MIM Relay- Felicitas!

Thanks to my husband and well-meaning friends, I have been dubbed the "paparazzi" after whipping out my camera at dinner last night to document our fabulous post sprint/pre-oly meal. But our meal was fabulous- love me some friends and food. Consider my blog a scrap book of happiness, even if I do scare my friends with my stalker-like pictures and posts. :)
So- on to race #2!

No amateur challenge for me- I think the injuries are teaching me some lessons.

But, I did follow up the MIM sprint on Saturday with the bike TT for a relay team- FELICITAS. (yes, I give my teams a name because I am fun like that)

Swimmer: Meet Julia... without embarrassing her anymore than I already did today, let's just say that she has a very famous, 5 color tattoo that only a select number of people can wear, and it is NOT an m-dot. hmmmm. After recently coming out of a 3 year full retirement to play in the pool again, I convinced her that an open water swim would be fun! hee hee! She did amazing, of course, and I think she may even enter her very own first triathlon soon because she had so much fun!

And runner: Rachel...so awesome to be sandwiched on the bike by amazing athletes. She is such a strong, fast runner. And, she is the mommy of two!!!! Fit mamas rock! Rachel had the unfortunate HOTTEST part of the relay...ouch....the runner always has the most pressure. Of course she did great!

So, Felicitas won 1st place overall female relay. Yea us.

Somewhere in the middle there was a cyclist- and that would be me. I raced in my Splish bathing suit, and for some reason, this bothered a lot of people. I can't tell you how many multiple comments I had on my bathing suit..."why are you wearing a bathing suit to ride your bike?" Well, because I didn't want to put on a jersey and shorts for a 90 degree race? Maybe they were trying to tell me my butt doesn't look good in a bathing suit, and I just didn't get the hint. Fine, I will put down the oreos.

So, I am not really a TT girl. I have done this only 1 time before. I mean, I just find it easier to swim and then get on my bike. My HR is already up and I am focused. No, I don't bring my trainer to the race to warm up, although I do see the benefit. I was too busy taking pictures of Julia at the swim start. (paparazzi). There was a girl in the relay transition warming up on her trainer, and I got slightly nervous thinking...she may be serious about this.

And so Julia comes in and I have a big lead. My HR is probably at 80 and all of a sudden I have to TT! Ha ha!!! There is hardly anyone out in front of me- 4 male relays and the college division. So, I just try to start picking off the college kids one by one- and the guys were so sweet. Almost every one of them said something really nice and kind as I passed them and I was so appreciative and just wanted to let them know that if they give it a few more years they will be kicking some butt. Anyways, huge sweethearts out there and great sportsmanship.

So, one male relay was out of reach and one other male relay passed me but otherwise I think I got everyone else in front of me. It was a little lonely out there with no one around for most of the race, but it was great training. I was passed by two guys near the end and found a whole new gear to keep up, so it makes me wonder if I left it all out on the course. But, I am sure TTs are something that take practice to figure out how to ride the fine line.

I haven't raced over 14 miles in 2 years, so I was glad to see the 23ish miles pass with good time. Wow, has it really been that long? yes, it has. crazy. I think for the sprint I avg 22 mph/12.8 miles and today it was 21.8ish /23ish miles, so, not a huge drop in speed which was good- no knee pain, legs responding fine, everything is good. I wanted to break 1:05, and I did with 1:03 something or other. It is hard to compare year to year or hour to hour as conditions change yearly and hourly on the course, but I was happy with the results and feel good about my ability to handle two hard days of training/racing back to back.

Otherwise I spent the rest of the day drinking beer, saying hi to out of town people (Angela Kidd! who rocked!!!), stalking sister Madonna, and cheering on pros. And, I just made an executive decision to sleep in and skip swim in the morning. I think I have gone 7 days in a row with a 4:45am wake-up call, and that is just not acceptable. Boy do I wish I could skip work tomorrow as well.

Oh- and-break the pain. one of those inside jokes after too much MIM.

Happy training!