Lake Logan in beautiful weather...
The mountains around Lake Logan today...
Lake Logan sprint tri was this morning. For this one most of the appreciation had to go to the support crew - it POURED down rain for the whole race, and I didn't much care because I was wet anyway, and I rode my bike in the rain a lot this spring so that wasn't any big deal, and running in the rain is actually pretty pleasant. But standing around in the rain for over an hour - that's just not pleasant at all. So the lion's share of the "way to go" goes to everyone who stood there cheering. But a significant amount of appreciation also has to go to Andrew Pulsifer.
Andrew's the coach of the Asheville Masters swimming group, and also gives swim clinics pretty often, and I've attended both rather faithfully since I decided I was going to try to learn to actually swim this spring. Or really, I decided that if I was going to take up a new sport at age 37 I didn't have time to do it badly for ten years and then find some good instruction - I needed to start with the good instruction. And clearly that's what I did, because, in what I consider a complete miracle of his good instruction and my actually getting up at 5:15 in the morning to drive to the swimming pool, my best ranking for swim, bike or run was in the swim - seriously. I was the 5th woman out of the water (out of 78), and when I climbed up on the dock after the swim and the guy said "Fifth woman out of the water," literally the first thing I thought was, "Andrew Pulsifer is a genius." That might mean I could stand to have a little more focus while racing, but SERIOUSLY - I couldn't even swim 4 laps of the pool in a row in January, so this is surprising stuff.
The rest of the race was pretty good - 9th on the bike and 6th on the run, to finish 6th overall and first in my age group (yay!) My revelation for this race was - I've really got to ride the bike more. Because I seem to have a good thing going with swim training, and I can kind of fake my way through the run (which is totally what I've been doing - I don't think I've topped over 10 or 12 miles a week since April because my foot's still not so great), but I can't fake my way through the bike. I don't have any background on the bike (having gotten my first road bike in January, and also having not ridden my mountain bike more than 2 or 3 times in the last 3 years), which means I've got to put in some miles on it. An actual training plan might not be a bad idea either. It's not that my rank on the bike is so bad, it's that the bike is long enough that when you aren't riding as fast as the women in front of you they can put a few minutes into you. And it's hard to make back several minutes on the run - it's just not long enough - especially not in my current shape. So a little more focus on the bike is in order - and I feel sure Robin can help remedy that.
Running out of T1 to get on the bike - I'm smiling because Sam was cheering so loud.
Sweetest kid ever.
Overall we had a great time. Emmie did her first tri ever (yay Emmie!) after mountain biking at Tsali yesterday (which I thought was a rather bold warmup), Dawn did her first tri since having a baby 3 months ago, David placed in his age group, and Geoffrey had a good showing as well. So friends and neighbors all had fun. Also, Lake Logan has got to be one of the prettiest race venues anywhere, even in the pouring rain, and that's a pretty good way to spend a morning.
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