Rattlesnake Olympic Triathlon & Muddy Buddy

Rattlesnake Triathlon, me coming into the finish, me and Amy, and me coming out of the swim.

Various pics of Lindsay and I in the Muddy Buddy...notice us on the stage with Ryan Sutter...ahhh yeah!

I woke up Saturday morning feeling good. I actually got a wonderful night of sleep. Usually before a race I toss and turn but Friday night I slept like a baby. We traveled out to Aurora Reservoir. It was my first time out there for a race. I went out last week to scope the course, and the venue, and I was expecting blah-ness but I thought it was beautiful. We got a parking spot about 8 feet away from transition. I unloaded and set up my stuff. Troy came over to me to point out someone I knew and I snapped at him a little...pre race nastiness. He disappeared with Annie. I went to the bathroom, picked up my timing chip, double checked transition, got my wet-suit, goggles, and cap and headed over to the swim area. I found Troy near the restroom where he gave me some stern words, and a large piece of his mind. My eyes welled up with tears. I thought I was going to get through an Olympic triathlon without tears, but not so. I got on my suit and headed to the water feeling like crap. It’s really rare that Troy gives me “stern words” so I knew I had pissed him off royally. I did a nice thorough swim warm-up, which I just love, it really relaxes me. Although some guy ran into me hard during my warm up and knocked my goggles off and the strap came out. I have been having strap issues b/c the cat keeps chewing up my goggle strap if I leave them out, which I am prone to doing. I have been through 5 pairs of goggles this season.

There was massive confusion about the swim course. It’s hard to explain, but it was confusing. I made sure I knew where I was going and then I lined up. This tri was a time trial start, which I REALLY like. They had run a yellow cord through the water from buoy to buoy and I found that really helpful to swim next to. The swim went well...except when I dove in after I was given the go-ahead to go I forgot to put my goggles on. So I dove in, thought my goggles got knocked off, popped up out of the water, found them on my head, put them on, and started swimming again. Oops!

Coming out of the swim I felt great, I looked down at my watch and saw 26 minutes. The course must be short, but at the time I thought “AWESOME SWIM”. I had a quick transition and found it AWESOME to come out of transition neck and neck with my good friend IronLiz. We both hoped on our bikes, I passed her, then she passed me, then a couple miles up the road I passed her again. It was awesome to have her near me, one of my many partners in crime! Once I got settled and had spun out my legs a bit I started cranking. I focused on the person ahead of me and reeled them in one after another. I just continued in this manner and passed many many people. I felt great. At the turn around it was AWESOME to see that IronLiz had done the same and she was right behind me. Awesome! I switched my bike computer over to average speed and the whole way back just focused on maintaining that number. It’s up hill on the way back so I lost some ground on the number, but gained a lot of ground on the girls ahead of me and was able to pick off some more. The final person I passed was Amy. Amy is Jordan's girlfriend and she is a total rock star. This was her second triathlon, first Olympic and she is already VERY good! She is a fantastic runner so I knew I had to come in ahead of her on the bike and that would give me incentive to run harder knowing that she would be reeling me in. I was able to do this and I came screaming into transition to the cheers of many friends.

After some trouble getting my bike into the bike rack I was off on the run. Lots of friends were there cheering for me, that felt great...lots of Mountain Mamas came out to see me race, and I felt like a rock star. I just pulled into a pace I knew I could hold and tried to keep it strong. Amy caught me somewhere in-between mile 4 and 5 and I stayed with her for a bit. As we pulled around into the finish I picked it up and I was able to finish strong and hard. This means nothing b/c of the time trial start but I was the 6th woman in, which means since I was number 93, I possibly passed 87 women during the course of the race...??

Race results still aren’t posted online but I got second in my age group and 7th woman in the race. I don’t know my splits at all, but I think I was like 26-27 on the swim, 1:14-1:15 on the bike and who knows on the run. :) Results should be up tomorrow and I will post them here.

Saturday afternoon we went over to Lindsay’s and Dougs for dinner to finish our costumes. We spray painted our shoes and helmets (old helmets). We were very excited. I slept like a rock that night!

I was up at 5 on Sunday (Troy up at 4...he had forgiven me...i think). We got to Boulder Res at 6am. Lindsay and I picked up our packet, Troy and Doug changed the tires on the mountain bike over to the knobby tires, and Lindsay and I got into our costumes and painted ourselves green. It was awesome, we were sooooo green. Everyone was getting a big kick out of us and that was the best part. We headed over for the costume contest...did our Jolly Green Giant thing....and didn’t win :(. BUT, man, those Oompah-Loompahs looked really good, so I totally understand!

We then headed over to the start line. We were in the 9th wave, and they were letting the waves go every 6 minutes so we knew that we were going to stand there for like an hour. Lindsay and I took that opportunity to peel off almost all of the body paint we applied. We were so tired of the stuff, it felt great to get it off! By the time we got to the line we were mostly free and clear of paint. The bikes take off two minutes before the runners so Lindsay was off. I stepped up to the front of the line b/c I knew I was going to take it out in the lead and keep it in the lead. There are 5 legs to the race. I would be running 3, biking 2 and Lindsay the opposite (bike 3 run 2). I had done the math and knew that Lindsay would be able to stay ahead of me, so it was up to me to take it out hard. There was a girl dressed up as a Boy Scout right on my tail. I thought it was hilarious, here was the Jolly Green Giant and a Boy Scout duking it out for the lead. You can see in the picture above the two of us pretty far ahead of everyone else.

The first obstacle was a climbing wall. I was over it quick. Lindsay did an awesome job with the bike, upside down and in the upper left of transition. I grabbed and bike and rode. They had a section of steep hill that I dragged it up, and then rode it down. It was a scary bit of down, and I held my breath. I biked as hard as I could and barely made it to the next obstacle as Lindsay was finishing the obstacle. She grabbed the bike and was off.

I was through the obstacle and running again. We had to wade through waist deep water for one section then off running again. The boy scout passed me...dang, she’s fast. At the third obstacle (a balance beam thing) I grabbed the bike and was off, but not before noticing that the boy scout had to wait for her partner. She had run so hard, but then had to wait...so sad...Hah. I passed Lindsay running, she looked great, I told her we were winning our age group and to stay strong. The 4th obstacle was this huge blow up slide. VERY fun. I was off running again. This time I ran hard, I could see the finish and I didn’t want the boy scout to pass me, so I laid it down thick! I kept waiting for Lindsay to pass me on the bike but she didn’t. I pulled into the end, and there is a waiting area where you are supposed to hook up with your buddy before the mud pit. I only had to wait one minute and there Lindsay came. I guess she had to wait in line for the blow up slide for like 2 minutes. We crawled through the mud and RACED to the finish in a time of 40:36. We won our age group by 3 minutes and we were the 2nd overall female group! AHHH YEAHH. We got medals and got on the podium, it was so fun and so awesome. Definitely one of the best times I have had EVER!

Rattlesnake Results Swim: 26:38 (I think the course was about 2 minutes slow...based on reliable swimmers times) T1: 0:46 Bike: 1:15:31 T2: 0:48 Run: 45:26 Total Time: 2:29:16 8th woman overall (not 7th as I thought yesterday)