Lakes Region Tri Festival

Bristol, NH - September 2017

Pre-Race

            My mom and I drove from Boston to New Hampshire the night before this race and stayed in an AirBnB for the first time.  The quaint town and beautiful race venue helped to ease my nerves and allowed me to process my experience from the prior weekend at Dover-Sherborn.  On race morning, my mom and I headed to the lake so I could get my bike set and go for my warmup jog (i.e. a half mile that was no help whatsoever).  The race director corralled us in transition for the race briefing and National Anthem, and then drummers dressed in Revolutionary era attire marched us to the swim start.  I gave my mom a hug on the way over and then slid into the water for the men’s mass start.

Swim

            This race allowed me to realize mass starts favor my race style.  I’ve got broad shoulders and plenty of experience with rough swimming from four years of collegiate water polo.  I had no problem breaking away from the pack and settled into a rhythm at the first turn with another swimmer.  I think he was just as new to triathlon as I was because we swam the ~500 yard stretch parallel to the beach side-by-side and breathing towards each other. Had we worked together, we probably could have chased down the MIT guy (and ultimate winner) who broke from the pack at the first turn. I pulled into second as we turned back towards the beach and maintained my place into transition.

T1

            A slightly more successful T1 than the previous weekend, but I still have a lot of work to do here. The jelly legs feeling never totally goes away; you just kind of get used to dealing with it. I lost a few spots here because of how careful I was cleaning off / drying my feet and putting socks on.

Bike

            This course was fun… mostly flat along our side of the lake before a brutal climb at the tip of the lake. The gentle curves on the way out provided some stunning views of the surrounding mountains and the vast lake.  At the tip of the lake, I think we gained something like 400 feet over less than a mile before turning to go down the other side in a nice, gradual descent.  I borrowed some clip-on aero bars from the BC physical trainer for this and remember thinking about how cool it felt to whip down that road at ~25 mph. For anyone wondering if clip-ons make a difference - they do! While I personally wouldn’t want that to be my permanent race set up, the positional shift was enough to tuck me in a bit better than just riding in the drops.  Just as I was zipping along towards the end of the bike, the “uber bikers” finally began making up the swim gap.  As I gawked at their shiny tri bikes, I naively thought a bike upgrade would make me as fast as them… I’ve since realized you also need race wheels (oh, and an actual training plan)!

T2

            My legs felt surprisingly good here. I’m not sure if this had something to do with the clip-on aero bars or me knowing what to expect.  I waved at my mom and set out on the run. 

Run

At this stage in my journey, the runs were essentially thinking “1, 2, 3 (inhale), 1, 2, (exhale)” repeatedly while trying not to cramp.  I didn’t get passed by many people this time, which encouraged me, even though I seriously considered quitting at the turn around.  I thankfully didn’t; the back half of the race showed me that sometimes grabbing some nutrition and / or slowing down can be enough to keep you in the game. Additionally, I used to be all about the wow factor… so, when I finally turned into the long finishing chute, I just had to start sprinting to look cool in front of the crowd – you never know when that might get a girl to start talking to you!  (News flash – it has yet to work)