Recently in Running, Biking, & More Category

First things first about this morning's Y Freedom Tri: I finished 6 minutes faster than last year, repeated as 1st place Athena, and averaged more than 20 miles per hour on the bike for the first time ever! Yee-ha!

Since my mom is in town, I even have photos of my race. I think she enjoyed watching the race -- it was the first time she'd ever been to a triathlon. And I definitely enjoyed having a cheerleader! We had to get up just after 5:00 and left my apartment at 5:30 to drive over to Pearland. We got there with plenty of time to walk over to the park and set up my transition area. I'd made sure to get there early because I had a box of BAM jerseys to deliver to some racers, but I managed to immediately pass those off to a BAMmer who wasn't racing.

Mom took a photo of this guy's shirt -- his daughter had made it for him and on the front it said "Go Jen Go" or something like that. I guess I need to make one for my mom the next time she comes to a tri! Since she only visits once a year, that won't be for a while though. Still, cool shirt.

Here I am mere seconds away from starting the swim. It was a pool swim (obviously) held in the 50-meter public pool at Independence Park in Pearland. It was nice that I'd just swum in a 50-meter pool last week at the Sugarland Women's Tri, so I expected the wall to feel far away. There was a lot more congestion on this swim than there was last week, and I passed 3 or 4 people in the water. There were stairs at the end of the pool that made it very easy to get out of the water, so that was nice. I ran out of the pool, through the grass, and finally crossed the timing mat into transition with a time of 6:34. Actual swimming time was probably about 6:10, which is exactly what I reported (which put me at #106).

There I am running into transition. I got in and out of there in 52 seconds. There was carpet down in the aisle of transition to make it easier to run in bare feet (the parking lot was very pebbly and uncomfortable), but it make for some slippery running in bike shoes. Thankfully I made it out unscathed and hopped on my bike. The 12 mile course is flat and fast, but there are four U-turns that force you to slow down. Still, it's fairly easy to get a good rhythm going. What I couldn't do was break free of a pack of three other women! We leapfrogged each other for the entire 12 miles, none of us ever really breaking away. We maintained enough space between us so as to not get penalized for drafting, but that was it.

I finished the bike in 36:22. Now, if the ride was exactly 12 miles, that's an average of 19.8 mph. But my Garmin measured 12.26 (and last year it measured 12.25), and tris are notorious for rounding the distance to the nearest whole number. Assuming 12.25 miles, that's an average of 20.2 mph! This agrees with what I saw while riding -- I hardly ever saw my speed drop below 20 or 21. And since I didn't give myself credit for 20+ last week since Garmin read 9.5, I'm going to stick with Garmin and pat myself on the back for my first race where I averaged greater than 20 mph on the bike! Woohoo! Next goal: average 20 mph on both the Garmin and the official results. ;-)

I got through T2 in 50 seconds and headed out for the run. Not much to say about it. The first mile follows a crushed gravel path along a bayou, so that's a scenic route. The next two miles are through a neighborhood, and there was the occasional homeowner outside cheering, but other than that it was pretty quiet. I was not wearing my watch, and I actually felt like I was running pretty solidly, but my time shows otherwise. 33:56. Ugh! I really thought I'd covered the distance about a minute faster than that, so I was a little bummed.

Nonetheless, I finished the race in 1:18:34, which is more than 6 minutes faster than last year. The difference is entirely due to a faster bike. My swim and transitions were slightly faster, while my run was about a minute slower. I repeated my title as 1st place Athena and got a cool pint glass with the race logo and "Athena Winner" on it! I liked the award a lot.

All in all, another fun day at the races. We had more than 20 BAMmers out there and many of them placed in their age groups, so it was a successful day all around. I'm not actually sure what my next race is -- but it will probably be the Webster Duathlon at the end of July. Oh, and I'll probably show up at one of the 4th of July 5Ks on Friday.

The guy who marked my age on the back of my leg got a little creative yesterday. I didn't even know it was there. Jose noticed it when I got home, and it made me laugh.

After the huge storms that rolled through last night, it was actually a fairly nice morning for a tri. Nice for June anyway. Humid, but not too hot. I signed up for the Sugarland Women's Tri about a week and a half ago on a whim. And though I hate driving to Sugar Land, this was a great race for which to make that sacrifice. I did this race 4 years ago in its previous incarnation as the Speedo Women's Tri, so it was fun to return to a course that I only vaguely remembered.

I arrived with just enough time to set up my transition area without being rushed, then head over to get my chip, make a stop by the bathroom, and walk over to the pool deck. This race is held at a really nice aquatic center, and the pool was the nicest I've ever been in with the exception of the pool at Georgia Tech (which was built for the 1996 Olympics). I was one of only 5 BAMmers doing this race, and the only one wearing a spiffy BAM jersey, so I wasn't sure if I'd find the other girls or not. But I met Kathy while in the bathroom line, and saw Stephanie on the pool deck later. I saw Cathy (a different Cathy) after the race as well.

The swim was once again seeded by estimated 300 meter swim time. I'd estimated 6:10 which put me at #85. This was a 50 meter pool, so it was big enough to start two people at once, one on either side of the pool with the exit in the middle. I lined up with the odd numbers. As the race began, there was a girl (#90-something) who was standing between me and the girl in front of me. She was making all sorts of crazy comments about the people in the water -- saying things like "oh that person's gonna get caught," and "look at her form, it's crap!" I thought it was pretty presumptious of her to critique the form of the women in the pool who were obvious faster than her (given her race seeding), but whatever.

I hopped in the water and was off. I haven't been in a 50 meter pool since last year at the Y Tri, and though my brain knows that it's twice the distance of my normal pool, it still feels like it takes forever to get across the pool. Where was that wall?? I passed two girls in front of me -- one who had stopped because she was having a problem with her goggles, and another who was just going slow. Three laps later I was done in 6:11! Did I seed myself correctly or what?

(As a side note, I looked through the results and there were only 2 people -- myself and another girl -- within plus/minus 15 bib numbers that swam anywhere close to a 6:10. This is the part of pool swims that I hate. My bib number was 85, I swam within 1 second of what I predicted, but 6:11 turned out to be the 38th fastest time overall. That's almost 50 people who seeded themselves too fast! People just do not seed themselves correctly! Pet peeve!)

The volunteers at the end of the swim were a little overzealous in dragging me out of the pool, and I ended up with a couple minor scrapes on my knees. No matter. I was on my way into transition in no time. Shoes on feet, helmet on head and I was off while the girl who'd started the swim just ahead of me was still putting her stuff together. T1 time 50 seconds.

I got on the bike and started pedaling. I'd like to average 20 mph in a race sometime this year, and I was determined to give it my best effort. My run is always slow, so I don't see much point in holding back on the bike. I might as well go hard. I whizzed down the road, passing a lot of girls in the process. I probably passed 20-25 people over the short course, and no one passed me. I rolled back into transition in 29:05. The race was advertised as a 10-mile ride, but my Garmin read 9.5 miles -- so I was either just over or just under a 20 mph average. Either way, that is my fastest bike split ever in a race, so I was very excited about that. And as I came into T2, I was greeted with a bunch of empty racks. The racks were laid out in order, so the first couple racks were full since the people who'd started the swim far ahead of me had already headed out for the run. But there was still a lot of empty space in the 40-80 bib number range. I was #85, but I beat the majority of the 50s, 60s, and 70s back into T2. That was a good feeling.

I got through T2 in 58 seconds. It was a little slower than T1 because I had to run farther in my bike shoes (slow) and I had to pause at the rack for a couple seconds to keep from falling over as I reached down to change shoes. Yep, I rode hard on the bike.

As I ran out of T2, a girl ran up beside me and said something like "wow, #85, you're amazing!" (I wish I could remember what she actually said, because it was better.) She was #42, so I must have passed her on the bike. I couldn't help but laugh as I said "I may be a pretty good swimmer and biker, but you haven't seen me run yet. 11:00 miles, oh yeah." But it turns out that she was a lot like me and runs the same pace. "Who cares," she said, "you just smoked all of us on the bike!" That was definitely a confidence booster. I pulled ahead of her on the run, but I looked at her results and she must have finished just a few seconds behind me real-time (a few minutes chip time). I saw her again after the race and we congratulated each other.

The run was, as usual, sucky. Yet again, I am forced to admit that, without question, the run is where I have the most room to improve -- by leaps and bounds. Each mile felt like an eternity. But I managed to keep it steady and ended up finishing the 3 miles in 33:50. I had hoped to get 11:00 pace, but it was not to be.

My final time was 1:10:54. The race had no Athena category so it wasn't a hardware day for me, but I did finish 13th (out of 32) in the 30-34 age group. In my age group I was 6th in swim, 4th in T1, 4th on the bike, 4th in T2 (if it had been an aquabike, I would've placed 5th!)...and 21st on the run. Sigh.

Overall it was a very fun race and I'm pleased with my results. Maybe next year at Lonestar I'll enter the aquabike and go for my first piece of "legitimate" hardware... ;-)

So I fell off my bike last night. Off my bike that was stationary on my trainer. Actually, I suppose to be more precise, I should say that my bike fell off the trainer, and I happened to be on it at the time.

I was on my new tri bike, which I have put on the trainer without issue twice before, and was only about 8 minutes into my almost hour-long session. Suddenly, I felt myself shifting. Amazingly, my brain processed what was happening very quickly. Things went into slow motion. "I'm falling," I thought. And so I was.

As you can see in this photo from a year and a half ago, my apartment is pretty tiny, and my bike is set up between a chair and the coffee table. I fell to the left, and so it actually wasn't too much of a disaster. My left hip landed on the coffee table, and my reaction was quick enough that I was able to catch myself with my left arm. My left foot came out of the pedal, but my right foot remained clipped in. One side of the trainer ended up stuck between the spokes of my rear wheel, but upon removing it and inspecting it closely, there does not appear to be any damage. No damage to the bike, yes, but I did not escape the fall totally unscathed, and I now have a bruise on both sides of my left knee -- one from hitting the table, and one from the bike hitting me!

I quickly figured out the culprit. One side of the rear skewer that I thought was a metal cap that screwed onto the end of the skewer to hold it in place is actually just a plastic cap covering a very small metal nut. It was only a matter of time, it seems, before I fell off, since obviously the plastic was not capable of holding the load of the bike plus me. A quick trip to the garage to retrieve a different skewer remedied the problem, and I was riding again within 10 minutes.

All in all, a funny story, although the bike ride itself was not good. I felt totally worn out and lacking energy. My usual plan on the trainer is to pull up an hour-long show on the Tivo, and cycle hard through the commercials as intervals. After the first commercial break, I could not maintain it. I tried to cycle hard through the remaining breaks, but I kept on having to use lower and lower gears. I was pooped, so I stopped at 15 miles, or just shy of 55 minutes. (I recently got around to installing the Garmin speed/cadence sensor, and now in addition to cadence, which I never had before, I can also get speed and distance even when I am indoors.) I spent the rest of the night in a funk because I felt fat, slow, and tired. Ah well. Just one of those days.

In other athletic news, my name was not drawn in the NYC marathon lottery. This is actually an ok thing, since I will be in Japan the same weekend that the marathon takes place! This is year #2 that I have not gotten in. One more year of rejection and I get an automatic spot. If I don't get in next year, I'll be automatic to get in for 2010. I'd really like to run this race sometime, so I'll keep playing the lottery! Congratulations to June, who did get in this year. I know how badly she wanted it, so I was very happy to see "accepted" next to her name. She's gonna do great.

Less than a week after Silverlake, I found myself at the starting line of another triathlon! I did the Combat Tri for the first time last year and it's such a good race that I had to do it again. I don't know why I never did it before last year either, since it's the tri that's closest to home. The weather couldn't have been more different -- yesterday we got the typical hot and humid summer morning instead of last year's downpour of rain. I'm not sure which is worse. I mean, riding in the rain always feels a little absurd, but at least the rain makes things cooler.

First up: the results! I only wore a watch on the bike so that I knew my speed; I wore nothing on the swim or run. Turns out I had a good day in the pool, a great day on the bike, and a very "blah" day on the run. As I was telling everyone after the race, if this race had been an aquabike, I'd have been fantastic -- in fact, my swim+T1+bike+T2 time would have been good enough for 2nd place not in Athena, but in my age group. This is a big deal for me. Actually, I would have finished in 4th of 12 in my age group yesterday, even with my 8/12 running time. That is also way cool. Oh, and I did repeat as 1st place Athena by more than 10 minutes, so I got another plaque to add to my collection. I seriously don't have a place to put them all! Woe is me. ;-)

300 yard swim - 5:40 (last year 5:29)
T1 - 0:56 (1:23)
15 mile bike - 46:07 (49:00)
T2 - 1:02 (1:07)
3 mile run - 33:37 (32:43)

Total - 1:27:24 (1:29:43)

More than 2 minutes faster than last year! It's totally thanks to my new bike, but whatever. Heck yeah!

On to the recap! I put down 5:30 for my predicted swim time, just like last year, but there must be more people doing the race. The numbers are given out in order of predicted swim time to manage the logistics of the pool swim as effectively as possible, and last year I was #106. This year I was #115, which meant another 2 minutes of waiting before I got to start the race. No worries though. At least I wasn't #397. With 6 people per minute, that poor guy had to wait more than an hour before he started his race.

I hopped into the pool in the wake of #114, who was a kid that looked to be maybe 15 years old. "3...2...1..." and I was off. The trick to pool swims is seeding yourself correctly, and I did ok in that regard. The guy behind me passed me within the first two laps (100 yards), so obviously he put down a time that was too slow. Then, as I passed the halfway point at 150 yards, I found myself slapping the feet of the kid in front of me -- I had caught up to him. I thought for a moment about passing him, but in the end I decided that I'd just hang on his heels for the rest of the swim. I was swimming at a comfortably hard effort, and I didn't want to get my heart racing by passing this kid in the pool, all in the name of saving a measley 10 seconds. So I stayed behind him. I slapped his feet at least once per pool length just to let him know I was there, and I did have to do a few strokes of breaststroke here and there to let him get a few feet ahead again, but I was happy enough with my position. All in all, staying behind him couldn't have cost me more than 10-20 seconds, so I would've been right at 5:30 had he not been in front of me. I was happy with my 5:40 swim time and happy to see that I had seeded myself correctly.

I darted out of the water towards transition to the cheers of my BAM teammates still waiting to start the race. I ran to my bike, jammed my helmet on my head, pulled on my shoes and ran out of transition. Check out that T1 time! 56 seconds! I was smokin!

I hopped on my bike and put my sunglasses on as I started to ride. Here's where I knew things would get interesting, because it was windy. As I drove down I-45 to get to the race, I'd been treated to the sight of every car dealership's giant American flag sticking straight out in the stiff wind. It was coming from the southeast and going almost directly parallel to the highway. Since the majority of the bike course is on the I-45 feeder roads, I knew we'd have a huge tailwind going north and a huge headwind for the ~5-mile south portion.

The wind had died down just a bit by the time I got out to the bike course, but I was still flying up the northbound feeder road. I hit 24 mph and held it...and held it...and held it...and it was actually comfortable! I felt like I was flying. It was awesome. I got passed by two people but I didn't care because hey -- 24 mph! The turnaround came up fast though, and after hammering up the overpass I coasted down the other side, grabbed a sip of water, and prepared myself for the wind.

I gotta say, the tri bike makes the wind more bearable, mainly because being in the aero position lets me maintain a higher speed going into the wind. The slowness of fighting the wind has always been the mentally demoralizing part, so being able to maintain 15 mph into a stiff breeze keeps me in a much happier mental state. I pulled anywhere from 14 to 17 mph while heading south as the wind varied in speed, and passed a handful of people over the next 5 miles. It was disappointing to watch my average speed drop from 21.5 mph to 18.5, but I knew that was coming. I finally reached the second turnaround and grabbed some more water before heading north again. Whee! Flying time again!

The rest of the bike passed quickly. I raised my average speed back to about 19.5 mph and held it there throught the last couple miles, which involved a lesser headwind as we left the highway and rode back to transition. The bike was the only portion of the race where I used a watch, and I did it precisely because I had a goal: beat my time of 49:00 from last year. As I rode into transition, I knew I would finish 3 minutes faster than that, and I was really excited.

I ran into transition, changed shoes, grabbed my hat and race belt and headed out. I am amused in retrospect to see that my T2 was slower than T1; that rarely happens. There's not much to say about the run other than it was hot, it was humid, and I sucked it up. I'm disappointed that I couldn't hold sub-11:00 pace. Still, I finished strong and was very excited to see that I improved my time by more than 2 minutes over last year! Maybe next year I'll get sub-1:25. :)

I took 1st place Athena again, more due to lack of competition in the category than anything else. But it's always fun to get some hardware!

I thought about signing up for the Tejas Tri on June 8, but then remembered that I'll be working the shuttle mission that week! So my next tri will be the Y Tri in Pearland on June 29. My mom will be visiting that weekend so she'll be out there to cheer me on. And that gives me a whole month to work on my running...right?

I was really looking forward to this race this year, and then I got strep throat. While I feel 100% better, I'm still on the antibiotics, not to mention that being sick means I haven't run since last Saturday, haven't biked since last Thursday, and haven't been in the pool in almost two weeks. I didn't think I had much chance of beating my time from last year, 1:15:11, so I didn't even wear my watch! No watch, and I haven't put a computer on my new tri bike yet, so I had absolutely zero idea of how fast I was going or how far I'd gone.

Maybe I should leave the watch behind more often! I had a great race, and finished in 1:14:19 -- a minute faster than last year, and that's after being sick all week. Crazy. My time was good enough for 3rd place Athena, although I'm still kicking myself for not winning. I was the first Athena off the bike -- I could tell because mine was the first bike back on the rack, and we were all racked together. I didn't know if I could hold on during the run, but I gave it my best shot. It was impossible to tell who was Athena, because not all of us had the giveaway "A" on the back of our calf. Turns out I was passed by two other women, probably in the last half mile, because they each finished less than a minute ahead of me. But that's life. I'm still very happy with my race and with the improvement over the last year. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I reinforced my reputation for arriving at events at the last minute when I got into transition only 5 minutes before it closed at 6:30. But the sad part is that I was actually in the parking lot before 6 a.m.! Because this race is in the middle of a neighborhood, the parking areas are a mile or so away and you have to walk or ride your bike to the race site. I obviously didn't study the map hard enough, because I set off for the race site -- and a mile and a half later, I was in the middle of nowhere. I'd missed a turn right out of the parking lot and had been riding backwards along the bike course! (I didn't turn around earlier because I saw cones and figured I was heading in the right direction.) Sadly, I even dragged two poor guys along for the ride, since they'd been following me. We turned around and finally found the right road, but I probably rode 5 miles before the race just trying to get there. I can be such a flake sometimes.

Fortunately I can set up transition quickly, and I had no problem getting out of there before it closed. After that, I had a lot of time to hang out since I was in the last wave, starting at 7:27. There were plenty of people to keep me occupied. We had a ton of BAM people out there, and I also got to hang out with 4 of my Texas Independence Relay teammates! Katy was psyching herself up for her first tri, Cassie was, like me, doing a tri after being sick all week, and Jon (and Waverly), Edwin and Manny were there to spectate.

Finally, it was time for those of us in the last wave to begin! I hate being in the last wave, but I've gotten used to it, since that's where they tend to put the Athenas. As a positive, it always means that the course is less crowded, so I guess that's something. The water was 74 degrees, so there were a few people taking advantage of it being wetsuit-legal. But I went without, and the water actually felt fantastic. My goggles fogged up a bit, but soon enough I had completed the V-shaped course and was running through the grass towards my bike. My position in transition sort of sucked because I was at the complete opposite end from the bike out, but nothing I can do about that. It was a long run from transition to the exit, and more running across a small parking lot to get to the bike mount line, but finally I was there and off.

The bike course for this tri is a little unorthodox, with two sections that involve a lot of 90 degree turns in quick succession through the subdivision, as well as a u-turn halfway through the course. It forces you to slow down more often than you'd like, but I actually think the twists and turns are kinda fun to ride. I came out of the water behind my friend Cathy, as well as Katy and Cassie since they'd started in waves ahead of me, but I passed them all on the bike. Did I mention that my new bike rocks? :)

I came roaring back into transition and racked my bike on the empty Athena rack. I'll have to post my splits once the results are online, but I averaged right at 19 mph for the short 10-mile ride. Just about the same as last year. I headed out for the run and felt pretty good. The weather this morning was absolutely perfect -- cool at the start, and the sun didn't really come out until I'd finished, which meant it was also cool for the run. And no humidity! I'm loving these late-season "cold" fronts right now.

Again, I had no watch, so I had no idea how I was doing but I felt strong and knew that I was definitely under 11:00 pace. I knew Katy and Cassie would be catching back up to me, and sure enough, Katy passed me just before mile 1, just before I saw Jon cheering on the sidelines. I kept going though, and feeling good. Cassie caught up to me with less than a half mile to go, and we stayed close through the end. She was running a little faster, so I used her as motivation to finish strong! We saw Jon, Waverly and Edwin again just before the finish. My final run time was under 31:00 for an average pace of about 10:20! I can't be too upset about losing 1st and 2nd on the run because that is still a dang good run for me.

Afterwards I hung out for a while chatting with all my friends and waiting on awards. The timing company made an error that put all the Athenas in the first wave -- which meant that the results showed our swim times as 32-38 minutes. Obviously wrong. Subtract the 27 minutes between the first wave and the last wave and you get our true time! They still hadn't fixed the error when I left, but I did alert the timing guy to the issue. They'd figured it out already for the 40-44 women, but hadn't realized they'd done it to the Athenas as well. So my posted time (and the one announced during awards) was my gun time of 1:41:xx but like I said, subtract 27 minutes from that for my chip time.

All in all, it was a beautiful day for a race and I had a great time. I can't wait for the Combat Tri next Saturday!

Update: Finally found the results online.

Swim: 9:02 (last year 8:25)
T1: 1:35 (1:33)
Bike: 31:33 (31:21)
T2: 1:12 (1:07)
Run: 30:56 (32:48)

Total: 1:14:15 (1:15:11)

I'm a little bummed to see that all of my splits were slower than last year except the run, but then again, I'd been sick all week. And I was only seconds slower on each part, but my run was a solid 2 minutes faster. The seconds in T1, T2 and on the bike are a wash, and the swim course was different this year so who knows -- it may have been slightly longer, since they're usually pretty hard to measure. I'll take it. And it just goes to show you never know how you might place. Last year I was 2nd Athena with a time that was a minute slower!

It's possible that the run course was a tenth shorter than last year. I'm not sure though, since I didn't wear my Garmin.

It was hot and humid this morning in League City and thus, as always, the Summer Kick-Off 5K turned out to be a very aptly named race. I am not looking forward to the next six months of running. My body just doesn't like it, and I don't either. But alas, running is what a runner does, and I am a runner. So off I went.

I saw a bunch of my buddies from all over as I wandered around trying to find my chip before the start. There were quite a few BARCers (like Joe) in attendance, as well as some of my fellow BAM triathletes. I saw a few coworkers as well, including Ray, who is a volunteer captain in the League City Fire Department. He and some of the other guys did the 3K walk dressed in all their fire-fighting gear, which I thought was pretty cool but dang they must've been hot!

My race went as well as I expected. I've been feeling a little off over the past couple days -- tired from a busy week at work, and my throat has been feeling weird, and I'm a little congested. Whine, whine, whine.

Anyway, I planned to go out comfortably but I guess I got a little caught up in the start, because mile 1 passed in 9:52. (I didn't actually realize this until after the race when I looked at my splits. I didn't look at my watch during the race until I was almost at the end.) I walked for a moment to get some water just past mile 1, and when I started running again I knew I'd have to hold back a little if I wanted to make it to the finish without completely falling apart. I haven't run much in the heat and humidity yet this year, and I could tell that my body temperature was already rising, and fast. I ended up covering the next two miles in just over 11:00 each and crossing the finish line in 33:13. Not very fast, but not completely awful either. I'm happy. If I can run this pace (10:40ish) for the run portion of next weekend's Silverlake Tri, I'll be a happy camper!

I was excited to read this morning that my TIR teammate Katy has signed up for the Silverlake Tri in three weeks. It will be her first triathlon! I'm so pumped that more people are getting into the sport that I've come to love. There are so many benefits to doing triathlons -- from the challenge to the competition to the crosstraining. You never get bored because you're always doing a different sport, and each has its own quirks and tricks. I challenge everyone out there to try doing a triathlon at some point. You won't regret it!

And hey -- if you're still a runner at heart, trust me when I say there is no better cross-training than cycling. For the past month and a half I've been running twice a week at best, and yet somehow I've maintained my running fitness and speed, as evidenced by my performance at the Bayou Bash. This is completely due to the fact that while I may only be running twice a week, I'm also cycling at least twice a week. After years of having an on-again off-again relationship with my bike, I've finally made peace with it over the last few months and am loving it.

My training is going fairly well. My next races are Silverlake on May 18 and Combat on May 24. I've got "mystery plans" for the night of May 17 (I can't say what they are because it's Jose's birthday present), so I'll probably be pretty tired for Silverlake. I plan to race harder at Combat and, with any luck, beat my time from last year.

On Sunday morning I rode just over 20 miles with the BAM girls. We took it really easy for the first 8 miles, averaging about 13 mph as we rode with one of the group's beginners. She turned around on NASA Parkway just before we hit 146. We sped up after that and covered the rest of the Todville-to-Port Rd-to-Bay Area loop at an average of 17 mph or so. Total time for the 20 miles was 1:26, which included a couple lengthy stops due to stoplights that we weren't heavy enough to trigger! It wasn't the most intense workout, but it was quite an enjoyable ride. While riding into the wind up Todville, we were passed by a huge crowd of roadies heading in the other direction. I can only assume it was the Bike Barn/Space City Cycling group, as I believe I spied Joe among them.

Last night I almost bailed on swimming when I got to my car and realized I'd left my gym bag at home, but fortunately detouring past my apartment is not really that far out of the way. I got to the pool only 15 minutes later than planned and swam 1450 yards -- 500 warmup, 5x100 hard, and 450 cooldown. It was supposed to be 500 cooldown but I lost count of my laps and only realized later that I'd shorted myself by one lap. I finally had a watch with me that I could wear in the water (thanks to being one of the first 300 women to join Trek's new Women Who Ride club!) so I took a look at my 100 yard times. They were decent -- between 1:44 and 1:47 for the "hard" repeats, and 2:00-2:05 for warmup/cooldown -- but I'd like to be a little faster. I feel slow in the water right now, which is a little frustrating. The harder I swim, the slower I seem to go. I think I need to really concentrate on pulling, long strokes, and making the most of my glide. I'm also considering contacting a local swim coach recommended by my tri group to give me a couple lessons to tweak my stroke. Then again, it'd be pretty hard to earn a significant time gain on the swim when sprint races involve such short swim distances!

Tuesday is normally a running day, but I'm stuck in a sim until 9:00 tonight. I'll take the day off and look forward to my first brick of the season tomorrow! There's a large group of Tri on the Run folks, BAM folks, and others who do a bike/run brick every Wednesday on Middlebrook, but class has prevented me from going so far this spring. With the semester over, I can brick again!

Yesterday I ran my first HARRA race of the year -- and it was the last HARRA race of the spring. Oh well. It would be really nice if one of the races in the spring series was in/around Clear Lake. Then again, they are currently all inside the loop, which is really the best way to be fair to suburbanites all over the area. Next year I'll have to make more of an effort, but I'm going through a period right now where I'm far less interested in driving all over the city to get to events than I used to be. The gas prices are a small part of that, but really I just need a break from spending more time in the car to get to the race than it takes me to actually run.

I did want to do the Bayou Bash Relay yesterday, so I signed on with a Bay Area Running Club team. It was my debut as a BARC racer, as in seasons past I have raced for the Striders. (Of course, "raced" is a relative term since I am not a speedster.) I've done this relay a couple times before when it was in Sugar Land, but skipped it last year when it moved way out to Katy. This year it was in another new location on the campus of Rice University. The race is a total of 8 miles, with each person running a 2-mile leg. I liked the course -- except for the handoff, which involved taking the baton and running about 20 feet before immediately having to pull a U-turn to head back out onto the course. Running on the lovely Rice campus was fun.

I met my teammates Alissa, Stacy and Christie after I arrived. I've been a BARC member for a year now but haven't been very active, so I don't know many people in the club. Hopefully I can slowly change that. Alissa went first, I would run second, followed by Christie and Stacy brining up the rear. Veronica did a good job of putting our team together, as we were all pretty evenly matched as far as pace was concerned. Alissa went out strong and got back for the handoff in about 17:30. I took the baton, made the U-turn, and off I went. Joe took a photo of me as I raced out of the starting gate at top speed.

"Top speed" is again a relative term, but on the drive up to the race, I had mentally committed myself to really seeing what I could do with this short 2-mile course. At best, I thought I could do somewhere between 18:00 and 19:00 for my two miles so that was my goal -- and I knew it would take some real work to do it.

I went out hard. The weather wasn't that great for a race -- windy and wet -- but it never rained hard and so it wasn't much of an issue. There were a lot of puddles on the ground that I tried to avoid for a few minutes at the start before I gave up on keeping my feet dry. I hit the half mile marker in 4:32. When I saw the split on my watch, I was both happy and appalled -- because while I was excited to see that I was indeed cooking along, I was already starting to wonder how long I could really keep it up! The next half mile was under the trees at Rice, which helped keep the mist away. Unfortunately, this was also the portion of the race where the first "C" runners (third leg) passed me. This race draws some incredibly fast teams (my team averaged just over 9:30 pace and we were way in the back of the pack) and they flew past me like I was standing still. It was a little discouraging, but also amazing. I love watching the fast guys. They make it look so easy!

The next half mile passed in 4:39, for a first mile of 9:11! That's the fastest mile I've run in a while, so I was pumped. With half the race over for me, I just kept reminding myself that I only had a mile to go. Less than 10 minutes. I could do it. The only people who passed me on this leg of the race were a dozen or so "C" runners -- all of whom went flying by. Not a single "B" runner passed me, and I managed to "chick" two men, so I improved our team's standing by two positions! If there was a 1.5 marker, I never saw it, but I could see the handoff point with a quarter mile to go and starting pushing to get there. I handed the baton to Christie and stopped my watch -- 18:12! My second mile was 9:01. Dang! I was ecstatic. I was also about to fall over from lack of oxygen. It took me a couple minutes of walking before I caught my breath, and right around then was when the first team finished, just under 40 minutes. A sub-5:00 pace. A-freaking-mazing.

Christie ran our team's third leg right around 22:00, and Stacy brought it home with a final leg of something around 19:00. Our total team time was 1:16:xx which I thought was not too shabby!

My Garmin measured only 1.97 miles, so it's possible that the course was just slightly short, but either way I was well under 9:30 pace for my part and pretty pumped about it. Maybe in my next 5K, I should just go all out for the first 2 miles and then try to hang on. :)

It was a fun race, and well worth running. I enjoyed meeting some new BARC folks and seeing a lot of old faces as well.

Georgia Tech posted the results of Saturday's Pi Mile 5K and shows me with a 33:34, which is right about what I thought. Woohoo! I'm very happy with that result, a 10:49/mile pace on a thoroughly hilly course. For those that have avoided math since high school, I should probably explain. Remember that pi is a never-ending number that is generally rounded to 3.14. And that's just a hair over the 5K distance of 3.1 miles. And Georgia Tech is a school full of engineering dorks like me. Hence the Pi Mile 5K. (Yes, it was actually a 5K, not 3.14 miles.)

I also forgot to mention that the race t-shirt was perhaps my favorite of all time:

What's not to love about a t-shirt that features a large pi that is actually constructed out of the digits of pi itself?

I'm home sick again. But I'm feeling much better. I expect to be back at work tomorrow.

I did my first triathlon in 2003. For five years, I rode my trusty Specialized Sequoia -- a bottom-of-the-line road bike that wasn't even built for racing but rather for comfort and for rides like the MS150. But I was always hesitant to upgrade. After all, while a bike can make you a little faster, your legs can make you a lot faster. I didn't want some fancy bike that my legs couldn't keep up with. And I didn't want to look like a fool going 14 mph on a fancy bike.

It wasn't until last fall that I started thinking that I might finally be worthy of a tri bike. A beautiful, shiny, speedy tri bike, with its geometry designed specifically to make the transition to running easier and the lovely streamlined aerobars to help get in a less draggy position.

Yesterday I decided to buy myself a "little" happy-30th-birthday-to-me, I-got-my-first-paying-design-gig, I-got-my-tax-refund, I-had-a-kick-butt-first-tri-of-the-season, I-just-really-really-really-want-it present.

So I bought a tri bike. And it is awesome. I can't stop looking at it. I can't wait to ride it. And yet I'm stuck in my cert sim until 10:00 tonight! Pure torture, I tell you. Torture.