first race of the season!

Well, it came and went. And it went stupendously!

I went down to my mom's last night so I'd be right by the race course. Sleeping in my old high school bedroom was a little odd- it always is. I just couldn't sleep last night, it was so hot.

Anyway, I woke up at 6 this morning, got dressed and tried to eat some breakfast. Mmmm, peanut butter and strawberry jelly Uncrustables (trust me, they're great!). Unfortunately, that was all I got since I forgot the second one and my banana at my mom's.

We left for the course at 6:30 and I quickly set up my transition area (perfect rack assignment). Almost immediately I run into Misha from work. We ALWAYS find each other right away. I chat briefly with some other members of RTB and hit the bathrooms twice before running a warm up lap around the park. Somehow, time got away from me so I didn't get a warm up swim in. Oh well. I was feeling excited.

I was in the third (of four) waves and waited patiently chatting with other athletes. And then we were off. I didn't have the best swim, but it wasn't bad. I flew through T1, only getting hung up on my timing chip with my wetsuit for a moment, mounted my bike and was off. This was the first time racing this bike with a computer on it. And only my second time racing it!!! There was a lot of leapfrogging between me and a couple other girls. I came to found out later that we were the leaders!!!

Again, I zoomed through Transition and was off on the run. And I was feeling super. Incredible. Amazing! And then a couple minutes into it, I got passed by a woman like I was standing still (she went on to be the first woman finisher and beat me by over 4 minutes- posting an 18 minute 5k!!!) And then I think two more woman passed me-but that was it! I kept them in decent sight at least. However, there were two waves of women, so I wound up 9th woman overall. 2nd in my AG out of 11, and 43 person out of 229. Not a bad finish!

My mom got some decent pictures. But the best is the video she got of me running out of the water and blowing a snot rocket as I passed her. Classy!

I leave in a couple days for Ironman CDA as a finish line volunteer. I'm super excited!