better yet, I’m soon to start a two-week vacation — but I still feel like I’m digging out from inside a cold, deep hole.

Said hole includes some fragments of blog posts I never finished, though, so let’s rewind to the Sunday before Thanksgiving, when I ran the inaugural Berkeley Half 10-mile race.

Way back in 2011, I made a 1:30 10-miler a goal, figuring it would be a stop on the way to a sub-2 half — not something I’d finally get around to attempting almost a year later. And yet, my loose goal for Berkeley was still 1:29:59; I wanted to finally claim a sub-9 pace for a longer race. (My half PR is 9:05/mile pace.) In the weeks leading up to the race, I’d been debating what my strategy should be: Go out hard and try to hang on, which worked fine for a 10K but might be awful over four more miles? Start slow, finish fast? Try to run exactly 9:00/mile? I do have the ability to run consistent splits, but only when I’ve been doing tempo runs, which I hadn’t been.

The one thing I definitely didn’t intend was to run without data, but when I tried powering on my Garmin at the start line and was met with a pathetic beep and a gray screen, apparently I was going to be doing just that. My phone was in the car on the way to the finish line; my Garmin was my only clock. I figured I’d take note of the time at the start clock and compare that to the clocks along the course, but it turned out there weren’t any clocks along the course. All of that meant that this was the first race I’ve ever run where I had no sense of how I was doing until I saw my time at the finish line.

***

Downtown Berkeley (miles 1-3ish)

We started in a park downtown, looped around to the southern edge of the Berkeley campus, and ran through some residential streets I vaguely remembered from grad school. There’s a minor but steady uphill in the first mile, which I suspect is why I felt tired early on; maybe I was running too hard for that early in the race, but I’ll never know, because I have no data.

I’d decided at the last second to run with music — my first race in 2013 with music! — and I’m glad I did, because being legitimately surprised by the songs shuffling through on an ancient running playlist distracted me from how exhausted I felt in those first couple of miles.

The Frontage Road (miles 4-6ish)

I’d find out later that most people hated this part of the race. We were, apparently, running on a frontage road next to Interstate 80. I say “apparently” because I was too busy looking at the water to notice. If there’s one thing I learned from the Berkeley race, it’s that you can basically plop me down on any shoreline and make me do anything and I won’t even care as long as I can see the water. We hit this road and I finally felt strong.

Besides staring at the water, I was also scanning through the droves of runners coming the other way. I knew a lot of people running the race, but the only one I saw was grad school friend DR, who was near the front of the 10-mile pack. It was weird — I figured I’d have been able to find a friend, or spot a pacer, or see something that would give me a sense of how I was doing, but there was nothing, so I just kept running.

The Marina (miles 7-9ish)

On the way around the Marina, I started thinking about the long runs I’d been doing with a faster friend. Running at her easy pace had pushed my easy pace to the quicker end of my range — 9:20s instead of 9:40s. I remember thinking very clearly that if I could run 9:20s while chatting, I was probably running 9s without having to talk at all. I briefly considered asking someone near me what pace they were running, but I’m not sure if that would have meant anything anyway — there were half-marathoners, 10K runners, and 10-mile runners all on the road together, but because of the staggered start and the course deviations, I wasn’t sure if I was running with 1:45 half-marathoners or 2:30 half-marathoners.

I did realize, though, that I was passing a lot of people. I’m not sure I’ve ever passed that many people that steadily in a race before, other than maybe in Berlin, when I managed to get a second wind around mile 24. I felt weirdly guilty passing half-marathon runners who had already run more miles than I was going to run the whole day … but feeling fast was fun.

Part of this stretch was on what had been noted in the race guide as “gravel trail” but was in real life more like “large, slippery rocks and/or broken-up road.” It was also at a particularly crowded point, right where half-marathoners, 10-milers, and 10K-ers were all converging, and I backed way off my effort in favor of staying upright.

That Damn Hill (the finish)

I knew about the hill from reading Angela’s Let’s Go 510 race report, and I could see it for maybe half a mile before I actually reached it. It was a little blip on the elevation chart, but I knew even a blip would feel like a mountain at mile 9.5. And it was pretty terrible, though at least it was back on solid pavement and at least I’d get to tear down the back side toward the finish.

And that’s exactly what happened: I crested the top, saw the finish arch, and started gunning it. On the way down I saw Pete and my parents, who managed to capture photographic evidence of what I thought was graceful galloping toward the finish but was actually more like pained lumbering with a mean heel-stike. Regardless! I whooshed down the hill and into the 10-mile finishing chute, where I finally, finally saw my time: 1:28:26.

Post-mortem

I’d find out later that my one official race split — at mile 7.6, because sure — had me at 8:48/mile pace, and I finished at 8:51/mile pace, so I did slow down some on the trail, but maybe not as much as I thought. I wish I had my mile splits, just out of curiosity, but I’m glad I didn’t have them during the race. I think I might have been thrown by my rough start, or by the wobbly “trail” miles, if I’d been looking at my watch. I don’t think racing without data is going to be my thing forever, but I can’t pretend it hasn’t worked for me so far.

This was my last race of 2013 (there was also a turkey trot, but that doesn’t count), and it was exactly the right note to close out the year. This year I took multiple minutes off my 10K PR, hit a long-set goal for a 10-miler, and (while I think PRs matter less in triathlons) dropped more than 30 minutes from my Olympic tri time. And I think finishing a half-ironman is the axis on which all of those things turned, because it gave me a base of fitness and taught me how to get things done even when it wasn’t comfortable or easy. It was a very good year.

(Next up: I climb a mountain on my bike! A small mountain, but a mountain nonetheless.)

Race Recap: Run 10 Feed 10 10K

Before Sunday, I hadn’t run a 10K since August of 2011. I was, and am, damn proud of that 55:07 10K, but I’m a different runner now. In the summer of 2011, I’d just started doing speedwork; I hadn’t run a marathon or finished a triathlon; I was still more than a year away from running a sub-2 half marathon. After running a handful of 57-minute 10Ks in Olympic triathlons this year, I started to wonder what would happen if I ran 6.2 miles without going for a swim and a bike ride first.

That was the question when I signed up for the Run 10 Feed 10 10K. I had a feeling 55 minutes — my old goal — was a soft target, but I wasn’t sure how far that time could fall.

My immediate preparation for the race was less than stellar, but I had some promising workouts here and there — the 2-mile time trial from the end of Santa Cruz training and a good track workout last Wednesday that I ran entirely in the dark and entirely by feel. And I wanted the PR; I was ready to fight for it. I said to Pete while we were running in Vermont, I don’t think I’ll ever sign up for another 10K if it isn’t at least a stab at a goal time. I don’t need to prove I can run 6.2 miles at my normal pace these days. I needed that once, but again, I’m a different runner now.

That said, I sure didn’t spend Saturday acting like I was running a goal race. We got last-minute tickets to the Bridge School Benefit, which was fantastic, but which was also scheduled to end at midnight … and then actually ended at 1:15 a.m., a 30-minute walk in uncomfortable shoes from our car, an hour’s drive away from home. And there were 2 a.m. Jack in the Box cheese sticks. (The one saving grace is that I was sober, because I refused to pay $12 for a plastic cup of bad beer.) I fell asleep around 3 a.m. and slept a little too soundly, because I didn’t hear the first 45 minutes of my alarm and woke up totally confused at 6:45 a.m.

Luckily, the only thing my late start lost me was the chance to park across from the start before the street was shut down. Well, I’d planned to jog a warm-up anyway. I was out of the house in 15 minutes and parked a half-mile-ish from the start by 7:20. Bib pick-up and bag check were hyper-organized, porta potties were plentiful, and I ended up wishing I’d cut things a little closer, because it was windy and chilly and I wanted to get going. A little after 8, we headed down to the start corral. There were some half-hearted attempts to line us up by minutes-per-mile, but even though I lined up by the 9-minute sign, by the time the crowd crunched down, I was closer to the 7-minute sign. Oh well. National anthem, and we were off.

I had glanced at the course map, but I hadn’t really studied it, other than to know it was flat. The best way I can describe it is a 10K course in about a 5K’s worth of territory. If you know San Francisco running, the course went from Sports Basement down to the Mason/Old Mason split, turned left, picked up the trail, went along the water to Hopper’s Hands, U-turned there, and came back on the sidewalk and path to Sports Basement. That added up to somewhere between three and four miles, with the rest of the distance coming from two more (progressively smaller) loops on the same terrain.

It’s probably good I didn’t look more closely at the map, because if I had, I would have known I’d hate it. It loosely mirrors one of our go-to TAG training runs, and the gravel/sand trail (its exact composition at any moment seems to depend on the wind) always feels like it steals my energy — not to mention the nasty spit of cambered road on the way to Hopper’s, which I wish the ocean would hurry up and reclaim. Plus, it can have a nasty headwind going outbound. When we turned onto the trail for the first time, it slowly dawned on me what I was in for — and though it made the race harder than I’d anticipated, I was somewhat happy for the challenge; if I did PR, I couldn’t just shrug it off as “easy course.”

Most of my pictures were of someone else, so when I found this one, I stole it. If that gets fixed, I’ll buy it legally. Promise.

I wore my Garmin but put it under my sock-armwarmer and never once looked at it. There were clocks at every mile marker, and that was plenty of feedback — almost too much, actually, because when I crossed the first mile somewhere between 8:50 and 9:00, I was annoyed. I knew I’d started a bit back from the clock, but my previous PR pace was 8:52, and I felt like I had to be faster than that now. At that point, I reset my expectations to run all sub-9-minute miles — so if I hit a marker, and I was below that mile’s multiple of 9, I’d know I was doing OK. That actually worked, plus it occupied my mind to remember all the multiples of 9.

Here’s what I remember:

Mile 1: Half on the road with the wind at my back, half on the trail with the wind in my face. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Guys behind me chatting merrily away, probably running sub-8s, passing me easily. Thinking “steady.” Thinking “breathe.” Thinking “please let that dumb song from the radio get out of my head.”

Mile 2: All trail. Felt long. Passed the 4-mile marker and realized how the looping thing was going to work. Mind mostly blank except for some dumb song. Why on earth had I turned on the radio in the car?

Mile 3: Stupid, rutted road. Saw the crowd behind me at the turnaround and realized I was relatively far up in the field. Weird! Coming back on the road — tailwind, slight downhill, real pavement — felt great, but I was also getting tired, and as I came near the 3-mile marker, I remember thinking I’d run a really smart 5K, but too bad this was a 10K.

Mile 4: We looped past the finish, where a very enthusiastic announcer was yelling things like “keep pushing! keep driving!” I started leapfrogging with a couple of girls and eventually tucked in behind one in a way that I hope wasn’t obnoxious but probably was.

Mile 5: The last bit of awful road. I passed the girl at the turnaround and never saw her again, but then a girl I’d passed a while back passed me. I think this mile might have been slightly long; my watch beeped a solid 2 minutes before we hit the 5-mile marker, but I recorded 6.2 exactly for the course.

Mile 6(.2): Looping past the finish again, I was not in the mood to hear the chipper announcer. The wind had really picked up, or maybe I was just tired, but I swear it felt like I was being pushed to the right. The trail cut across Crissy Field and deposited us near the mile-5 marker, which made it seem like there was a lot of race left, but there was a clock there for mile 6, too, and it said 51:xx. Wait. 51? I tried to kick — I later watched my finish line video, and my idea of a kick could use some work — and ended up crossing just as the clock ticked over to 53.

My final time was 52:50, which I cannot believe. I mean. My 10K time starts with 52! That sounds so fast! That doesn’t sound like a time I can run. It’s an 8:31 pace! That’s insane. Looking at the splits later, it was a pretty consistent race — everything was under 8:45, and my first and last miles were the fastest. The best thing is, I think I could do it again. I’ve been afraid to run another half because I worry that my one and only sub-2 was a fluke, but this feels repeatable.

I don’t think I’ll chop another big chunk of time off this PR anytime soon; this leap was definitely helped by the fact that it was my first 10K in more than two years. But hey, if I average a minute a year, I’ll be at 50 minutes before I’ve aged out of my current age group. Seems like a good goal.

ABOUT THE RACE

Cost: I registered via a LivingSocial deal for $39. Early registration was $50, regular registration $60. There were also various $5 discount codes floating around the internet. The race was one of three 10Ks (the others were in Chicago and New York) sponsored by Women’s Health magazine, and the big sell was that part of the fee would go to provide 10 meals “in my community.” I couldn’t find much info about what that meant, but in 2012 the race donated some amount of money to the San Francisco Food Bank. Fundraising was encouraged but optional, and I didn’t.

Parking: Free and plentiful at Sports Basement before 7 a.m.; after that, you were on your own. I parked in a free lot about a half-mile from the race start that had plenty of spaces when I arrived at 7:20.

Race Day Logistics: This gets its own bullet, because I was really impressed. Packet pick-up was Saturday at Sports Basement or Sunday on-site from 7-7:45. When I arrived at 7:30ish, I immediately spotted a volunteer holding a sign that said “Still Need Your Packet?” I pointed and said “that’s me!” and she directed me into a short line. There were two computers for pick-up and two for on-site registration, but if nobody was registering and the pick-up lines were full, the volunteers would use the on-site registration computers to re-assign your number. And bag check was brilliant! It was set up with different lanes by the last number of your bib – one lane for bibs ending in 0 or 1, another for bibs ending in 2 or 3, etc. Each had its own table and its own volunteer, and the process for both pick-up and drop-off was seamless. I don’t know if it would work for a larger race (there were about 530 finishers), but it was perfect for this field size.

Swag: A burlap FEED bag (similar to this tote) that is pretty handy (and my cats love to sleep on it), a bracelet instead of a medal, and all the free toiletries you heart desired. Say what you will about Unilever — and I have said some things — but they sponsored the race and, most directly, stocked a post-race “referesh” station with sample-size moisturizer, Vaseline, deodorant, and towelettes in giant buckets with volunteers encouraging finishers to “take as many as you want.” And the main swag was a bag, so holding stuff was not an issue. There were also bagels with various toppings and spreads, apples and oranges, Kellogg bars and cereal samples, coconut water, and Cabot cheese packets. This is what I brought home:

Post-Race Festivities: A 30-minute workout/yoga session I didn’t stay for because I got cold; foot massages; a station to get your picture on a faux Women’s Health cover; foam rolling stations; manicures.

Overall Organization: There were volunteers at every turn (and there were a lot of turns), ample porta potties (it likely helped that there were public restrooms at the far ends of the course), good signage, and computers for checking times after the race. Times were online almost immediately, and photos and finish line videos came on Monday, though all of mine were of somebody else until things finally got sorted on Monday night. Photo downloads are $10 for all photos, which is on the better end of the spectrum, but it appears to be all or nothing; there’s no single-download option that I can see. (I’d be cooler with that if all my photos were of me, but oh well.)

Would I Run It Again? I wish I liked the course more, because everything else was great (and while $60 seems a bit steep, I think $50 registration is fair given the charity aspect, and the $39 I paid felt like a steal). I’d do it again with friends or as part of a long training run, but I’m not sure I’d try to PR there again, unless I wanted to go for consistency.

Race Recap: Santa Cruz Triathlon

tl;dr: met most of my goals, had the bike of my life, and PR’d by 11+ minutes.

Pre-race

Sara and I stayed with our husbands in a cottage a few minutes from the start. We drove down mid-day on Saturday, picked up our packets, and laughed like crazy at dinner with teammates (during which Michael Imperioli was sitting behind us, but none of us noticed — our waiter had to tell us later). Pete and I went for a beer after that — why stop now? — and I was asleep by 11 and out until just before 6 a.m. My pre-race sleeping game is pretty spot-on.

Sara’s husband drove us to the start, and I rudely passed up transition spots next to some teammates for a spot near the bike in/bike out, figuring that even though it might be a longer run in from the swim and out on the run, it would mean the least running in bike shoes. Blah blah porta potty, blah blah transition set-up, blah blah running out of time to put my wetsuit on so carrying it down to the beach. We missed the “mandatory” pre-race meeting but had plenty of time to warm up, get in the ocean (not much colder than Aquatic Park), and take some pictures before they called our wave.

Swim – 32:53

In all my excitement about having something to sight on my breathing (right) side, I’d failed to learn that the swim course doesn’t go straight along the pier. Instead, it’s a diagonal cut across the ocean from a spot a couple of hundred(?) yards down the beach, then around the back and straight to the beach along the other side.

Based on earlier waves, the advice I heard was “start right, stay right.” I lined up on the right, and I went into the water on the right, but by the time the crowd had sorted itself out, I was somehow on the left. That gave me a decent view of the furthest buoy, though, so I kept shooting for that. Could I have cut it closer? Certainly, since my Garmin swim distance was 1.08 miles (…again).

The return leg was a mental struggle — and not one I was anticipating. After all, I’d have the pier on my breathing side and the beach in front of me; how could I go wrong? By swimming totally solo, for one thing. By worrying that I was drifting left, for another. I thought I must be spinning around and swimming in the wrong direction. An intermediate sighting buoy or a kayaker on the left or anything would have helped, because everything looked the same and I felt like I was bobbing randomly in the open ocean. (No sea lions, though I could hear them and I’m told others felt them!)

Anyway, I was sure I’d been in the water for way more than 40 minutes, so when I looked down to see a time starting with 32, I was stunned. That’s my best Olympic swim of the season, though it probably felt the worst. I think the lack of markers and the disorientation messed with my sense of effort and distance. If I could swim that course again now that I know what it looks like, I think I could do it better, but I can’t really complain about a season best.

T1 – 6:24

I was dreading T1. It’s a .4-mile run up the beach, across train tracks, and down a long path, and I have wimpy, sensitive feet. I was hoping the swim would numb them, but it didn’t quite. I did manage to run the whole way without needing to walk or puke, though, so that was a win. Honestly, I’ve had T1s slower than this in a race where I didn’t have to run .4 miles.

The previous race I’d spectated on this site had bike mount/dismount about halfway up the small hill out of transition, but this race moved it to the top of the hill — a relief, because I saw some sketchy mounts/dismounts at the other race. Yeah, it took me longer, but I didn’t fall over.

Bike – 1:23:49

My main objective for the first part of the bike was to catch Sara, who’d left transition a minute or two ahead of me. At the random out-and-back in the early miles, I calculated that she was about three minutes ahead, and when we hit Highway 1, I started pushing.

This bike course was perfect for me. It’s not flat after all; it’s a roller coaster of several (smallish, 50ish-foot) hills. I must have finally figured out how to use momentum, because I’d see a hill looming in front of me and by the time my brain could go “what the…” I’d be halfway up it. I rode the whole time in my big ring and even pedaled most of the downhills, because the road was straight and reasonably well-paved and because I figured out that cruising at 23 mph is amazing.

I was passed a bunch in the first few miles, then settled into a leapfrogging relationship with a guy and a girl for the next stretch. I’d pass on the uphills; they’d pass back on the downhills. I lost the girl after the second round, but it took me four or five times to solidly ditch the guy. Every time I went around, I’d say something — like “on your left, see you on the downhill” or “on your left, hi again” — and he did not appear to be into it, so the last time I said “on your left, I’m really sorry” and he finally laughed.

I found Sara just before Davenport, but when we hit the last hill into the turnaround, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hold that pass. My legs felt dead pushing up the incline and through the aid station, maybe just because everyone’s pace dropped a lot while we squeezed through? It was pretty narrow, and I was happy to get back on the road upright.

I was bracing for a headwind on the way back, but it seemed fairly calm. I was feeling pretty good about coming in sub-1:30 but really wanted to crack 17 mph while I was at it, so I kept pushing through the rest of Highway 1, then stretched my legs out a little as we wound through town. My Garmin read the course a little short, so I thought we still had half a mile to go when I suddenly saw the “prepare to slow down” sign. I braked harder than I meant to but dismounted cleanly (no thanks to the guy who ended up with his bike horizontal across the right-hand side of the line) and walked the hill into transition because I was sure I was falling on my ass otherwise.

T2 – 2:09

Shoes off, shoes on. I tried a new trick of leaving my water bottle and race belt inside my hat so I could just take the whole bundle out onto the run course, and I liked it. I saw my total time as I was leaving transition, and I knew that I’d need a big 10K PR to break 3 hours, and I found that oddly relaxing. Maybe that was the wrong reaction — I’ve been thinking a lot about that — but in the moment, I took it as a sign to have the strongest run I could, versus chasing an arbitrary time and ending up disappointed.

Run – 57:14

You know what’s hard? Running after biking at 17+ mph. Oh, you knew that? I did not. My brick workouts have been a strength of my training this year — but running after biking the fastest I’ve biked in my life was new, and it hurt. I almost walked up the little hill (speed bump?) coming out of transition, saw a pace in the 11s, got sad, yet somehow still hit the first mile marker in 9:04. I had the great idea to lap my watch at the marker, forgetting that lapping in multisport mode ends the workout, so I got my little “you just finished a triathlon!” beepy song with 5.2 miles to go.

The run is flat but unshaded, and I wilt in those conditions, so I never felt good — though if a 57-ish 10K is my new “not feeling good” pace, well, OK. I walked all three aid stations for sips of Gatorade and water, and I topped off my handheld bottle twice. I saw almost everyone I knew on the course at some point during the run, and it was an amazing distraction to look for them. I knew Sara would run me down at some point, and I was pleased to make it a couple of miles before she came flying by. I saw her again at the turnaround, followed quickly by three training partners in a row coming the other way, and then Lauren, whom I ran over to hug. Coming off the path, I saw a few teammates with their medals on, cheering that the finish line was right around the corner, and — much like the bike finish — I didn’t believe them, but then I saw the arch and Pete and that was it. Final time: 3:02:29.

Minutae

• I said when I finished that I’d be mad about that 2:29 later, and it’s been three days, and I’m still not mad. Did I leave 2:30 somewhere? Not all in one place. Maybe I could have picked up a minute on the bike and a minute on the run, but I’m not sure. Would this have been sub-3 in a race without such a long run to T1? Maybe, but that also wouldn’t have been this race. Would I have run 2 minutes faster if I hadn’t stopped at the aid stations? I actually doubt it; I think those breaks enabled me to keep the pace I was running.
• That said, now I really want that sub-3.
• My final PR was by almost exactly the amount of my bike PR, and that’s cool, but I can’t ride that gravy train forever. My bike had the most room to improve going into this year, and I’ve improved it. Do I think I can still get faster? Sure, but the gap is getting smaller, and I’m not sure I’ll ever routinely ride faster than 1:20. I’ve got to drop time from the swim and run now too, which is scary, because I think I’m a lot closer to my speed ceiling in those sports. Maybe not. We’ll see.
• I ended up 16th/28 AG and one of four women from my tri club who occupied the 13-16th spots, all within six minutes of each other.
• Nutrition nonsense: toasted roll with almond butter when we got into transition, about half of an english muffin with the rest of the almond butter about 45 minutes later, and some water with Nuun throughout the morning; 3/4 of a bottle of Roctane and three shot bloks on the bike plus a salt tab; and lots of water and two more shot bloks running. I could have used some plain water on the bike and wished I’d taken another salt tab once it was apparent how warm and sunny it was, but this general plan works for me.
• New favorite finish line food: grapes.
• One of the super-fast ladies in my age group? Sonja Wieck, whom I recognized on the sidelines as I was walking to meet my friends. I did that awkward “I know you…from…the internet!” thing and we did some chatting and some cheering. Only later did I find out she won the women’s race.

Race Recap: Vineman 70.3

If racing is a celebration of training, then my time at Vineman on Sunday was one big 6-hour, 34-minute, 54-second party. It seems cold to say that the day was all just execution — where’s the drama in that? where are the crazy highs and lows? — but the number one thing I felt throughout the day was well-prepared.

And what that preparation got me was a bunch of times faster than the ones I thought I could pull off. I spent most of the day with a big dumb grin on my face. Part of it, I’m sure, is the sheer joy of the automatic PR, the fact that as long as I finished, I’d be doing something I could barely conceive of a year ago. But most of it was a confidence I don’t think I’ve ever felt before in racing — that I’d done everything I could to be ready, and now all I had to do was do it.

I don’t know where that confidence came from, but I’m glad it was there, because from the moment I got to Santa Rosa on Friday night, I felt calm. My phone was full of text messages with other people’s nerves, and I kept expecting my own to kick in at any minute, but they never did. On Saturday, we hit up some Sonoma County favorites: Flying Goat for coffee, Arrigoni’s for sandwiches and snark (overheard: “What gluten-free options do you have?” “Well. All of our sandwiches come on bread.”), Powell’s for candy. I went to the athlete meeting, got my wristband and packet, set up my T2 stuff, and lazed around the hotel until it was time for dinner with Michaela, Courtney, and friends. (And pros! Michaela’s post about chatting with a pro is fantastic.)

I started trying to put myself to bed around 10 p.m., and with the exception of one wake-up, I slept solidly until the alarm went off at 5:30. I picked up my friend from his hotel, drove back to mine to load the car, and Pete drove us both to Guerneville. By chance, we ran into my parents while looking for parking, so all of us walked to Johnson’s Beach together, and then it was up into transition and down to the water.

Swim — 40:18

I was in wave 17 of 23, starting at 8 a.m. The waves were split six minutes apart, but from the time we were called to get in to the time the horn went off, it felt like an hour. The water was warmer than the air — 70-ish degrees, warm enough that steam was rising off the top — and I was glad I’d chosen the sleeveless wetsuit even given the chilly morning.

In my practice swims, I’d always started toward the far bank of the river, so I found a spot on that side toward the front. I’m not sure how many people were in the wave — 50? 75? Vineman split up many of the traditional age groups to even out the waves, so I was with women 30-32 — but we were really spread out, and I felt very little contact getting through the start.

I was waiting for the first shallow bit with the plants sticking out over the surface, just after the bridge, but I never found it — I must have been just slightly to one side. In fact, I never encountered any particularly shallow spots; after the turnaround, I touched the riverbed a couple of times, but mostly I was able to swim normally. I saw people ahead of me dolphin-diving once or twice and spotted some people walking at the edges, but it seemed like most of my wave was swimming most of the time.

I felt like I was doing a good job staying in the thick of my wave — which is not something I’ve always done. I caught my first purple cap from the wave in front maybe halfway through the outbound leg, and it took longer than that for the first dark green cap from the wave behind to catch me. The river is narrow enough that I honestly wasn’t doing a whole lot of sighting, other than just making sure I was rounding the buoys on the right, and I know that benefited me.

The one tricky part was figuring out a line to the swim exit, and I swam more of the last .2 with my head up than I wish I had. I just couldn’t quite get a handle on the angle of the exit ramp. I saw people start to stand up but I kept swimming as long as possible, then picked my way over the rocks as quickly as I could and got over the ramp.

I was shocked, honestly, to see 40:xx as my time. I felt like I’d had a good swim relative to my normal open-water swims and, from what I could tell, relative to my age group — but that would be a good time for me for that distance in the pool. That said, swimming in a current-less, shallow, narrow river is probably about as close as it gets to swimming in a pool, so I suppose it makes sense.

T1 – 7:07

I mean, yeah, that took forever. I’d never done a two-transition-area race before, and I probably should have practiced shoving all my junk into a plastic bag with haste. I also walked the whole way out of transition through the sandy parking lot. I wasn’t doing myself any favors on time, but my footing wasn’t awesome and I’d long ago decided it wouldn’t be worth running my bike out, especially if I was going to walk the little gravelly hill out of transition …

Bike – 3:24:50

… which I did. And then there was still some confusion about who was going to mount where and so I kept walking, up and around until the road was flat. It probably took an extra minute on either side of the timing mat, but two minutes weren’t going to make a difference in my day.

As soon as I got settled on River Road, my first order of business was food. I had a Gu ripped open and ready to go, and I nibbled on it for a couple of miles. So glad I did, because as before, I didn’t manage to get any food down during any of the especially jostle-y parts of Westside, and I didn’t get fully on my regular food-drink-salt pill schedule until an hour into the ride. I was nervous about the tight right turn off River — perhaps the only thing about this course that qualifies as “technical” — and I’m still surprised by how steep and precarious it feels, because on foot it doesn’t look like much. But the people around me heeded the warnings to slow down and we went into the turn single-file, which made me feel much more secure.

After that, I just rode. And rode. And ate. And rode. I sang to myself. I kept an eye out for friends — Ron caught me on River, I caught Lisa on Westside, and Cristina and I leapfrogged for much of the ride. I kept clicking off miles under 4:00 and knew I must be averaging over 16 mph. I think I previewed the course exactly the right amount: my two rides were enough to always know what was coming next but not enough to plunge me into boredom.

We got so lucky with the weather. It stayed foggy and gray until I was going past the Dry Creek General Store around mile 25, when I started seeing streaks of blue peeking out over the vineyards. By the time we hit the Canyon descent, it was bright and sunny, and that’s one of those moments I’ll always remember from this race — flying down that hill, warm sun and mountains and vineyards all around me, feeling happy and strong.

My obsessive over-planning of snacks paid off a handful of times. My bento box ejected my baggie of Shot Bloks (I’d only eaten one of the six!) and the last bit of my Picky Bar as I went over various potholes, and my extra Gu must have gotten lost somewhere during the swim or in transition. But I’d stuffed more Shot Bloks and a Fig Newton into the zippered compartment, so I had quite the rolling buffet. Every time I started to feel tired or sore or angry, I thought, “Let’s throw some food at that problem,” and I did, and it worked great.

My saddle started to bug me around mile 30, and I stood up a bunch on the flatter bits to stretch. Between that and the little climbs leading up to Chalk Hill, I kept waiting for my speed to drop — and it did, but only a little. The way the aid station before Chalk Hill was set up, I didn’t even realize we’d made the turn until I was hitting the sharp incline that serves as a warning shot for the real climb. The hill itself was kind of a mess — people walking to the far right, then people passing them but riding slowly in the middle, then people who were stronger climbers trying to pass them, and the few really strong climbers all the way on the outside flirting with the yellow line. As a (relatively) stronger climber (in this field, on this hill), it was tough to get enough open space to climb at my pace while also not blocking people coming up even faster.

But then it was over, with a short downhill and then a few little bumps on the part of the course I hate. I’d packed a goody bag — a handful of cherry cola and watermelon candies — for this stretch, and every time I started to feel rough, I thanked myself for my foresight and ate a treat. As we came into Windsor, a few cars got aggressive and I did a little talking back, but mostly it was smooth sailing all the way to the high school. After Chalk Hill, I was pretty sure I could come in under 3:30; then I had a stretch where I wasn’t sure and picked up the pace again; then I knew I was going to make it and relaxed for the final miles. I waved to the goats, coasted through the turns, tried to stretch my legs, and finally spotted the high school roof and Pete and my parents cheering near the bike in. I couldn’t believe I was done.

T2 – 9:38

When I got off the bike and stood up, the backs of my butt and legs — basically where my hamstrings and glutes connect — were in searing pain. The same thing happened in Napa with my old saddle, and I’d gotten through the run there fine. I knew I could do it again, but those first few steps were not pleasant. I took my time walking my bike a long way — my Garmin recorded almost a quarter mile! — to my T2 spot and spent a few more minutes stretching once I got there. Eventually, I dumped the last of my bike water bottle into my handheld, stuffed food and the contact lens case I’d loaded up with salt pills into my pockets, and took some long steps to stretch out more as I headed toward the run course.

Run – 2:13:01

I hit the run out and started to jog, and I immediately realized that running felt a lot better than walking. It was a relief, and as I ran through the enthusiastic spectators in the first half-mile of the course — the only part where crowds were allowed — I was choking back happy tears. I knew I was well ahead of my goal, and for the first time, I also knew I was going to stay there. “You’re doing this!” is what kept popping into my head, and I’d smile and then start to cry and then remind myself to keep it under control because there was still a long way to go.

So, I ran. I walked the aid stations as I planned to, and went through every sprinkler and got sprayed by every garden hose, and in between, I ran. When I went over the timing mat at mile 6 at just under an hour, I knew I was right on pace; little did I know that the online tracker claimed the mat was at mile 6.6, and Pete and my parents briefly thought I was going to pull out a sub-2 half!

The high point of the run was probably the archway of misters at the start of the La Crema winery loop. The low point was absolutely the out-and-back on a boring road right after the loop. By that point, I was getting hot — and I know, I was so lucky, it could have been so much worse, but it was still full sun and 80 degrees — and I took a little more time at the aid stations to grab water and ice (where there was still ice; several aid stations had had theirs melt already). I dropped a Nuun tab in my handheld bottle around mile 9, but the heat and fizziness somehow combined to build up pressure in the bottle, and half the water went shooting out across the street. I could only laugh, but it still felt like a very long way to the next aid station and a refill.

I was tired, absolutely, and getting majorly chafed from all the water I was dumping on myself, but I felt weirdly … awesome? I was talking to the people around me, and keeping an eye out for friends, and while I wasn’t moving particularly fast, I never doubted that I could keep running. Non-volunteer spectators were only allowed on the last 1.5 miles of the course, so hitting the crowds was a big milestone. Then it was 10 more minutes of running, then five. Then I spotted my friend Ron again — he’d just dyed his hair red, and I’d been making wine jokes ever since, saying he’d gone Cabernet or Zinfandel for Vineman — and as I came up behind him, I yelled, “Hey, Pinot Noir, you coming with me?” He laughed but waved me on, and then I was at the last intersection before the high school, and then I was turning into the chute.

The chute wound through the parking lot, and I really wasn’t sure how much further I had to go, but I knew I had the dumbest smile on my face. A friend called out and I smiled even bigger — then Cristina was at the fence cheering — then it was Pete and my parents — and then it was the finish line. The announcer said my name, and I threw my arms up, and I was a half-ironman finisher. Total time: 6:34:54.

After

I ran into Layla at the finish and she was eating watermelon, so my next move was clear. I made it over to the food tent and piled a plate with watermelon slices and pasta salad, grabbed some water and chocolate milk, and looked for friends. Eventually, I slowly made my way back to T2 to gather my stuff, found my T1 bag (full of ants who’d gone after my throwaway bottle of Nuun-water, which I clearly should have actually thrown away), did some expo shopping, and walked back to the car. Walking away from the high school got us through the worst of the traffic, and within 45 minutes, I was eating nachos and drinking beer at Lagunitas in Petaluma.

I have more to say that’s all feelings-y, but this post is long enough. I’ll just say that when I look back on the day, there’s not much I would change, and that’s a pretty exciting way to feel after my first 70.3. There are things I could do better, places where I can build on this. But my pie-in-the-sky goal back in April was to hold 16 mph on the bike at Vineman, and I did. My motivation all year was to finish this race under seven hours, and I did. And knowing I could do this at all — that the girl who started running at 25 and learned to ride a bike at 29 could finish a half-ironman at 31 — is the craziest and most awesome thing, period.

Race Report: Folsom International Triathlon

Pre-Race

I headed out for the drive to Folsom just a couple of hours after riding Alpine Dam. People had been telling me it was crazy to do that ride and then race; I kept insisting I wasn’t doing Folsom to race. I entered Folsom as a rust-buster; I hadn’t raced since Napa in April, and I needed to remember how. I also wanted to feel the heat, to give my race nutrition strategy another test, and to practice walking aid stations and then running again — something I’m expecting to do at Vineman. It was all about the experience; time was beside the point.

And that’s a good thing, because the entire thing was sort of a boondoggle — from the 90 minutes I spent stuck in traffic three miles from my house to the end of the swim, when I couldn’t figure out how to exit the water. One hot (but at least not apocalyptically hot) mess.

This was my first USA Productions race, and it’s a big event for my tri club. We had our own rack in the club area of transition, which was good and bad for me — good because it was nice to be around people, bad because it wasn’t where I would have chosen to be and, well, because it’s not always nice to be around people. Being around people means being around people’s neuroses, and after a fair amount of “can I…” and “have you seen…” I had to have a talk with myself: You are not in captain mode right now; you don’t have to fix things that aren’t your responsibility. My responsibility was to feed myself and use the porta potties and get down to the water, and I tried hard to just focus on that.

Swim – 35:40

I decided in the five minutes before my start to wear my regular wetsuit. The morning air was a little chilly, and the water was supposedly still in the low 60s, so I figured I’d go with what I knew worked. This was my first-ever in-water start, so my warm-up was paddling slowly out to the first buoy. I was feeling pretty good until I realized I had no idea where the next buoy was — we were looking straight into the sun. I asked a couple of women next to me if they could see it, and they said nope, they had no idea either.

So when the horn went off, I hopped on some feet and hoped the feet knew where they were going. There was a rowing buoy line in the water, and I was right on it (I could see the underground cable and my hand occasionally hit one of the little round buoys), but I had no idea if it went to our buoy or not. At least I was going straight to somewhere …

I truly never saw the buoy until I was about 10 strokes from it, and I only saw it then because I noticed others making the turn. Even once we were out of the sun, I was never really sure I was on course. At the end of the swim, my Garmin recorded 1.08 miles, so perhaps I never really was on course. It was my slowest Olympic swim ever, though actually at a decent mile pace (if only I’d managed to swim less than a mile).

As I got close to shore, I realized the last few feet between the water and the beach were littered with big, slick rocks. I stood up, tried to take a step, and kicked a rock. Tried again, stumbled on a different one. People around me were running out just fine, but between the rocks and general post-swim disorientation, I literally could not figure out how to get onto the beach. It didn’t help that I started laughing at how ridiculous I felt, which only made me more wobbly. Eventually I managed a solid step forward and beelined out of there.

T1 – 7:06

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that on my way out of the house on Saturday, I cut my finger slicing bread. I slapped a band-aid on it and it seemed well on its way to healing, and I was more worried about waterproofing it on race morning than anything else. Besides, how much do I bend my finger when I swim?

So. I got to my transition area, accidentally pulled off my timing chip (which I’d pinned) with my wetsuit, and noticed a little bit of blood on the ground. I wondered if I’d maybe scraped my ankle with the pin. And then I looked at my hand, and … I’ll stop there. I didn’t see a medical area inside transition, and hell if I was going to drop out of the race because of a knuckle cut. I had some tissues and band-aids in my bag, and eventually I decided that the best plan was to wrap a band-aid on as tightly as I could and go ride. So that’s what a 7-minute transition looks like. I hope I never see one of those again unless I’m bleeding, and I hope I’m never bleeding again in transition.

Bike – 1:36:58

I frankly wasn’t expecting much out of my legs after Alpine Dam, but I did want to get at least a bit of race-pace riding in on a fairly flat course. The one thing I didn’t consider was that flat course = crazy wind. I worked a little harder than I should have in the first 10 miles and had something like a 13 mph average to show for it. I’m not a great at riding into a headwind; it’s hard, but it also gets to me mentally. And I wasn’t familiar enough with the course to tell myself there would be a tailwind later — because what if there never was?

At least the flat course meant the wind wasn’t scary (just annoying and loud). We made a turn onto a random out-and-back stretch just after the halfway point, and I got a few minutes of the wind at my back, which felt awesome. The aid station was on this stretch, and I checked one of my race goals off the list by successfully grabbing, drinking, and ditching an aid station bottle.

Back on the main road, we made a right turn and picked up the tailwind. Miracle! My sole goal became to get my average speed over 15 mph, and it was amazing to routinely click off miles in the 17, 18, even 20 range while doing very little.

The one frustrating thing about this stretch was that I knew I could have gone even faster if my saddle hadn’t been so uncomfortable. I was trying Soas shorts for the first time, and I was hoping they’d solve all my problems, but they…did not. I stood up a handful of times in the last 10 miles to readjust my position, and every time it was hard to convince myself to start pedaling again. (I’ve since gone back to my bike fit guy and have a narrower saddle to try. This only seems to happen during harder rides, but since I’m hoping to ride 56 miles at race pace in a month, I’d like to fix it.)

I’d expected this course to be a slam dunk sub-1:30 bike split, given that I wasn’t all that far off at Napa, but I actually rode about a minute slower than I did there even though Napa is objectively harder. I think that a course with some climbing suits my riding strengths better than a windy, flat one — which is something to keep in mind for future races.

T2 – 3:59

I got back to my rack and there was nowhere to put my bike. Not only was I clearly the slowest person my tri club, but I got the added insult of having to duck and weave between bikes (AND WETSUITS) to squeeze my bike back on the rack. It’s a good thing I always take my helmet off last, because I kept bashing my head into someone’s aerobars. The shoe swap/sunscreen spray/hat grab part of things happened pretty quickly because I was pissed and wanted to go run.

Run – 58:23

What I wanted from this run was a) some quality time in the heat and sun and b) a sense of what would happen to my pace if I walked through every aid station. This is the one part of the day that I am 100% happy with. It took until almost the turnaround for my legs to feel normal, but I bribed myself with Shot Bloks (one each at miles 3, 4, and 5) and splashed cold water on myself at every aid station. I also took a few sips of Cytomax somewhere in there.

Honestly, I was shocked to see how steady my pace stayed. I’ve had a hard time before with running after walking an aid station, but knowing I could keep my pace solidly in the 9:2x range even with those breaks kept me going. I’m aiming for 10-minute miles at Vineman, so this was encouraging.

The heat was noticeable for the first time all day — I heard it was 85 by the end, still not as hot as the forecast said — but the cold water helped tremendously. I passed a couple of people in my age group in the last couple of miles, and I felt strong running back through transition and across the finish line.

Minutae

• My final time was 3:22:06. It’s fine. It’s probably about right for the effort I wanted to put in, though I would have liked to not spend 11 total minutes in transition. It’s also proof that if I really want to finish under three hours, I’m going to have to learn to ride faster.
• Eating: some bread and almond butter in the morning; most of a bottle of Roctane, 3-4 gummies and about half a Picky Bar on the bike; 3 shot bloks during the run. I also had some plain water on the bike course, refilled my handheld bottle a couple of times on the run course, and used 2 salt packets, one at about mile 20 of the bike and one at mile 4.5 or so of the run. I forgot to eat a Gu before the swim and I don’t think it mattered, mostly because I didn’t have as much time to kill before my wave start as usual.
• Someone in my tri club recorded almost exactly the same swim distance as I did, and she said she missed a buoy. I wonder if I missed one too, though I don’t know where that would have happened. Most likely I just swam stupidly.

Wildflower 2013

I think I understand the Wildflower magic now.

Last year, I loved the race. I fell head-over-heels for triathlons, and I had one of the most magical, expectation-blowing races I’ve ever had in any corner of the sport. But I didn’t feel any particular pressing need to go back. I said several times that the one thing I knew I wouldn’t do this year was Wildflower. There are a lot of races out there; why keep going to one that’s so hard and hot and logistically complex?

This year, I spent more time on the other side of Wildflower — as a spectator and cheerleader, a jumping-around-er and a “here-you-can-have-my-windbreaker”-er — than I did racing, and from that side, I get it. Standing by the finish chute for an hour watching people sprint to the end and limp to the end and grab their children by the hand and jog the whole family to the end, I kept yelling to anyone who would listen, This is the most fun I’ve ever had!

And it was … possibly because I wasn’t really racing.

Team Brew Masters by jkoshi on Flickr

***

Racing isn’t really what this Wildflower was about for me, but let’s get it out of the way anyway. I was swimming the first leg of the Olympic distance relay, with Pete biking and our friend Jess tackling the run. We camped with the Golden Gate Tri Club, where once again I had no problems sleeping through most of the night, save for an incessant need to pee that I managed to put off actually doing until it was light out. We got ourselves out of the tents around 7, and had “first breakfast”: bread and peanut butter for me, plus some luxurious campground coffee made by Jess and her husband. I hardly ever drink coffee before morning workouts, but with nearly four hours to kill before my start, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

It was cold, gray, and windy — windy enough that leaves were pelting the tents at the campground, windy enough to send up big dust clouds — and, more than anything, confusing. Wildflower is hot and sunny! Yesterday was 90 degrees! Pros couldn’t wear wetsuits! What is going on? I actually wanted to get my wetsuit on sooner just to stay warm.

Just as last year, I remember thinking I’d be so bored waiting for hours in transition — and, just as last year, the time flew by in a steady rotation of saying hi to people, braiding hair, and cycling through the porta potty line. A bunch of TAGers were worried they would be cold on the bike, so I doled out all the warm clothes I had in my bag. Around 10, I wriggled into my wetsuit and headed down for the women’s wave starts.

From the boat ramp, it was clear that the wind was chopping up the lake. I saw a lot of people drift way to the left, and the kayakers had the course boxed in pretty tightly. I remember saying to my coach, “This is going to be really slow, right?” and him nodding hard.

During the warm-up, the water felt amazing. I do love that lake, even when it’s about to beat me up. Since the relay start was co-ed, I wasn’t sure where to put myself and ended up about 2/3 of the way back and as far to the right as was physically possible. I probably should have started further up, as it turns out, but no harm done that the lake wouldn’t have done anyway.

The first stretch, coming out past the boat ramp, was fairly unremarkable — a little contact, a little kicking — but as soon as we hit clearer water, the waves picked up. I breathe to the right, so it constantly felt like my left cheek was being slapped, and I was having to pull fast and hard just to get my head up far enough for clear air to breathe. I’d been legitimately afraid of being the last person out of the water, but it quickly became apparent that a lot of people were having very rough days. I passed a few that were just floating and looking worried, and I tried to say “you’re good!” but couldn’t manage it without a mouthful of water, so I kept plugging along.

Sighting was … not an option, really, but the clockwise course is a pretty easy one for me to stay on, so I just kept bobbing and diving through the waves, trying not to get seasick. (I heard later that a bunch of people puked in the water, and I don’t even want to think of what I might have swallowed.) I was, honestly, incredibly grateful for all of my terrible, tide-battling swims this spring. I knew I could keep making forward progress, and I knew I’d get to the buoy eventually, if I just kept bobbing and ducking, bobbing and ducking.

The short stretch between the two far buoys was hilarious — there was really no way I was staying on course, so I just went where the water took me —  but after that, we picked up the wind going the other way and had a somewhat easier ride back to shore. As I approached, I could see a 3 at the end of the clock and had no idea if that meant 33 or 23 or 43 (I was wearing a watch but hadn’t bothered with the logistics of looking at it). It turned out to be 33, and with the short, steep run to the top of the boat ramp — a .1-mile journey that I swear must have spiked my heart rate into the 200s and left me with a stomach cramp — my final time was 34:03.

A couple of remarkable things: that was 1:43 slower than my Wildflower swim last year, but it placed me substantially higher (804th overall this year, 1325th last year). It was faster than my Napa swim, which was in much easier water. And it’s maybe the first open water swim race where I felt not even a second of panic, even though by all rights I should have. I had a moment early on where I thought, “well, this is gonna be reeeeeeeal shitty,” and I think acknowledging that let me let go.

***

After that, the hard part of my day was over. I stood with my coach for a while to cheer the last few TAGers in out of that roiling lake, and I asked him if he thought after that I could handle the ocean swim I’ll be doing for Santa Cruz (he laughed and told me that after that, I should sign up for an Alcatraz crossing). I kept my watch going so we’d have a vague sense of when Pete should be back, and he biked an impressive 1:36 in some rough winds. Jess took off (to kill the run with a 10K PR in the 47s, netting us 11th of 40-something relays in our division) and I went out to the finish line with my camera to try and get pictures of the TAGers finishing.

And that’s when I really fell hard for Wildflower.

***

One of the other TAG captains told me later that if this year’s Wildflower had been her first triathlon, she probably would have never done another. Kristina blogged something similar. And I can’t say I disagree. I know a lot of people really struggled. Plenty of time goals came and went — including mine — and that can be tough to swallow after all that training. A few folks in my group didn’t make various time cutoffs and were pulled off the course, and while they’ve taken it in stride (and are already plotting next races), it couldn’t have felt good on the day.

I think that’s part of what made what I saw at the finish line hit so hard. This wasn’t a race you can just show up and do. You have to fight for Wildflower, and shockingly often, Wildflower wins.

But sometimes, you win.

Sometimes you get to tear down that chute and hear the announcer say your name and smile.

Sometimes you high-five every single person you see.

Sometimes you don’t want to ever take that medal off.

Sometimes you can’t believe the sweet relief of being done.

I can’t really even talk about some of the things I saw in the finish chute without tearing up. Two of my teammates running in side-by-side, stride-for-stride, smiling big. Another one with an injury that had kept her from running for several weeks, nearly getting passed in the finish chute and putting on her “oh hell no” face and sprinting it in ahead of her pursuer. My friend’s relay teammates jumping into the chute, helmeted and capped and goggled, so they could cross the line together.

I love this sport. I love this group.

And I love this stupid race, even though it so rarely loves anyone back.

Race Report: HITS Napa Olympic Distance Triathlon

A couple of weeks ago, before everything went sideways for a little while, I drove up to Lake Berryessa with Courtney for the HITS Napa triathlon. We spent the day before the race picking up packets at an Italian restaurant/general store/only outpost of retail anywhere the race, buying ridiculous socks to turn into arm warmers at Target, eating cupcakes and ravioli at Firewood and Sift, and doing race-day crafts at the Motel 6. (HITS gave us stickers for everything, including the race number, which was two large stickers that had to be placed back-to-back; mine looked like it was assembled by a well-meaning but clumsy toddler.)

I slept pretty solidly for about five hours, then dozed until Courtney’s alarm went off at 4 a.m. The drive to the race site felt a little creepy — lots of winding roads, few lights — but we were making good time right up until the last quarter-mile, when we got stuck in line to park. I think we made it in around 6:15, but the race organizers wanted all sprint athletes out of transition by 6:40, so Courtney got hustled into her transition area while those doing the Olympic were pulled aside.

A few minutes later, they let us in, and I found my transition spot at the end of a row, right where two of the temporary fences overlapped. The first thing I did was step on the overlapping legs of the fences, lose my balance, and fly into said fences, which seemed like an excellent sign. I was hoping to see Courtney and my TAG-ers before they hopped in the water, but I was a few minutes too late, and instead I waited with one of the other TAG captains to cheer for people coming out of the water.

It was harder than usual to spot people — each race had just one swim cap color — but I saw about half our group finish the swim, and somehow Michaela found me and introduced me to Jana. I puttered away the rest of the time chatting with them and making a (barefoot) trip to the porta potties (not recommended). As soon as the last sprint swimmer hit the boat ramp, the horn went off for the Olympic. When the second wave went in, I bobbed around by the boat ramp and got some water in my wetsuit, and those four minutes between waves went by fast, because all of a sudden I was swimming.

Swim – 34:15

The swim was two 750-meter loops, with a short run out of the water between loops. All the women in the Olympic-distance race started together, and not that far behind the men, and there was definitely more contact than I’ve felt before. The first buoy was right in the path of the sun, so I popped up a couple of times to get my bearings, but that just led to swallowing water, and after sputtering through that a couple of times, I decided I’d just go where all the wetsuits around me seemed to be going.

Swimming has been rough for me this spring. My times in the pool have been fine, but they’re not improving, and the couple of open-water swims I’d done before Napa had not been great. I’ve been changing the way I breathe in the pool — I breathe less frequently now — but in open water, trying to swim with that rhythm has been making me seasick. So for this swim, I went back to breathing every right-arm stroke, figuring that even if it made me a little slower, I’d benefit by not feeling pukey.

Somewhere after the first turn, I was still in a big crowd, and I remember thinking, “Wow, I’m never not going to be swimming on top of people.” And then, a few minutes later, I was swimming totally alone, wide of the course. I pulled it back in, and I think I swam pretty decent lines the rest of the way. My first lap was 17:xx as I came out of the water, and then I did the run around the buoy on the concrete and dove back in.

My second lap was smoother, and I managed to find some feet to draft a few times. The water felt fresh and cool, maybe a little choppier than I expected but so much nicer than salty, 53-degree Aquatic Park. I could have happily kept swimming, but instead I found myself approaching the boat ramp again, and I headed up the carpeted path and over the rocks to transition. I’m not sure where the timing mat was, but it wasn’t right out of the water, so I’d guess my second swim loop was 16-ish minutes. Considering my confidence level going in, I was satisfied.

T1 – 4:57
Slow, but not as slow as my 6+-minute transition at Wildflower. Improvement! I’ve learned that putting sunglasses + helmet on first doesn’t work for me — I’m dripping water, my sunglasses fog — so I worked from the bottom up: socks and shoes, race belt, switch watches, spray of sunscreen, sunglasses, helmet, go.

Bike – 1:34:51
My brain was still waterlogged as I started biking, and I didn’t register much about the ride between transition and the main road. I did notice that I’d forgotten to turn off manual lap on my watch, which meant that instead of beeping every mile, it was beeping every time it got jostled — which meant every time I went over a substantial bump in the road. Which meant I ended up with 57 “laps” for the course.

Luckily, I wasn’t using the lap info for anything, but the beeps were driving me nuts. It took several miles for me to get a song in my head to tune them out. The mental debate I had over whether I should reset my watch and lose my overall time info but stop the infernal beeping — and whether I could actually pull off that much button-pushing without crashing my bike — did help pass the time, though, including the first big hill. Also throughout those first few miles, I spotted some of the TAG crew coming in from the sprint race and did a lot of cheering.

My goals for the bike were to practice riding in my big gear — did I mention? I can do that now! — and to manage nutrition well. As always, I was getting passed a bunch, but I was also doing my share of passing. I had this story I told myself when I hit a hill and had to drop down to my smallest gears, which was this: Hey, you’re really good at climbing. It’s your thing. Nobody else here is better at it than you are, so might as well use all those gears — that’s what they’re for! I don’t remember seeing any mile markers — just kidding, I did see them, scattered all over the road, having apparently fallen out of a truck — but I was focusing on drinking every 15 minutes and eating every 20-30 and trying to keep my effort steady. Right before the turnaround, we hit a long, curving downhill facing a pretty dramatic tree-covered mountain. I picked up speed and found myself wondering if I could bike under 1:30, which I figured would get me in around 3:15 total. But of course that long downhill turned into an equally long uphill after the turn — not steep, just forever — and I stopped thinking about 1:30 and 3:15 pretty quickly.

Somewhere after the hill, I started settling in near the same little group of women. We were spaced pretty far apart on the course, but that spacing wasn’t changing — the one in front always seemed the same amount in front. I’d catch the next girl in the line on uphills, but I could never get past her before the next downhill or flat. Still, keeping the three of them in sight was a good goal. Barring disaster, I realized, this was going to be the fastest I’d ever ridden my bike.

The last six or so miles were tough. My bike endurance is good for this distance, but what I don’t do much is ride at race effort, and I was starting to feel it. I also became very conscious of the edges of the saddle digging into my legs and was standing up a bit more to relieve the pressure. Bad race math had revised my goal for the bike to 1:40, and given that and how interminable everything after mile 18 had felt, I was shocked to make the turn into the park right around 1:31. The last stretch of road was a disaster — more a broken-up gravel trail than pavement, lined with large speed bumps. I heard the TAG coach yell my name, and I yelled back “this road is bullshit!” and then shut up because wouldn’t it be perfect if I had the best bike ride of my life and then got disqualified for profanity. I coasted the whole bumpy mess with one foot unclipped and was just happy not to fall over before the dismount line.

T2 – 2:35
Fast enough to feel like I must be forgetting something.

Proof…that someone with my childsize head shouldn’t wear hats if I want my face to be visible?

Run – 57:22
My only time goal going into this race was to do the run under an hour. I’ve been running well off the bike, and I figured I’d throw down a solid first mile before my body realized what the hell it was doing. One thing I hadn’t considered was not being able to feel my feet: standing shoeless on a concrete boat ramp for 45 minutes plus the swim and bike had done a number on them. The road out was the same as the bike in — rutted, broken up, speed bumps — and I was concentrating hard on where I was stepping, because I certainly wasn’t going to feel the landing.

It was warm and sunny by then, and I walked through the water station at the sprint turnaround to take a couple of deep breaths. There was another little hill just after the water stop, then a mile of downhill all the way to the turnaround. On the other side of the road, I saw lots of people walking back up, and I mentally caved a little and assumed that on the way back I’d be one of them.

We bottomed out at the second aid station and I dumped a cup of water down my back, which felt amazing. I decided I’d run the hill until my run was slow enough that I might as well be walking, but it never got that bad — just like running home from the ocean through the MLK hills. My next goal became to get through mile 4 without walking, and when that was fine, I figured I’d get to 45 minutes. By then, I was cramping a little in the heat, but my legs were still going, so I shot my fast food salt packet and started picking people off as I moved into the downhill section to the finish.

When I crossed the line, I immediately spotted Courtney and a teammate who’d crossed just a couple of minutes before. I fished the watch I’d had going since the swim out of my jersey pocket and saw 3:15:xx and just started laughing.

Race math is always wrong.

Final Thoughts

• I finished in 3:14:03 official time, 9/28 in my age group and a big PR for the distance, if that sort of thing even counts in triathlons. (Does it? Courses are so different!) I ran a few minutes faster and got through transitions a bit quicker than I did at Wildflower, and swam a little slower, but the big time drop all came from the bike. That’s awesome, because it shows what gains I’ve made as a cyclist (and also shows this was a bit easier of a course). And it also sucks, because if I’m going to keep dropping time, the bulk of it is still going to have to come from the bike. I mean, I ran just a couple of minutes off my standalone 10K PR, and I’m never going to get that much faster in the water.
• That said, I have thought that breaking 3 hours in an Olympic-distance tri would be a reasonable goal for me over the next couple of years — and now it seems closer than I would have expected, especially considering that I wasn’t perfectly trained or rested for this race. I want to give it a good shot this year, but I’m not sure if I want to pick something else this spring/early summer or wait till after Vineman, when I can really make it a focus.
• I definitely need to do more race-effort riding on the trainer or try one of my coach’s computrainer classes if I’m going to make another jump on the bike. Last year I was focusing on getting comfortable on the road, and riding indoors seemed like a cop-out. Now I see how it can play into an overall plan for becoming a stronger rider.
• Nutrition nonsense: I had some bread with peanut butter and water with Nuun in the car on the way to the race around 5 a.m., then had some more water while watching the swim and a Gu around 7:40, about 10 minutes before I started. On the bike, I had a bottle with Roctane, which is on the higher-calorie end of the options I train with, but I hardly ever get a whole bottle down on a hilly course, so might as well maximize what I do get for a race? I also ate 2 or 3 shot bloks and half a Picky Bar. I’m loving the Picky Bar for the bike — it’s soft but doesn’t melt, and it doesn’t taste like fake sugar. I don’t actually remember eating on the run, but I had a Gu and some shot bloks with me, so let’s assume I ate about 100 calories of something. I ran with plain water in my handheld bottle but had a Nuun tab (broken in half, wrapped in foil) tucked into the ID slot in case I wanted it, along with a salt packet.
• HITS Napa is a second-year race, and while I heard mixed feedback from spectators, things moved pretty smoothly from my perspective. We were spoiled in the transition areas (stools! Big bins for our bags!), though I would have loved some additional cover for the rocks. The stickering of all of our stuff was not really necessary — we were supposed to put stickers on our swim caps, but they mostly washed away in the water and I saw a whole pile of them drifting to shore at the swim exit — and I know some people got stressed out about the race tats. The only thing I’d really ding them for is the awful road in and out of transition, and I’m not sure how to fix that, other than putting transition in a different place entirely. {ETA: I’d also ding them for having the ribbon on our medals read “Napa Valey.”}
• More races should have oyster crackers at the finish.

Race Recap: Walnut Creek Half Marathon

The shortest story about Walnut Creek: 1:59:12.

Some longer stories:

• A 400-foot climb can be an incline, or it can be three hills.
• Pacers in bright clothing deserve the best of everything.
• Run math is always wrong. Always, always wrong.

And here’s the longest story:

I have a terrible sense of direction, and it’s typically at its worst in the East Bay, so I left San Francisco a little after 5:30 a.m. The info sheet we’d gotten at the expo said the start would only be open for four minutes, so being late wasn’t an option. At the first “road closed ahead” sign, I turned onto a side street where lots of runners were parking. I left when I saw the meter would turn on at 9 a.m. and found a garage instead. If I didn’t break 2 hours, the last thing I wanted to show for it was a parking ticket.

I got to the start around 6:50, closer than I would have liked, but the porta potty line moved fast, and I found a spot in the staging area near the 9-minute sign, behind and to the right of the 2:00 pacer. Countdown from 10, and we were off.

My plan was to treat the first mile like a warm-up, kick into tempo mode until the hill, do whatever was necessary to survive the hill, and then ride the downhill for as long as possible. This plan went out the window when the pacer took off at about an 8:30 pace. I figured she was banking time for the hill, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bank time for the hill, so I hung back a bit, but still not exactly a “warm-up.” First mile: 9:08.

… or so I thought. I’d decided to manually lap my watch at the mile markers, figuring that “GPS distance” didn’t matter, only course distance. (What IS distance, anyway? wonders philosophical runner.) Good in theory, if the mile markers were separated by a mile. Of course, I didn’t know then that they weren’t; the pacer mentioned later that she’d had a tough time with the markers being so off, and when I uploaded the data, the discrepancies between what I saw during the race and the “shadow race” happening in the background were hilarious. Then again, who cares what time I run one mile in, or three, or 10? The only time that counts is the one at the finish.

And I’m glad I remembered that, because otherwise I would have given up on this race after clocking “mile 7” in “11:02.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

At some point, when we merged down to one lane, I squeezed in front of the pacer. I knew I was running faster than I’d intended, but I decided that banking time wasn’t the worst idea; the hill would suck no matter what, I’d have a downhill, and then I’d just have to hang on. So I made it my goal to stay in front of her, and it worked; at one point I’d relaxed a bit, and she came up on my shoulder and it was a good reminder to keep pushing.

I listened to a little bit of music and a little bit of a podcast review of Homeland, and I spent almost all of mile three eavesdropping on the women behind me. I resolved to stay in front of them, too; worst case, they were entertaining.

Miles 1-4: 8:36, 8:58, 9:10, 8:58 [what I saw: 9:08, 8:15, 9:20, 8:56]

By mile 4, when the hill started, we were running in some serious fog. I figured, this could work: If I can’t see what’s ahead, I can’t be freaked out by it.

The elevation chart had made the hill seem like it was going to be one incline over about 2.5 miles:

But it was actually two or three different hills: one that ended just before the mile 5 marker, then a couple of shorter, steeper ones with a gradual incline in between from about 5.5-6.5. Here’s what the Nike+ data looked like, which I think better represents how it felt (up, plateau, uppppppp):

I’m good at gradual incline, but I wasn’t expecting short and steep. I focused on taking quick, little steps and keeping my eyes focused ahead — and not on my pace, definitely not on my pace — but I was clearly slowing down. A couple of younger girls (teenage cross-country runners, is my theory) were bounding up the hill like lovely little deer while I shot them dagger eyes. The 2:00 pacer passed me on the steepest hill, and I couldn’t stick with her, but I kept telling myself, “Just don’t take your eyes off her.”

I lapped at the mile 7 marker and saw 11:02, and I was pissed. I knew I’d slowed down, but that much? And for a whole mile? But I could still see the pacer’s pink sweatshirt up ahead, and I said — out loud, I think — “well, you’ve got some work to do.” I saw a bunch of people celebrating as we started to run downhill, and I thought they were crazy — because I’d misread the elevation chart and thought the hill extended beyond mile 7. Nope, it slowly dawned on me that it was literally all downhill now.

Miles 5-7: 9:33, 9:16, 9:34 [what I saw: 9:41, 8:33, 11:02]

So then I was flying downhill, realizing we were going down a lot faster than we’d been going up, starting to understand that there was going to be a whole lot of race left after we hit the flats, and thinking, “don’t care. just go.” It had become absolutely beautiful — early morning sun on the rolling hills of an open space preserve, a lick of fog sitting right over the valley.

Mile 8 was sub-8 on my watch and my run-math told me I’d gotten back one of the minutes I’d lost. I could still see the pacer, but it didn’t seem like I was getting any closer. I reminded myself that Run Less, Run Faster thought I could run a 2:02, and a 2:02 would still be a massive PR, and I was just about on pace for a 2:02, so that would be that. I spent mile 9 feeling like there was cement in my quads. I remember thinking I should eat a Gu and then spending the better part of a mile trying to get it into my mouth; I’d never Gu’d at that speed before.

Miles 8 and 9: 8:05, 9:00 [what I saw: 7:56, 10:25]

Everything after that is a blur. I remember the enthusiastic aid station just before mile 10 saying we were at mile 10 and being like, no, you fools, we’re at 9.5, not the same. We made a hairpin turn onto a winding path through a park, where I kept losing sight of the pacer on the turns, and I thought maybe I could figure out how far back I was by counting the time between when she passed a tree and when I got there, but I couldn’t handle the logistics.

I remember hitting mile 10 at 1:32-ish and thinking, “well, 2:02 it is, if you keep going!” Because: your run math is always wrong. I thought I was going to have to run a 25-minute 5K to go under 2 hours, and my legs wouldn’t turn over any faster than they already were.

I remember thinking I’d stop at an aid station and refill my water bottle once I was sure I couldn’t break 2 hours, but I never stopped, because I was never sure.

Right around the mile 12 marker, we turned onto a dirt trail, and my watch said 1:48 — which was almost certainly not 12 miles into the race, I realize now, but at the time I did a double-take and thought, oh wait, this is still possible. GO. My legs were stuck in their gear, but I thought maintaining that might be just enough.

I closed on a girl who was ahead of me on the trail. Passed her. Passed a guy. Got passed back. Tried to stick with him. Turned again. I could feel my form getting hilarious. Could still see the pacer’s pink sweatshirt, getting closer.

Mile 13, right around 1:56. Holy hell, I had this.

We went over a bridge, turned again, and made a hard left into the finish chute. The actual finish was on goopy grass and my feet went thwick – thwick – thwick and I remembered falling on my face at Ice Breaker and had just enough time to think “Please don’t fall on your face” before crossing the line. I heard the announcer call out the pacer and say “right on time!” and the clock still said 1:59:xx so I was pretty sure I’d done it.

Miles 10-13(.1): 9:04, 9:09, 9:15, 9:15, 1:19 [what I saw: 8:19, 8:14, 8:15, 9:43, 1:19]

How did I feel? Um, just look at this goober:

I immediately put my hand on the pacer’s shoulder and babbled a stream of “thank you thank you thank you I’ve tried for this for more than a year and you were always right there and I couldn’t stay with you on the hill but I caught up and your sweatshirt was so bright thank you for wearing something bright thank you” until she finally was like, “uh, cool, yeah, congrats, I have to go pay my meter.” I grabbed a bunch of food and wandered around in the sun, stretching a little, trying some free coffee before realizing I had no use for a beverage I couldn’t chug, and continuing to grin a giant shit-eating grin.

It’s crazy, looking at the splits again, how different this race looks by miles on my watch and by miles on the course. But I wouldn’t change anything about how I ran it. I didn’t really know until mile 12 that I had a chance of breaking 2:00, but I also didn’t know that I didn’t have a chance, and that kept me fighting just enough to get there.

At the end, as I was making a parachute out of my space blanket to hold all my stuff for the walk back to the car, I started chatting with a woman right at the edge of the park. “Did you do as well as you’d hoped?” she asked.

It felt so damn good to be able to say, “Actually? Yes. I did.”

Race Recap: Berlin Marathon

For all of the build-up and anticipation and training, the Berlin Marathon is one big 42-kilometer blur. That’s something I don’t think I expected about marathons before running one: how so many moments would fade into each other and become one amorphous mass of neighborhoods and water stops and discarded gel packs. Did I high-five those kids at KM 20 or 32? Where was the neighborhood where everyone was banging on pots and pans?

But while it’s still somewhat fresh — and before this plane lands in Munich and deposits me straight into four days of beer and pretzels — I’m going to try to remember.

Pre-race
The race started at 9, and being in the last corral meant I wouldn’t start till some time after, so we got to sleep in by race-day standards and left our hotel a little after 7:30. It was chilly (I was grateful for my arm warmers and for our 2.5K walk to warm up) but also cloudless, and I was worried about how hot and sunny it might get.

We walked through the Brandenburg Gate and saw part of what we thought was the finish, then made our way toward bag check. We were only checking one bag, under Pete’s number, and that led to one of the only organizational fails of the whole weekend: his booth was actually in a row set apart from the main booths with no path through. We (and about 50 other people) ended up squeezing through a precarious break between two tents and got the bag in just before the 8:30 cutoff. Pete headed to his corral and I got in a porta potty line, where I spent the next 28 minutes fretting and staring at my watch before finally getting my turn. I headed to Corral H, where all 4:15+ and first-time marathoners were, just as the elite race started.

H got its own start around 9:20. There were three Americans in front of me who kept saying “I can’t believe we’re here!” I was having a hard time fathoming what was about to happen, so I kept repeating “You love this city. You love this sport.” Just, I guess, trying to remind myself how and why I’d ended up there.

start to 5K
The start wrapped around both sides of the big statue in the middle of Berlin’s Tiergarten. I was on the left and watched in awe as we split from the right half, then merged back together – a huge sea of runners. I expected to run for a while without music, but after the immediate thrill of the start, the crowd really thinned out — especially on my side of the road; it was one of the quieter spots of the day. So I turned on my playlist somewhere before 2KM (the first marker I saw) and kept it on for most of the race, though I paused some for bands and frequently for crowds.

I was focusing on running easy and my watch was all over the place on instant pace, so I decided to wait till I got a steady stream of believable data and then flip over to average pace, which I think happened around 5K.

Random snippets from the first 5K: there was a giant Adidas installation at 2K spewing red confetti; I don’t remember any bands; it was really, really sunny. I spent a lot of time looking for the coffee shop where we’d watched the inline skating race on Saturday but never saw it.

Also around 5K was the first big water stop. It was AWFUL. Berlin uses plastic cups, and when they get tossed on the ground and stepped on, they splinter, and they’re slippery and bits fly up everywhere. I eventually learned how to pick up my feet and get through it, but I honestly dreaded every single water stop after that.

5K-10K
I don’t remember a whole lot from this bit, except I crossed the 10K timing mat exactly on the pace I’d told my parents to expect (I crossed at 1:06 and had given them a range of 1:03-1:08). I thought I might see them around 6 or 7K but it turns out they’d gone ahead (which makes sense — Pete and I were already probably 45 minutes apart at that point between pace and start time).

We also had a few stretches with shade, which made me realize just how much I was loving every single second of the race with shade (and how little I was enjoying the sun). Luckily, the second part of the course was a lot less exposed, but at this point I was just reminding myself to take advantage of every tree-covered stretch.

10K-15K
I remember being sad when I got to 15K, because it felt like I’d gone more than nine miles. (Something about having kilometer markers messed with my head, especially in this stretch — with 42 bits to tick off, instead of 26, I was constantly aware of where I was and exactly how much further there was to go.) My Rocktane kicked in shortly after that, though, and that perked me up.

15K-20K
It was in this stretch that I realized I was going to need a bathroom stop, soon. They seemed to be coming every few K, so I decided I’d try to hold out for 20. I was still running well and on pace, but I knew that wasn’t going to last if I didn’t stop.

I spotted a guy in a 2009 SF Half Marathon shirt and tried to catch up to him for probably a solid 4K. But when I stopped at the porta potty just after the KM 20 checkpoint, I lost him (as well as two guys with yellow flags who I’d assumed were 4:45 pacers, but considering that I finished ahead of them, they might have been just guys running in funny outfits).

My watch had been reading around a 10:22/mile average till the bathroom stop, but the time I spent there clicked it up to 10:40, and I never got it back down. Hard to tell because my watch laps are in miles, but I think I lost 4 or 5 minutes at that stop. I knew I was trading a slightly better time for a more comfortable race, but I was willing to deal with that.

Oh: there was no toilet paper in any porta potty the whole race, including the one I used before the start. I had two tissues with me, and I was rationing them.

20K-25K
So, I crossed 20K at 2:10, which I was thrilled with, but I didn’t get to the halfway point at 21K until 2:20. That kind of sucked because I knew at that point that I wasn’t going to wildly exceed my expectations. But: OK. First marathon, just want to finish, etc.

Race math kicked in around here. I had 5K to 25K, and from 25K it would only be an hour or so to my last checkpoint at 35K. And from 35K, it was just a little jaunt to the finish. I could handle that.

My stomach wasn’t feeling great (and never did again until, like, Monday) but I got a great boost from three things in this stretch: First, I saw my parents somewhere around 22-23K. I heard my name and I screamed and waved and attempted to jump up and down, which I bet did not look much like jumping. Second, I remembered I had salt packets in my shirt pocket, and I pulled over to walk one of the longer aid stations and take one. (By this point I was briefly walking at every second or third stop to refill my handheld anyway.) That salt saved my race. I’d taken margarita shot bloks at 1:45 into the race, but they did NOTHING compared to this straight-up fast food salt. And third, we went through one of my favorite stretches of the course, in the southwestern part of the city, where it seemed like entire streets had rolled out of bed to cheer.

25K-30K
Despite the salt, I again knew I’d be happier with another bathroom stop, but it wasn’t particularly urgent, so I decided to get to 30K first and stop at the bathroom with the shortest line after that.

I think it was around here that we went past a big wall fountain sponsored by a drinking water company and some fire trucks with their hoses spraying us. I also definitely high-fived some kids. And I think a water stop with gel packets was in this stretch, which was memorable because it made the road all gooey.

30K-35K
The 30K bathroom stop took FOREVER. There were only two people in line and one ditched shortly after I got there — which probably should have been my sign that this would not be so quick after all, but I stuck it out. Again, I was sad to lose the time but happy to feel better.

Before that stop, I’d been running awesomely for probably 20 or 30 minutes — feeling strong, passing people, picking up a bit of the speed I’d lost. I hoped I could get it back and cruise in for the finish, and while I never felt that good again until right before the end, I also never had a truly low moment.

I also remember a super terrifying water stop around here, where the road was noticeably slick for several hundred meters with plastic cups and Powerade.

35K-38K
From the second I crossed the 35K time pad, I was counting down to the 37K marker. How many times had I run 5K? I was enjoying the race, and I wasn’t wishing for it to end, but I *knew* that when I hit 37K, I would be able to finish. Also, given my total time, I thought that if I hit that mark at 4:15, I could finish under 4:45, which sounded good.

Aaaand I never saw the marker. Pete didn’t either, so maybe it wasn’t there, or else it was in a very odd location. This was the closest I came to hitting a wall: though I still felt OK physically, I let myself give in mentally. “Well, you can’t finish in 4:45, but you could basically walk the rest of the race and break 5. So, why NOT take one more potty break and walk this last big water stop?” And that’s exactly what I did: quick break in a bathroom with no line, quick walk for some Powerade and my second salt packet (which once again immediately relieved a side stitch; I will race every race with backup salt packets from now on). I started jogging, resigning myself to having 5.5K or so to go … And then I saw the next marker. For 38K.

Well, OKAY then.

38K-finish
I’d inadvertently paused my watch at the last bathroom, so I didn’t know my race time. But I was sure that even though 4:45 wasn’t happening, 4:50 could. And really, at that moment, I felt awesome. I told myself it was only about 4 songs to 40K, so I should chill and ride it out with my music till then and then go kill the finish.

It was a weird moment. I realized most people around me were walking. I was one of the only ones running, and I mean, I’ve walked at mile 12 of a half-marathon before, so I know that feeling, but all I wanted was to get to 40KM and TAKE OFF. I also finally saw (and passed) the guy in the San Francisco shirt, and I wanted to thank him for pacing me for basically the whole middle of the race, but he veered off for water just as I caught up.

We were making a lot of turns in this part of the course, and I wasn’t ever quite sure where I was, but we suddenly were in front of some museums, and I knew we must be getting close. I started giggling, and I said out loud, “I OWN this shit.”

And then we turned and ran past an Adidas thing that was pouring gold confetti into the street, and I saw the final inflatable arch and the Brandenburg Gate. Which I was about to run through.

And I swear, I’m a crier anyway, but seeing that was one of the biggest emotional rushes I’ve ever had. I yelled “HOLY SHIT!” and then clapped my hand over my mouth, and I was laugh-crying and speeding up and honestly, I wish I could run that last 1.5K every day forever.

I went through the gate and mugged for every photographer (apparently to no end, because I have zero official photos of me running) and sprinted the 400 or so meters past the gate to the actual finish, looking up into the grandstands and listening to the crowd cheering. And then I was done. 4:48:08.

post-race
I really wanted someone to put the medal around my neck. Usually I just take them, but I wanted to be crowned or something, I guess, so I found a volunteer and bent down for my medal. They gave us plastic sheets instead of space blankets, and mine stuck to me and I ditched it not long after. I found volunteers giving out bags of food, got a finisher’s photo with my medal, and started walking to the family reunion area, because it was becoming clear that I wanted to stop moving and if I stopped before I got there it might be hours before I made it.

I also stopped in a porta potty along the way and it HAD TOILET PAPER. I actually said, out loud, “Oh my god, finally!” And then I took some extra and put it in my bag, because apparently I’d gone full hoarder.

I also had to stop and unlace my shoe to take off and return my timing chip, which took me forever, partly because I was talking to everyone around me about how much that sucked and couldn’t we just take a nap first?

I made it to family reunion and Pete and my parents got there a few minutes later. We took some pictures, found the Adidas tent to buy race shirts (I’d been too superstitious to get one at the expo), and shuffled the 2.5K to our hotel. On the way we saw some people running and Pete remarked that he didn’t understand how running was a thing anyone could ever do, which I heartily agreed with.

I didn’t feel terrible after. My feet and knees and right hip were worst, but not so much more than a normal long run. I’m sure the flat course helped. I didn’t want to eat for a while — it took me 45 minutes to eat half a roll from my finishers’ bag — but when I did, I was STARVING, and we went around the corner where I ate this.

Germany apparently hates ice so my substitute was running cold water on my legs in the shower. Getting out of bed on Monday morning was not fun, but we did some walking around the city and by Tuesday, when I’m writing this, I felt almost normal.

I have so much more to say about the race — about logistics, for anyone who might ever want to run this race, and about what I learned about myself and running over those 42 kilometers. But there’s beer to drink and sausages to eat and lord knows this is long enough already, so I will save that for when I’m back at a computer with a real keyboard.

For now: I’ll end with this picture Pete got at the finish. I’m in the middle of the three people in lime green, grinning like a fool.