My second Athleta Lake Lanier Sprint Triathlon is over. I’m enjoying a nice day off with no pressure of a race looming over me.
The day before the race my anxiety started kicking in. I started having pre-race jitters and feeling like my race goals were too aggressive. I felt fit from other training but I was worried no bike and pool training would hurt me. It turns out it didn’t matter - my overall time was only 1 minute slower than last year. Upon reflection, my training while not affecting me physically likely hurt me mentally. If I had put in those hours on the bike and in the pool I definitely would have felt more confident during the race.
The mental part of competing is very hard for me regardless of my training. During races I always seem to be having little fights in my head - trying to convince myself that walking or slowing down is ok. I KNOW that running a race with this mindset is completely counter productive. My gut tells me that the mental game accounts for at least half of how well you perform. I’m going to devote some time to conquering this over the next few months. And really that's one of the reasons I started this blog - to figure out some things about myself.
Here's a brief recap of how things played out at the race.
As usually happens with me, I went into race morning having only slept 30 minutes. Yes, that's right 30 minutes. I always have lots of anxiety about having to wake up very early so my body decides to just stay up. Either way, after a pre-race Diet Coke, I was feeling pretty good. I was ready to give it my best shot. The only thing I worried about was encountering a mechanical problem (leaky goggles, bike troubles) because I hadn’t used my equipment in so long.
I was the 6th wave to take off so this allowed me time to watch the other swimmers and have nice conversations with some ladies in my age group. I love this race because it is all women and the feeling of camaraderie is awesome. I took off into the lake with positive expectations. However, this feeling quickly went downhill when we hit the water and everyone seemed to be swimming so much faster than me. It wasn’t a great way to mentally start the race.
On the bike, I felt stronger. I focused on passing as many people as I could - giving myself a mental high five each time I cruised by someone with a 40 – 44 on their calf. In my early 30's I spent a fair bit of time on the bike so I feel fairly confident on my bike.
The transition from bike to run was hard - I felt stiff and my legs felt heavy. I don’t remember feeling this way last year. My husband thinks it could be from lack of brick training. (This is when you train doing two or three of the sports back to back as you would on race day.) I kept hoping my body would kick into gear during this short run but I never got into a speedy cruise where I felt like I was a runner. Funny thing is that I ran a pretty good pace but it felt very slow.
After the race, I sat in the athletes breakfast/recovery area and had some great conversations with some of the other participants. Not only was I glad to be done with the race but I sure do appreciate some ME time without two little girls demanding my attention. I felt good about my performance and it was an interesting non-planned experiment in training (or I should say, non-training) for me. Not sure how I’ll train next year but I’m definitely doing this race again.
Final Results
2012
Place: 91/1038 (9%)
Age Group: 31/261 (12%)
Time: 1:50:45
Swim: 15:13
Bike: 1:06:55 (17.0 pace)
Run: 23:00 (7:40 pace)
2011
Place: 59/1008
Age Group 18/205
Time: 1:49:40
Swim: 12:07
Bike: 1:08:45
Run: 23:42
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