The Nishiki Takes the Trek!

Today was the Dunedin Tri, and it was AWESOME! Slug beat me by almost 5 minutes... which is fine, he's a guy, he's younger and he's been training pretty hard. Touche. I had a good race. But Slug's awesome hand-me-down 1978 Nishiki neon-zebra-taped bike did well for him, he beat me on Car Guy's Trek by 3 minutes on the bike leg. GO SLUG! :)

And now for the recap. First, I WON the swim leg in my age group! !!! I couldn't believe it... and what I really couldn't believe was that I felt like I was having a nice easy swim, and even so, the number 2 in my group was so much further behind me (8 seconds). Actually my time would have put me in the top 5 for the age group below me, too. NICE!!! :) Can't complain about that - I'm pretty happy with it.

The next 2 legs were progressively worse. I need to get on the bike more. I felt OK during the race, but the CatEye on Car Guy's bike was not reading speed. So I just tried not to have many people yell "on your left" at me - I tried to make myself say that more than it was said to me. I rode the 12 miles (12.5 according to Slug's CatEye) in 42 minutes, which seems really slow... 17ish MPH, I would like to be more like 19-20 average. Gotta work on that - get out and ride FASTER. I finished 8th in my group for the bike leg.

And then the run - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the run. Ouch. Running is not my forte in the first place, and after a swim and a bike, me trying to run is really kind of ridiculous. I actually fell on the trail twice. (Many of you know my capacity for falling, and I was long overdue for a good SPLAT onto the ground, so of course I take 2 today on the run leg of my tri! Only a bruised knee to show for it, I'm fine.) The good thing about the run was that I didn't walk at all, so hooray for me. :) It took me 32 minutes to do the 5k, 10 minute miles. 10th in my group. Oof.

So the result was I ended up dead center of my age group, people wise. Six finished above me, six below. And to be honest, thank God Slug beat me - he was so worried about it. I accomplished my goal of beating my old time by 5 minutes. YEAH!! But Super Cool if you are reading this, your horse won you $20. Get it from The Bee the next time you see her. (And do the dang race next year with us, already!!)

Speaking of future racers, we also need to get The Rockette in on the action. Although mad kudos to her for coming in from Houston to cheer us on!

And that's another Dunedin Tri down. I think we'll keep this tradition going, at least on the even years. Great weekend, good race, I learned a lot. I'm still super pumped about tris, even though it hurt and my foot blistered (which is a first - might have been my bike shoes?) I just want to do more and more of them. So... here I go. TriathLiz. Oh yeah. ;)

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Pics to follow. Race results here: http://altavistasports.com/results/2008results/dunedintriathlon060808.html.

Thanks to my awesome mom, sister, aunt and girlfriend-in-law for coming out and supporting Slug and I. You're the best!!!!!