ChelanMan

Today was the big day!  It has been such a long day.  We are finally home and unpacked, and ready for bed and an update on the race today.

When we got to the lake today, there was quite a lot of wave action going on... It was like swimming off the Washington coast out there.  I'm so thankful for the wetsuit, as I probably would have had a really rough swim without it.  As it was, the swim took twice as much energy as I usually have to put into it.  There didn't seem to be much of the swim that was with the waves, it seemed like we were fighting it all the way till the very last stretch.  (Sitting here writing this, I can almost feel the push pull of the waves rocking me... Not a good feeling)
Once out of the water and into transition, I got out of my wetsuit (pretty quickly too!) and got my bike.  After the push up the hill out of transition, I got to the top and realized that my shoes were not tight enough and had to stop to get them cinched up.  Then when I mounted the bike I couldn't get my feet in the straps, Ugh!  I guess I need more practice.  The first half of the bike was into a sharp headwind.  I would check the spedo on the bike and it would say 8 mph... I was really pushing it up the hills too.  Once at the turnaround the bike got easier and I got up to 24 mph.  The course wasn't too bad, but I should probably practice on some hills sometime.  After returning my bike to the transition, I had the worst part of the race to go... the 5k run.  After a little jogging and a lot of walking I met up with a very nice girl from the Seattle area and we hung out together (she had a recent knee injury, so she was walking at about my pace).  About half a mile from the finish line, I left her behind and ran the rest of the way (through the crowd where people could see me :) ).  At the finish line, I got a medal and a congrats, and got to sit a bit and have a snack.  Our after race snacks are much better over here, all they offered were bagels with pb and grapes and bananas.

Times are not posted yet, but according to my watch my time was approximately 1 hour 50 minutes.  Slower than Race the River last year, but quicker than Radiant Lake this year.  I have a race next Sunday, so hopefully I'll be able to decrease my time for that race and beat my time from last year.  I just need to push myself on the run, or push myself harder on the bike so I can walk more... either way, I need to try harder.
I'm off to take a quick bath then ice/myomed my neck/shoulder.  Tomorrow is another day!