So I have slacked on getting this review out, slacked a lot. That’s my bad. Here is how it went.
We stayed right next to the race start, one of our favorite things to do. It makes packet pick up and race day travel so much easier. For this trip we brought cooking items, both the rice cooker and flat grill.
We made up rice cakes and prepared our pancake batter Friday night. We were going to be prepped with as much food as we could. This was our first race and we had no idea what we were doing 🙂
Race Morning
We woke up early and gathered in the hotel lobby. It was too early for the hotel breakfast, but we were able to set up a grill for our pancakes. It was nice. Plenty to eat at 5am.
We then made our way down to the transition area to setup. Everything checked out, everything was set, and now it was time for everyone to start.
Swim
The swim was a mass start of both full distance and half distance racers. About 200 people. The water was calm and not too cold. I used a full sleeve wetsuit and I loved it. The swim was mostly uneventful and I finished in 41 minutes.
I exited the water and started running up and luckily we had strippers. A quick pull and I was off to jump on my bike. T1 was less than 3 minutes.
Bike
I loaded up on food and jumped on my bike. I packed 4 rice cakes, a soft flask of hammer gel, and two bottles of Skratch labs electrolyte. My plan was to drink one and pick up water.
The bike started out with a bit of a hill outside T1. I tried to eat my first rice cake but noticed something I did not plan for, a dry mouth. I ended up stuffing down about 2.5 rice cakes, and plenty of Hammer gel. This route was a bit hillier than expected and we ended up climbing about 3,000 feet. I ended with a time of 2:53. I was then out of T2 in about 3 minutes.
Run
I was feeling good coming out of T2 and I blew right by the first aid station just outside of the transition area. The next one was not for another 1.5 miles. It was immediately apparent that it was going to be hot and I was going to have trouble. I fought off some cramping in the first half and muscled through the second half until the hill of hills. That unforgiving hill just 2 miles from the finish.
I finished the run in 1:59, just eeked under 2 hours. Total time was about 5:40, I am definitely going to work on lowering this.
