Here's the day by day breakdown of last weekend's race at the Innsbrook Resort for USAT Club Nationals!
Thursday: Day off! I had a pretty loaded day so it was nice to not have the added task of fitting in a workout. I also got to enjoy a super fun evening of PATRIOTS FOOTBALL with friends which was nice and relaxing. Cut a bit into my sleep time, but oh well, totally worth it.
Friday: Went to class in the morning, ate, got packed up and ready, headed out around 3 pm. We got there at around 4:30 and picked up our race packets and took a quick dip in the lake. It was nice and warm in the water despite it being quite chilly and windy on land. We swam the Olympic course because it was a bit further and got a feel for the slight chop that we may be encountering the next day with the wind conditions as they were. Afterwards, we went to the hotel, unloaded all of our gear, got cleaned up, and went to Applebee's for dinner (where I ate a ton of pasta and sweet potato fries and nachos, which I guess isn't the healthiest food, but hey carbs right?). I went to sleep around 10 or 10:30 pm.
Saturday: Woke up around 5:30 am, readied all the kid, ate breakfast, and headed out to the course. We were sort of rushed when it came to transition (had about 15 minutes) which was sort of stressful, but it all worked out fine in the end. Club Nationals were being held at the Halfmax race this year, where they added Olympic and sprint distances especially for nationals. Most of the team was racing the sprint distance, a few of our boys did the Olympic. The sprinters all had about an hour of downtime between when transition closed and when our race started, so we wandered around a lot and hydrated and tried to stay warm before our start.
It was another chilly day and the water temperature had dropped slightly overnight and was just barely wetsuit legal (I think it was around 75F?). I am totally not comfortable swimming in a wetsuit in water that warm because I tend to overheat, so I stuck to just a trisuit. One of my teammates and I made a point of getting right to the edge of the water in the first row for the swim start since we were both strong swimmers: We came out of the water second (her) and third (me) out of the women's wave. Our wave started 5 minutes after the sprint men, which was sort of annoying because it meant that I was playing dodge the slow swimmer the entire last 100 yards, but overall it wasn't the worst. I didn't have the greatest swim ever, I took off pretty well from the gun but then slowed down and felt sort of sluggish and minimally motivated the rest of the way. I came out of the water in 7:57 (1:36 pace) where I was met with a long transition run uphill to T1.
I was actually in and out of T1 quite quickly, beating my teammate who had come out of the water before me to the start of the bike. The first 5-6 miles of the bike were super rough, something like 1300 ft of elevation gain in that period in the form of a series of short but super steep hills. It leveled out a bit after that and I just went into high cadence cruise mode. There was also one major hill towards the end that was also pretty rough. There were grades on that bike course that I had never seen in my life before and I definitely was surprised to see that some people had to clip out and push their bikes up some of the hills. I've never actually had to clip out on an uphill before though and am pretty sure I wouldn't actually be able to do it, so when I was struggling I just kept saying to myself that it was between getting to the top and falling over halfway. Thankfully I did make it through all of the hills, which was a massive blessing.
The bike course was fun because (a) I didn't get passed as early by one of the other girls on the team as I thought I would and (b) I hung with another teammate for a few miles in the latter portions of the race, just exchanging back and forths before I finally pulled ahead more consistently. There were actually 2 or 3 riders that I hung around pretty consistently the entire ride and they helped push me along pace wise. I ended up averaging 17.2 mph which I found to be super impressive given the hilliness of the course, so I was very happy with that.
T2 was pretty standard and fairly quick. The teammate I rode with in the later bits of the bike blew past me on the start of the run but I was expecting that since he comes from a running background. The run was also extremely hilly, pretty much just endless up or down with very few flat spots. It was 3.4 miles though so I just tried to stay steady and managed to churn out an 8:48 pace which I was happy with. There was one older guy who was originally from the New York area but now lives in St. Louis who ran with me basically the entire way. We sort of shuffled back and forth most of the way and talked briefly around the 2-2.5 mile mark on the way in before I pulled ahead on the final uphill into the finish. Speaking of which, the final uphill (which was also the first downhill) was the most ridiculously steep thing I had ever seen in my life. The thing about a lot of these hills were that you couldn't get up them by just being consistent and keeping the turnover high, you really had to drive hard in order to make your steps even count, so it was a lot of work. Coming off a hilly bike, it meant that every uphill my legs filled with acid and just burned the whole way and coming down I just did my best to not let the pace stutter and not let the form fall apart so I wouldn't hurt myself.
Overall, I finished in 1:47:53, 2/4 in my division, 9/74 for women, 70/181 overall. I got to take home a medal, which I don't really think I deserved, but it was still nice. I think the big takeaway from this race for me was that you really do work hard the entire time. There is no relaxing, not on the swim, bike, or run. There's effort management so that you don't blow up at the end, but expect to be breathing and working hard. I guess what goes hand in hand with that is knowing that I have the physical ability to work at that level for just under 2 hours without blowing up. That will hopefully help me with being afraid of inducing early pain in the longer race I have coming up this weekend.
A note on nutrition: I had a full breakfast in the morning and a single bottle of potassium laced fruit punch Vitamin Water and a gel roughly 15 minutes before the start. I did not take a gel on the bike like I had planned, but I did drink about 80% of my bottle of endurance mix Gatorade. It worked out well, I didn't feel like I was ever glucose short, so that was ideal. For the longer race this weekend, I will make a point of taking that second gel regardless of whether or not I think I need it, because the run will take me around an hour and I will more likely need it than not.
We ended up staying at the race venue way later than we wanted to waiting for the timers to sort out results and present medals. I got home around 3 pm, took a nap, got up, went grocery shopping (the active recovery begins!), made/ate dinner, and passed out.
Sunday: I took Sunday off, although there was some bike commuting to a volunteering obligation in the morning and some time spent with a family I'm mentoring through a school program that involved running around in a park shooting Nerf guns, so more active recovery!
Monday: Easy AM run, 3 miles, super chill pace, legs were actually feeling really good and not sluggish at all (although the easy pace probably helped with that).
Tuesday: Took a run with a friend, just under 3 miles, would have probably liked to go faster but she's just getting back into running so we went slow. I don't really know if I even want to count that as a workout, it was more of a brief escape from studying type thing.
Wednesday: Today! I got up earlier than I expected, spent 40 minutes on the bike trainer (10 minute warm up, 8 x 1 minute as 40 MAX/20 easy on base/base/+1/+1 repeat, 2 minutes recovery, 5 x 3 minutes as 2 @ 90-95 rpm threshold/1 @ recovery, 5 minutes warm down) while listening to a lecture I skipped like two weeks ago (feeling like a hardcore med student). It felt way tougher than it should have, but that was probably more due to dehydration than anything else. Whatever, I got in there and did something more resembling a workout than what's been happening the previous days so I'm good with that.
The plan is to take a swim tomorrow morning with the Master's team, sandwiched with a ride out and a ride back (putting that new commuting bike to work!) and a run in the afternoon (probably a tad longer, closer to 4-5 miles) on Friday. Saturday will be off for travel and Sunday is race day! Hopefully things will go well and I won't have to worry about qualifying for Collegiate Club Nats in the Spring. Fingers crossed!
Much love,
Jess
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