Ironman 70.3 World Championships!

Well... 2008 has finally come to a close and what a great year it has been!

We had a wonderful time in Florida! The kids had sooo much fun! The entire experience was great!

The race... well... didn't go quite perfectly, but they rarely do. It was definitely an amazing experience and of course I feel like it is something that will hopefully get me one notch closer to being the athlete I hope to be one day.

The weather there was pretty great! They had called for showers early in the week, but as time progressed, all of that faded away. The water was a chilly 70 degrees. Doesn't sound that bad, and honestly wasn't bad once you got in with your wet suit and got going. Even my kids managed to hang out in it for almost an hour without any complaints and only their little suits on!

We arrived Wednesday night and spent Thursday registering and playing a little at the beach and pool. I met Katie and Kerrie for a quick Gatorade swim on Friday morning which was Great, and then headed out to finish my pre-race brick. I tried to relax as much as possible on Friday, which can be hard when you have kids in tow at the beach! So we ended up going to see the new Madagascar 2 movie!

Saturday morning finally came after a long night of little to no sleep as usual. Race morning went really quickly! I got to meet Courtney, who is the new marketing director for PT Solutions! We have our first meeting scheduled together for this coming Friday and I had no clue that she was going to be down there. Our bikes were maybe 4 apart! She was down there with several friends of hers, including one local guy, Brett Daniels, whom I've heard a lot about. So it was nice to have some company pre-race!

The pros headed out at 6:45 and they started corralling us from there. Time went by pretty quickly and before I knew it the Female 30-34 group, all 62 of us, were standing at the water's edge ready to go!

*Our Pre-race Hug! I had to have a long conversation with Gracie about why Mommy couldn't stop and hang out with her during the race! :)

This race was a completely different experience for me. It wasn't just a local race, it wasn't just any 70.3 race, it was the World Championship! Everyone of these girls were fast and had earned the right to be there! So when the gun went off, there wasn't much of a breakaway kind of group. We were all clumped together in one entangled mess! I didn't freak out, as I knew to expect this and have been in this scenario before. I did get punched in the face twice both times knocking my goggles off. By the second time I had tried to put them back on my right eye was completely messed up! The goggles weren't positioned correctly keeping my eye from opening all of the way, which may have actually been a good thing since they were full of water! :) So success number 1 of the day was NOT freaking out about it. I didn't want to lose too much off the pack, so I just stayed calm and went with it. On the way out, it wasn't too bad. I was sighting on the left and the water wasn't too choppy. Really the only chop came from the boats and support staff out there. I did get one final kick to the chin before things started to spread out a bit.

By the time we got to the turn around and headed back to shore it got a little harder. We were swimming directly into the bright yellow sun, and I was looking for yellow bouys with my one left eye! I had NO clue where I was going. There was one point in time, when I was being completely overtaken by the wave of 30-34 men behind me that I started to get a little concerned that I had somehow swam my way all the way back to the other side. :) I just stayed calm and kept moving forward and literally kept working my way towards the sounds of the announcer on the beach. Finally came out of the water in roughly 34 min. Which I felt pretty good about. I would have liked to be more like 32-33, but I knew heading in it might be more of a just sub 35 kind of day. Since I am not the fastest swimmer, and I got beat-up in the water pretty bad, I took my 34 and went about my way!

I was in and out of transition as quickly as possible. When I found out after the race that I had only managed a 3:16 for T1, I was a little pissed at first. Based off of last year's time I was hoping for 2-2:30. But in looking at the other girls times, it looks like 3 was pretty average for this year. So I felt better about it realizing that I was kind of right in there with everyone else.

The Bike... Well there is a story in and of itself! :) I felt pretty good for most of it. And my number 1 success for this bike is that I can honestly say I rode the entire thing completely clean! That my friends is something A LOT of other people can NOT say! Jen had told me this was a big drafting race, so I knew to expect it going in. I can not tell you how many HUGE pelotons of people came flying past me over the course of 56 miles. And there are people that will say, oh... but you can't help BUT draft out there. Sorry folks... I was there, and I don't buy it! When 20+ people come flying by you at 28mph and you are hauling it all by yourself at 22-23, you don't automatically get sucked in unless you CHOOSE to. I didn't. And for the most part, you can tell who else didn't either. Just like Elizabeth Fedofsky put it, she rode clean. You can tell just by looking at our times. I'm not saying that every single age-group girl who managed a sub 2:25 didn't ride clean. If you did pull off that great amount of time all by yourself for the entire time, then I think that's wonderful! But... you know who you are if you didn't and in your head will always have an asterisk by your time!

*My kiddos waiting for me to come in from the bike!

Again, I was hoping for around a 2:30 on the bike. As I was finishing up, I thought it was still within reach. Or at least I could have come in around a 2:33. Well with about 4 miles to go a plastic grocery bag flew right in front of me and I ran over it. It immediately got sucked up into my crank and derailer! It jammed everything up and I had no choice but to pull over just to get things slightly moving again! I stood there for a minute or so pulling out as much of that plastic bag as possible. It was and still IS a complete mess! I got as much of it out as I could and hopped back on trying to get those last 4 miles in as quickly as possible. I couldn't shift gears, but I could pedal at least, so once again, told myself NOT to panic and just kept moving!

The run was good and bad. It was bad in the fact that I felt awful! The first half I was really sick to my stomach and kept almost throwing up if that makes sense. I was trying to pace it correctly, but I made my classic mistake of letting my mind get the best of me and backed off. It was NOT easy. It was 2 loops out and back both times crossing over a relatively decent size bridge that we climbed for a total of 4 times. It was REALLY hot by this point and not a lot of shade and breeze to give much help. I was holding on for the first 1/2 of the run ok, but then started to give up a little. The out portion of the second loop was my "down" time. My feeling sorry for myself, I just want to quit time. I knew my sub 5hours was out by then and was pissed about it. But then fortunately, something finally clicked in there that just because I wasn't having the perfect race that I'd hoped for. Just because everything hadn't gone as planned, and I wasn't feeling like myself at this moment didn't mean that I should just throw it all away at the end.

I ran a 5:09 at South Carolina several weeks ago and came into Clearwater thinking this would be a much faster time. On that last leg of the run, I got back into my groove and started pushing again in an effort to try to at least break that 5:09. I came close.... 5:10:52.

I am a little disappointed only because I know I could have done a lot better than that. That time doesn't really demonstrate where I am at right now, but... that's the thing about getting all wrapped up in the timing of races. It's not something that you can always control!

So overall, I'm happy with a lot of the little accomplishments that I made during the race. I managed to pull out a 5:10 on a not-so-perfect day, and that's not too bad.

I had an incredible year! Coach Jen has been amazing, and I can just think back to 10 months ago and see how far I've come physically and emotionally in this sport!

*Post race Put-put game! That place must have had 1000 stairs and THAT was the real test of what I was made of to finish that game! :)

*Notice that Gracie is swinging AWAY from the hole! HA..HA!!

Thank you all for your continued support this season! I've had so much fun this year building relationships with all of you and following you along through each of our athletic journeys! Thank you for a wonderful 2008, and I already can't wait for 2009!!