I still have a few fast-twitch running muscles left!

On Saturday, I ran the "Run Around the Square" 5k in Regent Square/Frick Park. The last time I ran this course was in 2006, and I haven't raced a 5k since Dec. 2006. Since I hadn't raced a 5k in so long, I thought it would be fun to see if I could improve my time, even though I've mainly been concentrating on endurance races. This had also been one of my favorite 5k's... it brings out a lot of runners and the crowd support is great. Plus, I LOVE Frick Park!!

This course is probably one of the toughest 5k's that I've done. The first 3/4 mile is flat through the Regent Square neighborhood, then it's a quick, sharp downhill followed by about 1 1/4 miles uphill. Most of this is on the trails in Frick Park, but a small segment is on the sidewalk. The last mile is a downhill coast to the finish line.

Going into the race, I wasn't sure what to expect since I haven't done any track or sprint workouts since ??? My time in 2006 was 25:46, which put me at 21/77 in my age group. Since the race start is only about 3.5 miles from my apartment, I decided to run there, race and run back - basically a tempo run. I was not feeling so great on the run over -- I felt tired and a bit sluggish and my stride just didn't feel natural. When I got to the race start, I had some Gu and water and did some drills, walked/ran around and talked to some people. While we were lining up at the start, the announcer told everyone that there would be a short delay to start the race, because there was a raccoon on the trail that needed to be removed! I'm glad they realized that, or things could've gotten pretty ugly (even though I think raccoons are pretty cute, I've heard they are not nice...)

After a few minutes, the announcer said that the raccoon was removed from the trail and the race could start. I was able to get out quickly when the gun went off, thanks to staying close to the start line, and I tried to keep pace with the people around me. I glanced down at my Garmin and saw my pace was 6:30/mile! Whoa - I definitely needed to slow down a bit as I was almost positive I couldn't maintain that pace for the whole race! My first mile split ended up being 7:08, which I was quite happy with. The uphill section of the course felt pretty tough, and I was really working pretty hard to try to maintain my pace. I told myself that the race was already 1/3 over and that I could tough it out for a bit longer and I concentrated on trying to stay with the runners around me. We climbed up the trail through the park, and there were several musicians along the way - a tuba player, a trumpet player and I think a sax player. I had my iPod on though, so I couldn't fully appreciate their songs! Finally I saw that the hill was cresting and the downhill part was starting. YAY! I had survived the worst part. The first part of the descent was pretty steep. Between the grade and the loose gravel on the trail, I felt I couldn't really go as all out as I wanted to. The last mile felt much faster than the previous mile, and soon enough the clearing where the finish line was came into view. In a time of 24:12, I was done - a 5k is really short - esp. compared to a half ironman! I ended up placing 15th out of 148 girls in the 25-29 age group... one of my highest rankings. Way to go fast twitch muscles! :)

Morgantown Half Ironman Triathlon - Aug 9, 2009

Sunday, August 9th was the big day! My first half ironman triathlon, and the longest endurance race I have attempted: a 1.2 mile open water swim, a 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 mile run. I am usually so nervous that I have trouble sleeping the night before a big race, but I think I actually was able to sleep from about midnight to 5am, which by my standards is a very good night of sleep pre-race!

My dad drove down to Morgantown with me and waited while I set up my transition area, picked up my timing chip, and got my numbers marked on my arms and legs. It was really nice to have him there, since I was pretty nervous! When the sprint races were starting, I noticed a few people swimming around the dock warming up and decided it would be good for me to warm up a bit. The swim was in the Monongahela River, which in Pittsburgh, is pretty gross. I have to admit that the Morgantown Mon seemed cleaner than the other open water river swims I've done. I hadn't swam in my wetsuit since last September, so I had kind of forgotten what it felt like and I'm glad I got in early to warm up and get used to it.

Getting ready for the swim. I was in the last wave to start, I'm one of the people in the water warming up!

After my warm-up, I waited on the dock with the other half iron distance women. This was the first race I've done with a non- wave start; we lined up along a dock and walked to the end of the dock in 2's or 3's and jumped into the water feet first and started swimming right away. (There was a timing mat at the end of the dock so the last person in wouldn't be at a disadvantage.) I was placed in the middle of the pack, I figured this would be a safe place for me to start since my swim times are typically in the middle of the field. I was a bit nervous that the person jumping in behind me wouldn't wait until I was out of the way, but luckily there were no problems. I think there were only about 50 women, so the mass start wasn't nearly as crazy as the big wave starts I've done at other races in terms of people bumping into you and splashing. The 1.2 mile course was a large, skinny rectangle, and it wasn't very far to the first buoy. I noticed that I had passed a few women right off the bat, which made me feel pretty good. I think I did a good job approaching the buoy at a good angle so I was able to swim continuously without getting too close to it and having to stop and re-align myself (my dad later confirmed that from his point on the observation deck above the river, I had good approaches going into the first two buoys; he couldn't see the last 2.) After turning the second buoy, I began to think I was perhaps putting just a bit too much energy into the swim and that I should back off a bit. I had a long race ahead of me, and I reminded myself multiple times that a good swim or a bad swim wouldn't make or break my race. Heading down the long stretch, I picked my head up to see the buoy and it was in sight. Wow, this swim was going really fast! I felt like I was doing a really good job swimming on course and not weaving around too much. As we reached the buoy, I realized that there was another buoy much further down and and the buoy I had been looking at was for the sprint tri turnaround. Argh! When I approached the third buoy, there was kind of a bottleneck of girls treading/breast-stroking in place. It looked like some guys from an earlier heat were cutting in front of the buoy, and one of the girls in front of me yelled to one of the lifeguards in a kayak to ask where we were supposed to turn, since the instructions had been to always keep the buoy on your left. We were told to go around the buoy, not in front of it, and even though the river was supposed to have very little current, I had a really difficult time getting around that buoy. I was trying to swim freestyle but felt like I wasn't able to negotiate the turn as easy as I had done on the two previous turns. I finally ended up breast-stroking around it. (Later, my dad said that he had overheard multiple people complain about the current around the third buoy.) I was able to pick up the pace once I rounded the fourth buoy and was able to see the finish line - yay! As I was stumbling out of the water, I looked at my watch saw that my swim time was about 45 minutes - considerably slower than what I'd estimated before the race. I glanced at my heart rate and saw that it was 177 - a bit too high. I walked up the ramp towards the path to my bike and heard my dad yell out "Way to go Anne, that was only 2 hours, 15 minutes!!" and a few of the people around me laughed and one guy said, "only six more hours to go!"

My swim to bike transition was not the best. It was a pretty long distance between the swim exit and the transition area, and since my heart rate had been so high coming out of the swim I decided to walk most of the transition to bring it back down. When I got to my transition station, the first thing I did was grab a Gu gel and some electrolyte tablets. With the forecasted high of 93°F, I wanted to make sure I was getting enough electrolytes. I went to put my helmet on and realized I hadn't adjusted the straps since John borrowed it for a TT race the week before. Oops! Silly mistake. It only took me a few seconds to adjust it, but I made a mental note to be aware of things like that in the future. I made it out of transition in what ended up being just under 4:00.

I was relieved to get out on the bike. This is only the fifth time I've ridden my new Giant Trinity TT bike. I was a bit nervous about taking the new bike out for this race, but it ended up working out well. As I started out of transition, I hit the button on my PowerTap computer to turn it on. It turned on, and instead of registering a speed and power, it kept searching and finally flatlined across the screen. I made it search for the PowerTap wheel, and it still couldn't find it. Noooo!!! This is NOT the way I wanted to start the bike! I double-checked my rear wheel to make sure I hadn't put the wrong wheel on by mistake. It was indeed my PowerTap wheel. I was about to resign myself to basing my pace off HR alone, since I had a separate HR monitor on, but I reset the computer and made it do another search, and finally, it registered the wheel and showed my power, speed, distance, cadence, etc. WHEW! Thank goodness. The first lap of the bike went really well. My bike felt great, and I passed a few people pretty early on. This is a relatively small field, so people on the bike were pretty spread out. The elevation profile made it look like the course had two distinct climbs, but the first one was so gradual it barely seemed like a climb the first time through. When I got to the second climb, I actually passed one or two people on it! On the second lap, I could tell I was slowing down a bit. The sun was more over head now, and I was starting to feel pretty warm. The first climb in the loop that hadn't felt like a climb before, suddenly seemed to have an increased grade. At about mile 35, a woman passed me and said "Don't slow down now! You've been my rabbit this whole race so far!" I briefly passed her again, but she passed me with about 10 miles to go and I never caught her after that. Somewhere around here, I reached for my second water bottle (the other was empty already), fumbled it, and dropped it. I had a half-second urge to pull over and pick it up, but a) it was already rolling down the hill and b) I remembered that there were two volunteer stations on the course where they were handing out bottles with electrolyte drink. After a few more miles in the heat, I began to wish I had given up the 30 seconds or so it would've taken to grab my bottle. The aid stations were further away than I had anticipated! The last few miles were really tough on my neck. I have never been in the aero position non-stop for that long! I ended up sitting up for the last few miles simply for comfort. I was not particularly looking forward to running a half marathon at this point, but I was getting antsy to get off the bike.

Starting out on the bike - less than a mile from transition.

As I pulled back into transition at the end of my second bike lap, I saw John cheering for me and he yelled out that I was one of the first 10 half IM women in. I think my jaw almost hit the ground in disbelief. He then asked how I was feeling and I believe my exact words were "I think I'm going to throw up!" (Luckily, I didn't!!) I had a much more efficient T2, grab some more Gu's and head out to the run.

Around mile 6 of the run...

The run course for this event used to be very challenging from what I was told. There had been a very steep hill referred to as "devil's hill" (complete with person in devil costume to chase/motivate runners up the hill!). I was glad that they had revamped the course and changed it to a flat, double out-and-back course on a trail along the river. The first part of the asphalt trail was all in the sun. I didn't know which heat was worse: the heat coming up from the asphalt, or the heat from the sun. After about a mile and a half, the trail changed to crushed limestone and there were some areas of shade. By this time, it was past noon and I was sooooo hot. We've had such a mild summer in SW PA that I couldn't have prepared for running midday on a 90°+ day if I tried! At one or two points I felt a bit dizzy, so I took some walking breaks. After the turnaround at around mile 4, a girl passed me and I noticed she had a 27 on her leg. I remembered she was one of the first people I passed on the bike. She was going too fast for me to even try to match her pace though, so I didn't even try. On the way back in, I alternated some walking in with my runing whenever I felt too warm or my HR was too high. I told myself that this wasn't the Olympics and it wasn't worth having a heat stroke over. (I checked the weather report the day after, and it had been 91° during the run and the "real feel" was 94°.) There was a hose at one of the water stops, and getting sprayed with the cold water felt amazing! Volunteers were handing out cups of ice water at the rest stops, and I drenched myself every chance I got... I think really helped to keep me cool, although as I could feel the water squishing around in my shoes, I knew there would be some bad blisters to follow (and there were). I saw John again at the half-way turnaround and he said I was at about 1:10. Ugh, for 6 and a half miles? I was way behind the pace I had been hoping to run. At the beginning of that second lap, I started talking with a girl running next to me. We introduced ourselves and started talking about the heat and how difficult it was to run in it. We decided we'd try to stay together, alternating running and walking when necessary, to get to the finish line. My quads started feeling sore around mile 9ish and by mile 11 I could feel myself wearing out. I started lagging behind Lisa a bit, and she kept waiting for me and encouraging to keep going. At one point, I think I told her I didn't want to hold her back and that she could keep going and I'd finish on my own, and she shook her head and reminded me we were in this together and with that, I was able to get myself together and suck it up for the last mile. We ran through the finish line together - yay! We were so happy to be done! We really kept each other going on the last lap of the run... I know if she hadn't been there, I probably would've ended up walking much more than I did.

Lisa and I at the finish line

I was excited to see that I had finished third in the 25-29 age group, but a bit disappointed to see that I had about a 10 and 15 minute lead over the girls who eventually took 1st and 2nd AG going into the bike, and they both passed me on the run. I really need to work on improving my post-bike running! I do realize that I shouldn't be too hard on myself though, since I am definitely not used to such hot weather and I had spent most of my training time on the bike in the month or so before the tri. I didn't find out until the next day that there were only 5 girls in my age group, which surprised me because I had thought there were more. So, I felt a little silly for posting my 3rd AG on my facebook status, but I guess it is still an accomplishment! I was right in the middle of the women's overall field, which is where I had hoped to be. Overall, the experience was really good and I enjoyed doing the race. It was organized really well and the volunteer support was great! I definitely want to do another half ironman - maybe the same one next year? Or maybe I should look into races in northern Canada so I might be guaranteed a cooler day!