OK first I need to vent because I have had a crappy morning and for some reason throwing it on my blog makes me feel better (and will hopefully keep me from throwing something at our receptionist. I'm sitting at work right now and she is very poorly singing along to the radio. Seriously!!) Money has still been ridiculously tight and now I had to throw $443 at my air conditioner for my townhome. This morning my car was making a weird vibration (keep in mind I just had it serviced a few months ago) and the stupid unfriendly bank teller lady was making me mad because I just needed to quickly deposit a few checks and garage sale cash to pay down my credit card. First she made me count all the cash, just to turn around and recount it and change my total. Then I had to use the change machine to count the change and she wouldn't take the full unopened roll of nickles. Add on that my escrow refund check from my old loan that still has Kevin's name on it that she wouldn't deposit without his signature and I had HAD IT. My nerves are shot already this morning and it's barely 10am......
Anyway.....moving on......
The Manitou Triathlon has been renamed this year to the Optum Health Performance Triathlon. Both Mark and I didn't know what would happen at our first triathlon of the season since we had only been to one lake swim. Honestly the night before the tri we were contemplating not going. We were tired, it was a 4am alarm, we didn't feel prepared.... But I knew Mark would be disappointed if we didn't go and likely I would be too. Plus my USAT "boss" is the race director so I would feel horribly guilty if I didn't show up :-P We arrived with just enough time to pick up our stuff and quickly get setup in transition. Then it was about 1.5 hours before our wave start so we relaxed with some friends that were racing. Warming up before the swim start wasn't much of a warm up since I didn't get very far in the water. I was shivering from how cold the water was so I decided to just get wet and wait for my wave. The swim went ok, I was a little cautious to keep my head up and not get smacked. Weeds were pretty thick too but they don't bother me too much during a race. It was two laps and the second lap I had plenty of space for about 2 minutes until the wave behind me caught up and I got a bit ran over.
I was surprisingly dizzy getting into T1 so it was a bit slow getting my bike shoes on but I got out on the bike course just hoping my bike would stay in one piece this time. Weather was cloudy and kind of cool so riding was great. It was a rolling hill course and I tried to use the downhills to recover some speed although some spots in the road were rough and I didn't want to risk being in aero in those areas.
T2 was a sigh of relief because I made it through the bike with no issues! :D :D
The run was great although a tough start as usual. Body just isn't used to the bike to run transition yet for this year. The course was nice and flat and pretty much exactly what we ran for the Jump To It 5k so that was a nice flashback since I had a good run that day. I was running probably 90%, not wanting to blow everything I had on this race since the Irvin 5k is this coming Friday.
Overall I was satisfied with my times: Swim: 18:14 (pace 2:05) Bike: 44:00 (pace 18.4) Run 24:53 (pace 8:18) Age Group placement 7 out of 19.
Unforunately no pictures to post from this event, at least yet.
Last night we went to our first outside Masters Swim at the New Hope pool. Unfortunately there was also a group of young kids taking up 6 of the 8 lanes with a coached swim so they annoyed me a bit. But it was our first time swimming a full 50m pool. Wow I was thrown at first, I took off for the first lap and I had NO idea how far I was from the end. But it was fantastic to be able to swim that far and concentrate on technique for much long before having to turn around. My typical stroke count in a 25yd pool is 20, in this 50m pool is was 52. And it was fun being out in the pool while it was starting to get dark and they turned the lights on. One of the last laps I did, I was turning around at the far end and looked up into the sky. There were the coolest clouds from the rain that had been passing through the moon was shining brightly. I actually stopped for a few seconds just to take it in. I LOVE being outside :) This evening swim is available to us now Tues/Thurs nights through July.
We are running a small bit this week in prep for the 5k on Friday but I have no idea how it's going to go. I just don't have confidence that I can shave off enough time to make my 23:18 goal. I'm considering putting the headphones on for this race. Might as well try right? It's going to be a fun weekend away in any case. We have our 5k on Friday evening then we have at least 3 friends running the marathon the next day so we will be on the course cheering for them and then partying away the evening. Sunday we need to make our way home again but our plan is to hit a few of the State Parks and pick up the Passport Club, Hiking Club and Safari Challenge Geocache at each one and still get home before too late. We have a tendency to want to spend too much time exploring the parks and before we know it, we are out of time. But it's fun :)
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