Nashville Oly

First olympic distance since June of 2008.

I was told in so many words this week that my race reports are too long- I think that meant they are boring.
The quick end of it:
1. If you think triathlons are stupid and could care less what I did this weekend, stop here.
2. For those of you who only care about who placed where- I got 3rd in my AG.
3. Anyone interested in the details of the 3 events can read on and I will try to make it short.

-Swim: awesome in Cumberland River. I now- post race- realize that currents matter and there is some tactical positioning required to swimming rivers (it should not take 5 minutes to go 100 yards). My overall swim time looks stinky, but I had a lot of fun in the water ;)

-Bike: was fine- definitely a strength of mine at this point by default. Slow first loop...picked it up second loop when I had some guys to chase down. This is a fun course...good hills and headwinds made it challenging. I got my first penalty ever- the "overtaken" penalty, because some guy kept passing me and dramatically slowing down over and over again....just killing me. I kept dropping back each time, but I finally just had enough and had to get away from him. So, after about the fifth time he did that crap, I just barely dropped back and passed him immediately to get far away from him. I had a feeling I was getting a penalty when the motorcycle went by me slowly. F-me. Completely my bad...my frustrated self came out.

-Run: The hardest 10k course I have ever run. It was a monster. The temps were in the high 90s (thank goodness for the Splish), and the hills were gigantic. I was happy to run the whole thing, although the run was more like a shuffle up the hills. I went about a block off-course at one point because a volunteer did not direct me the right way- that wasn't cool. I have never done that in my life, and I swear it is because all of these bloggers (ahem...Angela and Kari) keep going off-course and it must just be catching on. Ice + water all over me at every aid station, and I made it to the finish. My time sucked, but I was happy to run my first 10k in well over a year.

And after years and years of my soccer teammates calling me "Bird"- I finally see that I do run with one chicken wing (see picture above). I now have enough running pictures to prove it and can deny it no longer- my awful left arm crossing my body. I am pretty sure it is in the position so I can elbow the crap out of someone on the field to shield the ball- can I erase 25 years of elbowing people? Looks like I will be doing some running form drills in the near future to see if you can retrain your muscles.