Chisago Lakes Sprint Triathlon Report

Or “Sweet Bloggy Meet-Up!”

Or “Fastest Bike Split EVER!”

Or “This race report brought to you by the letter ‘P’ for “Preservatives.”

Pre Race:

So I lived up to my word in my last post: I ate CRAP the day before this triathlon. Friday night, Pharmie and I ordered Thai:

On Saturday (the day before the race), I ate some of the crap that was shown in my previous post. My lunch consisted of a 4-meat Totinos pizza and a can of Mac and Cheese:

I add extra cheese to Totinos pizzas

The Mac and Cheese didn’t want to be eaten - it just wanted to stay home:

But in no time, both were in my belly:

I’ve stopped using a plate with Totinos - I just carry
the cutting board to the table and eat off of that

My thoughts on the canned Mac and Cheese: The first half of the can was actually quite delicious: rich and creamy. The last half started tasting like wet cardboard. I’d eat it again, but in shifts. So my the final numbers from just my lunch the day before the race look like this (Totinos and canned Mac and Cheese combined):

The bad news:
1160 calories (500 fat calories)
56 grams of fat (86% of my Daily Value)
20 grams of saturated fat (110% D.V.)

The not-so-bad news:
3440 mg of sodium (144% D.V.)
122 grams of carbs (42% D.V.)
42 grams of protein (84% D.V.)
80% D.V. of calcium

I needed that sodium, because I’d be sweating a lot the next day. I needed to carbo-load, so those carbs didn’t go to waste. Protein is good. And so is calcium.

AND THAT WAS JUST LUNCH!! A few hours after that, I went to a work-related pot-luck (uh-oh), and I had a brat, half a burger, a LOT of guacamole and chips, some pasta salad, and a couple of cookies. I was fueled for my race!

Race Morning:

I woke up at 3:45 am after a night of restless sleep. For good luck, I taped the Mac and Cheese label to one of my water bottles (I really don’t know HOW this is lucky):

I got loaded up and was on the road by 4:45. I got to the race site, got my race packet, went back to my car for my gear, and set up my transition:

Notice that sweet, sweet, torn, paper sack under my bike? That’s my gear bag. Come on Zoot, TYR, Blue Seventy, or anyone else - I could use a gear bag! Please? Anything beats my paper sack.

I walked down to the water while it was still calm and quiet. You can see the 5 yellow markers for the short 400 meter sprint course, and all the orange markers (that nearly reach the far shore) for the much longer 1.2 mile half IM course:

Then I stopped at a port-o-potty because there wasn’t a line yet!

First self-portrait in a port-o-john mirror! Sweet!
(Notice my hand - I was in wave 21)

Then back in transition, I ran into 2 bloggers: Danielle in Iowa and Miss Allycat:

I was quickly introduced to Karen (who actually snapped the above photo), a friend of Miss Allycat. TODAY WAS THEIR FIRST TRIATHLON!! For both of them! They were excited!

I showed the ladies my sweet, sweet smiley face on my calf that I asked the body-marker to draw on for me. They were jealous. I pulled a Sharpie out of my pocket and marked Danielle and Miss Allycat with smiley faces to make them feel better:

I’m the girlish one in the middle.
At least my smiley is the biggest...

Well, that was that. Time to drop the camera, all our extra clothes, and get down to the start. Danielle, Miss Allycat, Karen, and I stuck together until our starting times. We all scoped out the scene, and I was trying to be helpful (but not that “overly helpful jerk” that we’ve all met) to the 2 newbies. I think they had their plan, and they both knew what they were getting into.

We watched the 8 waves of half IM triathletes take off, along with the first few of the short course athletes. I told the 2 newbies that they weren’t triathletes until they peed in the lake. So I waded into the water to do my pre-race business. I was in waist deep water, and I let it flow.

“Hey Miss Allycat!...” I said with smirk and a thumbs up. She looked over and laughed. She knew what I was doing. “Now you can say you’ve seen me pee!” I exclaimed with a smile. She walked up next to me and paused for a second. “Well...” she said to me, “now YOU can same the same about ME!” Sweet. We both peed for a minute next to one another. That was “Step One” for Miss Allycat in becoming a real triathlete.

Oh, and as we were getting ready to swim, we saw MN triathlon stud David Thompson walk by. All the half IM swimmers had gone out a long time before. I asked him what he was doing out of the water. He said that he just registered race morning, and the line was an hour and a half long. He JUST got registered. So they let him start late. I wished him luck. He’s so personable for being such a big-shot super-stud; he’s always nice to talk to, even if he doesn’t know you. Karen thought he was HOT! I told her that he was married to Hannah from Gear West. She knew Hannah because Hannah helped her while she was looking at aero bars. Karen thought BOTH of them were hot, so she said something like “I don’t want to break up their marriage and sleep with David. So I’ll invite Hannah too, and we can have a threesome.” Gotta love a woman with a plan! Go get em’ Karen!

Swim (0.25 miles):

I took off in wave 21, and went out well. I hit a major “log jam” of swimmers when I was nearing the turn-around: I think a few people collided, and more people swam up on them. I got around the mess pretty easily. I hit the turn around in 4:47. That was slow. Talking with Danielle afterward, she thought the swim seemed long too, so I’ll go with that.

I lost my form a little on the way back - I was trying to go a little faster than I should have. The good news is that my calf didn’t cramp up like it did 2 weeks ago! I hit the shore in 10:30, but the swim didn’t technically end until way up a grassy hill at the edge of transition. So that added nearly 40 more seconds to my “official” swim time.

T1:

Nothing fancy here. The only thing to note is that I decided to bike and run topless. Two weeks ago at the LTF Triathlon, I struggled A LOT with my shirt in T1 - I actually had to take it off and give a second run at it. So today, I wasn’t going to bother. I think topless cyclists look a little trashy, but I didn’t care. I was off on the bike in my topless glory, folds of skin bunching at my mid-section. Trashy. My apologies.

Bike (17 miles):

I really wanted to attack the bike today. I’ve been focusing on that all year. I went out pretty hard. People TOTALLY forgot to stay right during the first few miles. I passed a lot of people on the right. People were all over the road. It was pretty frustrating. It got better as we got farther into the ride.

My biggest excitement on the bike was at about mile 2. I went for a drink from my Gatorade bottle. I had a swig, and then the bottle flew out of my hands. “Crap,” I thought. But it was only a 17 mile bike, so I didn’t think I’d need that much liquid (I had another bottle with just water), and I had gel for calories.

After 5 miles, my average was 21.4 mph. That’s CRAZY FAST for me! I’ve never averaged over 20 mph in a race. At about mile 10, my average was 21.5 mph (down from my peak of 21.6). There were a few more hills in the last half, but I was able to roll into transition with my computer reading 21.0 mph. THAT’S FREAKIN’ FAST FOR ME! I’d never broken 20 mph before (officially, my average was 20.0 mph two weeks ago at the LTF Tri, but my computer read 19.7 mph). I hit T2 feeling REALLY good about my performance thus far.

T2:

In and out quick. I was trying to do better in transitions today. I threw on my shoes, and I was off in 1:07, even though I was in a crappy corner of the transition zone.

Run (5K):

I wanted to break 20 on the run, but I really didn’t know what I could do after having a faster than usual bike split. I saw Jumper cheering out on the run. I gave him a high-five (and later he told me he held up his hand and bad shoulder - I felt bad for that! I hope I didn’t hurt his shoulder!). I hit mile 1 at 6:30, and I hit the turn around in 10:15. “Crap,” I thought (again). I’d need to run a negative split during a triathlon in order to keep my 5K under 20 minutes. “Well, I won’t know unless I give it a try...” So I picked it up.

I was running pretty uncomfortably. I missed the “mile 2” marker, so I had no idea if I had a chance at sub-20. I was passing all kinds of people. And, unlike last week where 1 person passed me, today NO ONE passed me on the run! Sweet!! I saw the finish area coming up, but there were a couple of sharp turns and one last little hill. I booked it to the finish line, and my official 5K split was 19:58.20. Sub-20! (Barely!) And a negative split! (Which I don’t think I’ve ever done on a run during a triathlon!)

Official Results:
• 0.25 Mile Swim: 11:07 (included a run up a hill to T1)
• T1: 1:58
• 17.0 Mile Bike: 48:52 (20.9 mph)
• T2: 1:07
• 5K Run: 19:58 (6:26 / mile)
• Total: 1:23:03

• Overall Place: 73 out of 781
• Age Group: 16 out of 52

Highlights:
• Posted fastest average bike speed in a race (20.9 official, 21.0 computer - my PR used to be 20.0 official, 19.7 computer).
• Placed 17th out of 781 on the run, and 6th in my A.G. on the run!
• My strained calf, weak heel, and bad knee all stayed in check!
• Got to meet up with some awesome blogger buddies!!

Post Race:

I was hungry. At the finish of this race, they have fresh Swedish pancakes! So I had 2 plates:

As I was eating, I was looking for Danielle, Karen, and Miss Allycat to come to the finish line. I totally missed Karen, as she finished her first triathlon in 1:30! Nice job Karen! (Now good luck with that threesome...) Danielle came running by first. But there was a catch. All the ladies made me promise not to post photos of them in spandex without their approval. So I told them instead of putting black bars over their eyes to protect their identity, I’d place a black box over everything EXCEPT their eyes (as to cover the spandex). So here’s Danielle getting ready to conquer that last hill:

And here’s Miss Allycat finishing up her first tri:

Here’s Miss Allycat and Karen in line for food after finishing their FIRST triathlon!

They both had a great time and can’t wait to do it again! I’m so happy for them! Way to go, ladies!!

Time to unveil the secret finishers food that I brought along:

I brought 2 cans of Spaghetti-Os and 3 spoons for anyone to share. No one wanted any except for Danielle and I:

My mouth isn’t really that crooked...

It only took us each a few minutes, and we were left with this:

I think I’ve found a new post-race tradition! SPAGHETTI-Os ROCK!! I don’t like eating cold food, but cold Spaghetti-Os after a race are GREAT! If we ever race together, and you want a delicious snack afterwards, let me know!! I’ll bring you a can and we can chow down together!

So the five of us (Jumper, Me, Miss Allycat, Danielle, and Karen) hung out for a few hours and watched the half IM folks run and finish:

Apparently, we had to line up tallest to shortest...

Oh yeah, notice the short yellow shorts “bowl full of sunshine” over my crotch. I threw them on as soon as I finished, so I could cheer for everyone else with a little "flavor." I didn’t run in them, but I couldn’t NOT wear them for an event.

We saw IronJenny take off on the run. She ended up placing 2nd in her AG with a half IM time of 5:18!! Nice job Jenny!

As we were cheering, we saw TacBoy come out of T2. He had to pee, but he was disguising it well:

He hung out for a few minutes waiting for his wife, TriMama. They posed for a photo...

...and then took off to conquer the run together. I also saw (and hugged) TriMom as she was starting the run course. But she caught me off guard, so I didn't get a photo. Shortly after, I got packed up, and hit the road. It was getting hot, and I was ready for some A/C.

So just to round off the weekend nicely, I got home today and had another Totinos:

Overall, it was a GREAT day! I got to meet up with a few old blogger friends, I got to meet face-to-face for the first time with other blogger friends, and I had a decent race on top of it all! Hurrah!

Check back in a few days for official photos! Thanks everyone!