What, only a short and a long course you say? Au contraire, Brooke Lord and I did quite well at the middle distance!
So, yeah... first run went awesome thanks to Sean's excellent coaching - Brooke and I were the first two women to finish. We took off on the bike... made it to the first intersection... and promptly went the wrong way. The great part about this is, there was a police officer directing us! He was apparently in a daze when I passed him, and motioned Brooke to the left. Later, when we back-tracked the 5ish extra miles that we rode, he told us that he "tried to stop us". Apparently he needs some "voice lessons" from me because there was no 10-4 [;-)] from either of us!
The rest of the bike was uneventful. The second run... oh wow, ok... so I managed to get up to speed half decently out of the transition area. I came to the first water stop... smiled because I didn't need water... took a right... and a little bit later, came to a complete stop because a tractor was blocking the path. Ok, this wasn't there on the first run... so I back-tracked for the second time of the day. Luckily, the water stop might have only been 150m or so back, and this time I asked where I was supposed to go. One of the volunteers apologized, and said that she hadn't seen me come through. Apparently I had been blending in quite well all day, which is awesome being that I was wearing my neon yellow shoes and bright red compression socks (yeah, it's a super special look I know). I managed to get a little bit away before I just burst out laughing at the absolute ridiculousness of all of this... and then I started wheezing because I can't laugh and run at the same time... life just gets better and better!
Finished the rest of the run, and even managed to motivate myself to semi-sprint the end because I decided to make finishing in under 2hrs my goal. On a positive note, I managed not to kill myself in my first race in clip-ins, and Brooke's new aero helmet and sneakers were great. Also, saw Tim G. out there volunteering (he was not one of the people who mis-directed us), and Allen Ray and his dad were competing as a relay for the long course. I talked to Allen for a bit, he had run well for the first run... and I saw him sprint out of the transition area for the second run. Actually, one of the volunteers collecting chips at the finish line remarked, "wow, he's flying"... yeah, Team TAF is awesome!
So friends, life is an adventure. And, it's hard to be in a bad mood when it's so nice outside (actually, oddly enough I'm not really upset at all... don't think I've stopped smiling since about halfway through the bike when I realized how great it is just to be able to finally race again). So, good luck tomorrow for anyone who is competing, and I hope your adventures are of a different variety! Results (short course) #20
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