And we're back! Maybe! I'm trying to do better about writing race reports for most of the races I do this year - I've actually only missed one so far, so hopefully this can be the start of a new trend! I signed up for Patriot this year after getting shut out of 70.3 Mont Tremblant, which sold out soooo fast. I really was expecting that to be my goal race for the year so after having to pivot to plan B I found myself a little lost and unenthusiastic about training. A pretty terrible winter and spring in terms of weather didn't help especially in terms of getting longer rides or open water swims in. By the time I was a few weeks out from the race I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea of a fairly mediocre performance - I knew I could get through the distances, but nothing about my training pointed to much beyond that.
The weather forecast for the race would have been extremely hot even if we were in the depths of July or August, and was utterly ridiculous for early June. Full sun and highs bouncing between the high 80s and low 90s were the forecast over a week out and never really changed - pretty much some of the worst weather that could be imagined for me as an athlete. Maybe it was because I wasn't really considering a PR, or maybe it's just the insight that age has given me, but while I was certainly not excited about this prospect and perhaps had some trepidations about how I was going to survive the above mentioned conditions, instead of freaking out about it I went into problem solving mode. I thought a lot about ways I could get extra fluids and electrolytes on board, including running with a bottle which I don't usually do, and having access to a cooler with ice in transition so I could load up my suit and ice hat before the run. I went to TJ Maxx the day before the race and ended up finding a great Gatorade cooler jug thing and then impulsively bought a popsicle mold which turned out to create ice cubes of the perfect size and shape for shoving in a trisuit pocket. Am I smart or what? Basically, I convinced myself that all of these measures were going to pay off, and while perhaps it was not going to be the most fun experience of my life, I could probably survive it.
The race starts at 7 and is about an hour away which means a super early wakeup call, which I was at least prepared for this time around. Among many improvements I've made to my life I think I finally have my morning nutrition dialed in - banana and juice followed by Celsius and graham crackers; if that isn't a breakfast of champions I don't know what is. I had decided I was channeling my inner Charmander during this race so I was jamming out to the Pokemon theme song as I entered the parking lot, as you do.
The timeline was tight but I managed to get to the porta potty, get my packet, and get my transition set up (and get bit by a fire ant, just for funzies) just in time to get down for a quick warmup swim...only to be told that the practice swim was over! Womp. The volunteer was at least kind and let me and a couple of other stragglers dunk in the water, which was a balmy 76 degrees. We then lined up for the walk over to the swim start and I chatted with a few people as we waited for the time trial start. The race served as USAT Long Course Nationals this year, so not only was it a bit bigger than usual, but there were also more racers from across the country - one woman I spoke to in line was from California! I'm not really sure why (maybe my nervous system is finally just sick of having prerace jitters after all these years lol) but I was super calm heading into the water, even knowing what the weather has in store. For whatever reason it's always just so much easier for me to center fun in in triathlons over performance (probably to the detriment of my performance but WHO CARES) so that's what I did. Just another day to swim and bike and run and have fun! And then it was time to go in the water!
Swim - 37:51 (86/422 OA, 13/119 F, 2/13 AG)
Quite a slow swim for me buuuuut with good reason as the second I dove into the water my goggles started leaking, and then I realized that we were swimming directly into the wind and there were literal waves in the water, and that was pretty much how the swim was going to go. I stopped to try to fix the goggle pretty early as my right goggle was entirely full of water, but shortly after that both sides started leaking because the waves kept whacking my face so I was like, welp, fuck it, we're gonna fly blind I guess. As always, I was grateful for the fact that while I may not be the fastest swimmer, I am strong and very confident in open water. I found the chop to be extremely annoying, but not at all concerning, and all there was to be done with it was to just keep swimming forward.
After getting out of an initial pack I found myself kind of alone for awhile (or maybe I just couldn't see, who knows). The wind seemed to pick up as I got further out into the lake and the second 500 yd felt like it took FOREVERRRRR. At the turn buoy I finally made the executive decision to fix my goggles again as I really wasn't sure where I was going and this time it finally held. The one benefit of the wind was that the way back was quite pleasant, although in the way that wind always seems to work the benefit from the tailwind did not seem to be equivalent to the hindrance of the headwind! I found myself in a little more traffic near the end of the race as I think I caught some people who had started ahead of me, including one guy who literally almost ripped my watch right off my wrist. It always is mind boggling to me that in a small race like this you can STILL run into people. I got out of the water feeling like I'd burned pretty minimal matches all things considered, and while the time was a little slow it's well within my usual pace range especially given the chop and the fact that I've *maybe* been in the pool 1x/week this winter. I used the wetsuit strippers (amazing) and ran up into T1, pleased by how many bikes still seemed to be on the racks!
T1 - 2:43 (178/421 OA, 51/119 F, 6/13 AG)
Actually, not a bad T1...although my worst placement of the day lol. I felt like it was slow because I was having a hard time getting my gels into my suit, and I also wasted a bit of time opening my ice cooler to put some in my bra and suit. It really wasn't hot enough to warrant it yet, but I felt like any efforts to keep my core temperature down could pay dividends later! I quickly ate a dinosaur fruit pouch (I have FINALLY found my optimal T1 snack!) and got out of dodge while fumbling with my watch which had somehow managed to start a new swim while I was in transition. Not my finest hour but got it done and onto the bike!
Bike - 2:40:41 (20 mph, 132/420 OA, 17/119 F, 3/13 AG)
I quite honestly had no idea what to expect from myself out of this bike - my training really hasn't been the greatest, and last year when I had my breakout 20 mph performance at this race I was in the thick of Ironman training and in the highest bike volume phase of my life, something we would not say about my current status. But, as usual, I have no metrics in the moment on my bike other than RPE and my 5 mile splits, so I decided to just stay focused on my fueling, roll with whatever felt good, and see what happened. And...look what happened?! I'm still a little mystified that I was able to match and actually slightly improve upon my time from this race last year.
I don't know if it's the fact that I'm finally starting to hit faster paces on my bike or the location where I come out of the swim, but I feel like I found myself around the most ANNOYING people on the first half of this ride. It was really to my detriment, because I found myself getting competitive (and tbh, petty at times) and making some potentially ill advised moves instead of riding my own ride as I typically do. The issue, as always, was primarily men - men whizzing by me with 2 inches of room and not a word spoken, men cutting me off, men clearly drafting, men blocking and riding two across...the list goes on. Seriously, how hard is it to say SOMETHING when you're about to pass someone?! It's really not that hard. Even more irritating was the fact that I seemed to spend the first 20 miles of the ride leapfrogging with the SAME men, who seemed to come back to me the second we hit any sort of incline or sometimes who seemed to simply pass me and immediately slow down. I also experienced the rare case of a WOMAN who was also exhibiting shitty behavior, including passing me but then blocking me by riding side by side with the next person up multiple times, and not saying a word when passing. I did not like this woman (I was delighted when I passed her later on the run).
All of the surging and passing and trying to stay out of the draft zone (I saw more official motos than I think I ever have before in a race) kept my mind occupied and the first 20 miles of the bike were over like that. I had been mostly seeing 14:3x splits and as we know speed always begets speed, so I was motivated to keep pushing a bit by the fact that my pace was looking good. I kept encountering this one guy over and over again, and at one point he passed me and said something to the effect of "oh, are you racing me?". In that moment I was finding him super annoying, so I responded "well, every time you pass me you immediately slow down soooo I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do..." Shortly after, I passed him again; a little while after that, he came by me again. "That's right, pass me like you MEAN it!" I told him. And yet, we kept on coming back to each other. At a certain point it crossed the border from annoying into comical, and we ended up chatting a bit and egging each other on, laughing each time one of us would make yet another pass. I lost him around 35 miles - my legs hit a bit of a low between about 30-40 - and figured that would be the end of that.
Once I found my own space to ride in, the rest of the bike was pretty uneventful. I alternated between singing the Pokemon theme song and Noah Kahan's A Few of Your Own, said hi to the horses, and overall just had a really lovely ride. The Patriot bike course is just so generally flat as to require almost no thinking and I just found myself really immersed in the enjoyment of being on Bheithir. There were a couple of things I didn't love - a few cars that passed a little too close for comfort, a random dog loose on the course that I thought was a coyote, one really unpleasant rumble strip of road - but in general I was just rolling along having a grand old time. I was super solid on my fueling, finishing all of my bottles, my potatoes and Humas just as I had planned, and I really only started feeling warm during the very end of the bike. Somewhere around mile 45, as I realized that I was once again most likely going to ride over 20 mph, I had a little moment with myself. This race happened to take place exactly 17 years to the day after my first triathlon back in Elkhart Lake (I actually wore the shirt in the morning and even got a shout-out from a random guy in transition who went to school in Appleton) and I just started thinking about if that version of me could see myself now. She'd never believe that I was riding 20 mph on a fancy tri bike, but still having nothing but fun out there. I said out loud "I AM GOOD AT THIS!", because maybe, just a little bit, I found myself starting to believe it.
I gave myself a little pep talk (out loud, natch) during the last few miles into transition, as the reality of actually having to run a half marathon in nearly 90 degree weather began to dawn on me. "OK, this run is going to suck," I told myself. "You know it's going to suck. And guess what? That's OK! Sometimes things suck! So here's the deal: you're gonna take it one step at a time, one mile at a time, you're gonna do everything you can to stay cool, you're gonna get to the end. OK? You can do it." I truly think a wizard must have come and blessed me with a new brain on this day or something, because I have never ever gone into a hot race situation with this kind of calm and clarity. I just wasn't worried in the slightest about my time or my placement or anything else - I felt this weird sense of trust in myself that I was just going to do what I could do and I would make it through the fire.
I will say, I was VERY delighted to roll into T2 and see confirmation of a 20+ mph ride on my watch! I truly don't know what unlocked for me in the past 2 years on my bike but we can keep this trend up, please and thank you.
T2 - 3:25 (127/409 OA, 34/115 F, 4/13 AG)
T2 was dumb and I almost gave myself a penalty! You had to run all the way around the transition area with your bike and I found it annoying, so my dumb ass decided to try to think of a way to speed up the process and the only thing I could think of was unbuckling my helmet...which you are not allowed to do until you rack your bike. This volunteer lady YELLED at me (she was kinda mean tbh but I was also being really dumb tbh so what can you do) but I suppose she forgave me for my sins as I did not wind up with any penalties.
This transition also took way longer than usual due to my commitment with stuffing every single pocket on my person with my popsicle ice cubes - 1 in each side of my hat, 1 in each leg pocket, 1 in my sports bra phone pocket, 1 in my trisuit pocket. All of these were completely melted by about mile 3, but I think mentally they helped and hey, if they kept my core temperature a little lower for even a couple of miles, the extra time was worth it! I also put on SUNSCREEN, because I apparently care about my skin now. It took an unnecessary amount of time to get my life together but I eventually did. I did notice that my legs actually felt great as I headed out of T2, so I had that going for me, which was nice!
Run - 1:48:24 (67/400 OA, 11/114 F, 2/13 AG) - Started the run 116th OA and 12th woman, and ran my way all the way up to 81st OA and 9th woman! That's neat!
Look, this run is almost 10 minutes slower than last year and looking at that now, from the perspective of a person who is not frying slowly in the pits of hell on a shadeless road in the middle of some podunk Massachusetts town, it's easy for me to say "oh, gosh, I bet you could have gone at least a few minutes faster!". But the fact of the matter is, I would have had to go 7 minutes faster to move up one place (absolutely no chance that would have happened), I also most likely would have had to give myself actual heatstroke to even attempt such a feat, so I need to tell my current hindsight brain to STFO and let my brain from the moment do the talking. Because my brain from Saturday? Might be more proud of this 1:48 half marathon than many other races I've done in my LIFE. I just mentally never let myself go down a rabbit hole of feeling bad about my splits or convinced my death was imminent or stressed about my time. I literally just stayed in it, moment by moment, doing what I had to do at each point in time and never letting myself completely break. I've NEVER been able to do that in hot weather before...never.
So anyway, I started the run and while I had a lot of trepidation about the heat, my legs felt surprisingly springy given how hard I'd felt like I'd gone on the bike, and that was a nice surprise. A funnier surprise was running into my bike bestie man AGAIN about 5 minutes into the run! By this point we were both kind of cracking up and I decided we needed to actually introduce ourselves. His name was Rafael and we clicked off a couple of nice miles together mostly chatting about Ironman races (because truly, there is nothing a man in a triathlon wants to talk about more than Ironman races lol) and actually kept things down in the 7:45 area for a bit! I knew that wouldn't last, particularly as I literally came to a complete stop at the first aid station to shovel ice into my suit and throw water on my face. This would be a pattern - I actually think the majority of the time with maybe some exceptions between miles 6-9 I was running sub 8 pace, but stopping for 30+ seconds at all of the aid stations took a chunk out of my time. However, stopping at the aid stations was also SAVING MY LIFE FROM HEATSTROKE (and also literally everyone around me was doing it; I didn't see a single person just run right through an aid station) sooo I think I was making the right call here.
I left Rafael behind at the aid station, never to see him again (until after the race lol) and the next couple of miles rolled by. The first half of the course is shadier and while I could still feel my temperature rising, it was tolerable for awhile. The other issue with this course is it seems to be entirely made up of low grade but endless uphills (450 ft of elevation is a freaking LOT in a "flat" half!), and THAT was what really started draining me when combined with the heat and sun. Still, I had a plan in my head to break things down - get to mile 6, then get to mile 10, then get to the finish line. Simple as that, right?
The first 5ish miles were actually pretty OK; it was around the 'get to mile 6' point where I could tell the heat was starting to take it's toll on me and the splits were following. It's clear when I look at my heart rate (consistently up in the high 160s) that I was absolutely giving the maximal effort for the conditions. One hilarious thing happened somewhere around this point, which was that a random car drove by and stopped at a stop sign as I was running past. The car happened to be BLASTING "Horse With No Name" and I started cracking up. The day prior, I'd been forced to attend a training at work that for inexplicable reasons was horse racing themed. I'd told Brittany and Joy about it and we'd been kind of laughing about ways to involve horses in my race experience. Well, HERE was the horse! And not only was it a horse, it was a horse in a DESERT! Just like I was! I pretty much spent the rest of the run singing "la la laaa laaaaaa la la la la" in my head which was actually kind of the vibe for the pace I was running. Little musical moments like that absolutely delight me, and this was really a perfect one.
Around the mile 6 aid station I saw a familiar tri kit up ahead that I recognized as Amy, a woman I'd met at the Clutch Rescue race back in September who was super nice. And also, we should note, faster than me as both a swimmer and a runner. Naturally, I am not capable of keeping my competitive instincts in check even when I am slowly frying in the pits of hell and so I set my focus to attempting to reel her in. I was actually feeling kind of shitty at this point, which I realized after awhile was because I hadn't eaten anything since I got off the bike ("Eat a snack, you dumbo," I said aloud to myself as I rummaged in my pouch for a Huma). Lo and behold, my mood improved greatly after some carbs and some caffeine, and after a brief period of leapfrogging where we exchanged pleasantries I was able to pull ahead.
Miles 7-11 were not spectacular, and I would say I hit my low point around mile 8-9. Despite all of my efforts and all of the ice cups I was dumping down my suit I was just so. Damn. Hot. I had almost drained my bottle by the time I got to the mile 8 aid station, and I spent a little extra time there refilling it with Gatorade (praise be to whoever decided they'd have ARCTIC BLAST Gatorade!) and adding some ice to the bottle to attempt to drink some liquid that didn't taste like it was pulled from a tea kettle. The fact that the humidity had dropped from the week prior and there was theoretically a breeze was I'm sure helping the situation more than I gave it credit for, but in the moment I was not appreciating the lack of humidity or the breeze, I was simply bemoaning the fact that my face was on fire and the ice I was dumping in my suit was instantly melting and I was somehow STILL running up a hill. At one point, bees or flies over something kept chasing around my head and I was literally like, if I get stung by a bee, I think I'm done for.
I'm making it sound like this was completely miserable, and I suppose in the moment it probably was, but it was actually so much LESS miserable than every other hot race I have ever run! I was mentally willing to compromise and handle the conditions in front of me instead of wishing for something different or trying to act like the conditions weren't what they were to my own detriment, and I think that was the game changer. I never felt good, but I also never ran up against the wall of salting out complete depletion like I have every other time I've raced in temps over 80 degrees, and even if we had to throw a couple of high 8:4x miles into the mix, that in itself is worth celebrating.
This all came even more clear when, around mile 11, having finally realized that I wasn't going to die and become a withered husk laying on the roads of East Freetown, I realized that I actually had something left in my legs to pick up the pace a little bit. Nothing dramatic, of course, but enough that I pulled things back down into the low 8s for the last 2 miles despite some significant uphill, and actually felt decent doing so. 2 of the 3 women I passed during the run I went by in these last 2 miles and I was shocked by how much I still had left in my legs. By this point I was pretty laser focused on the finish line - I genuinely had no clue how long I'd been out on the course and any shits I'd given about time as a concept had vanished long ago. And that kind of made this whole experience fun too! I was actually RACING - racing the people around me and racing the conditions on the day, not some random time on a clock, and I kind of forgot how much fun that actually is.
I finally made it up the last big hill and headed back towards the finish line, mentally preparing myself for the obnoxious little cross country section that is the last quarter mile of this course. Like, yes, just what I need after 5+ hours of racing, roots and uneven grass, hooray! But much like the aforementioned horse with no name, I focused on lifting my feet and soon enough was heading down the home stretch carpet. I tried to make my lil legs move as fast as they could. I'm not sure it was super fast, but it was something, and I made it over the line in 5:13 and change.
The water bottles wrapped in a cold towel that this race company gives out have NEVER felt so amazing as they did on this day! I recovered slightly and then headed over to see the results situation (and more importantly, whether I had received a penalty for my idiotic helmet gaffe lol. I did not!) I was SHOOK when the printout spit out the fact that I was 9th overall woman and 2nd in my AG - I would later discover that the winner of my AG was the straight up winner of the race, and someone who *probably* should have been entered in the elite race and not the AG race but whatttttever. That wasn't the point! The point was I had made the top 10 at nationals! I had age group podiumed! I had crushed my bike! I had survived my run! I had done ALL the things that I didn't really believe I could do! I always joke with people that I have no idea what I'm doing when I do triathlons, and encompassed in that is the fact that I am genuinely surprised by every single thing I do out there. While all signs generally seem to point to me being decent at this sport (see: my need to give myself a pep talk of "I AM GOOD AT THIS") , and I've now been doing it long enough that I should theoretically know what to expect, I am never not shocked to wind up placing highly, making the podium, or any of the other things. It's all delight, all curiosity, all suprises, and that mindset always brings out the best in me. To do all of those things in this weather, this god forsaken hell weather, was even more mind blowing, and all because I think I just stayed in the moment, stayed a couple of steps ahead of the heat, and followed rule #1: don't be an idiot. I wanted to write that I was convinced I couldn't have a good race in the heat. I think that statement as true, but my conviction must not have been that deep, because I somehow was able to embrace the suck, take the day for what it was, and genuinely perform to what I think was the best of my ability on the day. That's fucking cool. That's what it's all about. And that's probably why I cried hearing Don't Stop Believing over the speakers at the finish line as I was getting ready to leave for the day, lol. I had a good race on a hot day...I really freaking did it.
5:13:05 - 81 OA, 9th woman, 2nd AG
