Sunday FUNday!

Ooooof, you always for get what doing "just" an Olympic feels like the next day...because it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the vino.  You think due to it's short duration that it's "easy".  Meanwhile, the entire race, my diesel, slow and steady tortoise is screaming at me to just slow down, this is too hard- take a break, it'll be OK and no one will notice ;)

Hubby represents Coeur too!

Yesterday was a VERY local tri in Oakland and it was AWESOME.  I don't think I've had that kind of fun racing in a long time outside of Ironman.  Seeing Mark come home the night before having WON the series he'd been working on all season long got me incredibly jazzed to race myself...I needed to represent the family!

I had lots of friends racing and saw SO many gals in Coeur kits that I insisted on stopping each and every one of them and asking them how they liked the fit and how their race was.

Podium with friends is always better!

Overall result: 1st OA female

Roka Swim/Osmo Swim : 2nd OA swim
We had been told the swim was with a current and wow was it ever...17:13 for a .9 mile swim?  Sure, why not!  I told myself to just GO from the gun and very quickly found myself on the feet on one guy and that was how the entire swim went.  I felt pretty confident that I was the first gal out of the water for our wave and we had also passed hoards of folks from the wave ahead.  Next bit of fun for the race was getting to transition...which meant a run up 4 flights of stairs and then down the other side as we had to get across some train tracks via a pedestrian bridge. I may or may not have said "seriously"...and then just smiled.  Race silly girl!

Argon18/Enve Bike: 1st OA bike of 1:06:42
I was so focused on getting the heck onto my bike that I didn't take any food with me.  I realized that quickly and then remembered it's only an hour ride and I'll get my Cytomax energy chews as soon as I hit the run.  The bike was a two lap, through the city and port of Oakland course.  And while there were tons of turns and pot holes, the course was designed for you to HAUL on.  It was awesome for us love of flats folks.  Put it in a BIG gear and GO.  Why is that just THE BEST way to ride.  No hiding it, even though I live in California, I do not love to ride hills....I grew up in the Mid-West and the flats have my heart. The 2nd lap of the bike saw things get a bit hairy with congestion from the sprint, duathlon and aqua-bike folks also ALL being on the same narrow roads.  A few agro dudes later and thankfully I was safe and sound in transition...do I have to do those stairs again?

Da Girlz

 Coeur Sports/Smith Optics Run: 42:48 (think this is a PR for me)
I'm just learning to use my new Garmin 910 so instead of hitting LAP to go tot he run portion yesterday, I hit STOP.  Which is funny that I couldn't figure that out until the finish as I kept hitting the page button and wondering why nothing was showing up.  Shows how little brain power you have while racing!  So...the course may have only been 6 miles and not 6.2 but that is still a fast run for moi! I knew that there was one gal in the wave ahead of my who specializes in short course racing and that I would need to run well to beat her.  I knew I had made up time on the bike, but people who do lots of short course racing can just RUN. The entire day I had just been telling myself when I wanted to slow down that NO, you do NOT get to slow down, it will be over soon and you do not want to have any energy leftover or to have not won just because it hurt.  #suckitupbuttercup  Helping me to not slack off at all was head coach of Team Sheeper.  When I started making my dying animal noises, he told me to keep going, that was GOOD!  Really, it doesn't sound good and surely it doesn't FEEL good.  But it was awesome to have the cheering and I really don't know if I would have run as well without it. 

mmmmm, Dinner

We were home in time to treat ourselves to a burger and fries and then it was time to get prepped for Sunday Dinner with friends.  My fave way to end the weekend.

I don't think that I'm racing again until Kona, but I'm so glad that I did race yesterday.  It was really good to get out there and push myself and RACE.  Good to have the fire back in the belly after pulling the plug on Alcatraz back in June due to lack of mojo. I think that the more years you have in sport, the more you learn that it ebbs and flows.  Sometimes the motivation to race is ever present and sometimes you need to nurture it back to health and find fresh new things that get you excited to challenge yourself.  I can always get excited about Hawaii, but this year, getting excited to race outside of qualifying for Kona and Kona has been tough.  So glad to see the return of the racing spirit....it's just in time.