Thursday night dinner - Mellow Mushroom custom pizza with pesto base, spinach, jalapenos, avacados and tofu:
I stayed at the Days Inn Rivergate on Carter street about .6 miles from the main race site. The hotel was nice enough and there was a 24 hour diner attached so that was a bonus.
On Friday, a group of us went and did a 20 min swim in the river, then I got on my bike for about 20 minutes and did a 20 minute run. Everything was good to go. Pro briefing was at 12:00 and afterward Kari and I went to see Pitch Perfect 2. Nice way to sit and relax for a bit and let out some stress with laughs.
Here's a group shot of the awesome friends I was hanging out with all weekend and my yummy breakfast from the diner Saturday morning.
My standard pre-race cookie sandwich. I got this from the Chattanooga Cupcake store on Broad St. Half before, half later :)
I forgot to take pictures of dinner, but I had Trout with kale and cheese grits.
Onto the details of the race:
For breakfast I had a bagel with pb and Infinit Mud with water about 2 hours before start time. Then ate a banana about an hour before start time. If you have not tried Infinit Mud, you should. It is awesome. Check it out here.
Swim - 32:10
The water temp was 71.9. 0.4 degrees higher than allowed for pros to wear a wetsuit. I was actually happy about this. I got to use my new Roka Viper Pro Swimskin which is much more comfortable than my wetsuit.
I was last out of the water. By 2 minutes. This isn't as bad as I had originally thought. The swim had little to no current. I was able to keep up with the girls until the first turn around buoy. Then I just settled in and tried to finish before the age groups caught up to me. Which didn't happen either. I got passed by 3 or 4 guys and one girl. I knew my swims weren't going very well. I just couldn't pinpoint what I was doing wrong. So, back to the drawing board on that. I will give a better showing at Williamsburg.
T1 - 3:31
No issues. It was a sad sight to see only my bike on the rack.
Bike - 2:40:04
As usual it took me a few miles to get settled into the bike. I tried to keep my power around 170. The first half was a little more challenging to keep my speed up because it was slightly uphill. I passed two girls on the bike although I only remember passing one. The back half was a lot of fun since it was going back down. On the bike I had my Infinit customized mix. I had to take my sunglasses off after a while because it was so misty and they were all fogged up.
T2 - 2:04
When I was running with my bike my shoes were still clipped in and they kept catching on the ground and popping my bike up. Not sure how to prevent this in the future. Any ideas?
Run - 1:52:20
Yup, not a good run. I started off steady around an 8:15 - 8:30 pace. Then the last 4 miles I ran 8:48, 9:29, 9:46, 9:25. There is a lot of climbing. I used my Orange Mud HydraQuiver pack and had a bottle of GQ6 Flooid, Endurance, and Energy. This stuff is great as well. You can get it at GNC. I did not have any stomach issues on the run. In fact, I have not had any stomach issues using GQ6 on any of my training runs either. This is pretty amazing because I have tried just about everything. Given how bad my run was, it probably would have been worse if I didn't have the GQ6 on the run with me.
Overall I felt pretty good about this race. I think I need to take in more calories though. I had 280 on the bike and 115 on the run (+ some oranges and Gatorade that I took on the course). Williamsburg is in 3 weeks and Atlantic City Full is 2 weeks after that. Again, this race wasn't as good as I was hoping for, but I will use it as a base starting point and go from there.
Glad to be supported by Moxie Multisport, Outspokin, and TRIBAL Multisport.
