Ben, Rory, Mojdeh and I headed down to Portland this weekend for the Freshwater Trust Portland Triathlon. We had an awesome time! Rory and Mojdeh were already going as part of the USAT Mobile Tour, plus Portland is great, and I wanted to race. I knew I wouldn’t feel at the top of my game, but I figured it would be a really fun way to get in some good intensity work.
We drove down on Friday, stopping in Federal Way for an adjustment at Spencer Chiropractic, and arriving in Portland in time for a quick dinner at the saddest Whole Foods I’ve ever visited (salad bar was on a par with Applebee’s in breadth as well as quality)! I think it was a fake Whole Foods. Then the evening was salvaged with a taste-test-every-flavor trip to Mio Gelato… Mmm Rum Raisin!
Saturday was a typical pre-race day for me in that it took me until 3 pm to finish an hour of course-scouting workouts. After I finished my workouts, stretching, and a nap, the others were finished with the race expo, and we set out to find dinner. Yelp! told us the Bombay Chaat House earned 5 stars and 1 dollar sign: perfect! So we showered and changed and headed to the restaurant. It was a food truck in a parking lot! Parked by the Original Indian Chaat House, and a Mexican cart. There is a whole story about why there are two nearly identical Indian food trucks parked right next to each other. Our food was delicious, and cheap - $16 fed four of us with one entire plate of food left over! (Although, I’m not sure I’d use this as a pre-race meal ever again, I ordered “mild” but it was still fairly spicy and I was feeling it at 5 a.m.!)
Race morning arrived, I forced down half a bagel and a banana, gradually perked up thanks to my pre-race Neuro1, and headed across the street to the transition area. I got in a 10 minute warm-up jog and then put on my wetsuit so I could get in the water early. No such luck, the swim started down on a dock and they just let each wave down one at a time about 2 minutes before their start time. So Ben showed me how to do a dryland swim warmup, and surprisingly, the 5-10 minutes of systematic arm-flailing seemed to do the trick because I felt solid my whole swim! I was really pleased. It was the most focused and consistent I have ever felt during the swim portion of a triathlon. Between that feeling and the times I have been swimming in the pool, I just knew I was going to swim a PR. I swam a 26:13, which is 1.5k swim PR for me by over 2 minutes! Sweet! I know I still have a long way to go, but I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to finally see some improvement.
Then for the bike… which was going to be interesting. In addition to our Olympic Distance race, there was a Sprint race that started 10 minutes after. The last part of my swim was super congested because each race did an out-and-back, sharing the first and last 400 meters of the course, and then on the bike we shared the same 8.3 mile loop. Olympic racers did 3 loops, Sprint racers did 2 loops. It was crowded out there. The bike course was really cool, all in the city and 500 feet of climbing/descending each lap. It had some technical parts, some typical “city” pavement (i.e. hang on for dear life, it’s rough!), and absolutely no boring parts. I think this was my favourite bike course ever, in retrospect. My first lap felt a little lackluster but I was able to pick it up for the second two laps. I passed a lot of people but it was impossible to tell which race they were doing, there were no distinguishing body marks or race-numbers, so I just focused on passing as many people as possible. I rode very carefully on the descents though, the last thing I wanted to do was scare some new racer out of her mind by screaming past her around a blind turn, additionally I have crashed my bike before and it kind of sucked so I wanted to avoid that if possible.
I came into T2 in third place (which I did not know at the time), having gained time on race leader Sunny Gilbert, and having passed almost all the other Olympic Distance women racing, but also having been passed by one woman at the end of the bike leg who swam slower than I did. Now that I am not swimming 30 minute 1.5k’s, I guess this is possible!
I headed out on the run after a longer-than-necessary transition, exchanging a few words with Ben and meticulously arranging the tongue of my shoes made for some precious motionless seconds, although I don’t think those seconds really helped me any! It was just nice to stand still. But then I took off, with the eventual aim of catching the woman who had just passed me on the bike. I dee-dawdled around the first lap of the 2-loop course, running a little slower than I wanted. I kept postponing my “move” for another mile. I had gained maybe 5 seconds on the woman in front of me by the end of the lap, with at least 10 seconds left to close. I finished the first lap in just over 20 minutes and realized I’d better get serious! I stepped up my cadence and quickly caught her by around the 3.5 mile point. She ran on my shoulder for a little bit, but by the aid station at mile 4 I was all alone! I kept my thoughts positive and my cadence high and my arms relaxed and my breathing LOUD and suddenly I was at the finish. Even when it hurts, it’s always over before I know it! I negative split the second lap by nearly a minute and a half! Cool, on the one hand. But on the other hand I really should have gone out faster
. I was really pleased with my race, and I finished 2nd woman overall. Both my swim and my run (38:46) were Olympic-distance PR’s for me, and for the first time ever I had the fastest female run split! I was initially disappointed in my bike split, because boo hoo hoo someone passed me, but considering that I took most of July off from riding and still am not exactly riding very much, I’m actually very happy with my bike leg. My transitions should have been faster, but on days when I am feeling a little off, my transitions definitely suffer. It takes me a little longer to build momentum when I don’t feel spectacular, but the good news is that I can still reach a good momentum despite not feeling especially special. (I don’t want to be like a certain 2008 Olympian whose initials are MR and belabor the whole “oh I felt like crap here but I am so great that I still podiumed!”, that’s not my point at all. There are always going to be races where you aren’t on your A game and maybe the person who beat you wasn’t on their A game either, the point is to do your best and eek out the fastest and smartest performance possible, no matter the conditions.)
Women's Podium
. Instead of finisher medals, we got reusable stainless steel water bottles! I have been wanting to get one for ages! I accidentally dropped mine a couple hours after the race, and the impact broke the sports top, but I think I can replace it with a more sturdy non-plastic top. And I got a bottle of sparkling grape juice with a really cool label that said Portland Triathlon 2009, 2nd Place, etc., of course I dropped that too and it shattered all over the sidewalk when I was unloading my stuff from the car on Sunday night 
. I have never been known for my dexterity, I must say. Even after 30 years of it, my clumsiness can still make me sad! I also got a gift certificate to the Bike Gallery, a Portland shop. Since I am not sure when I’ll be back down there we stopped by on our way out of town. I splurged on a new chain for my bike. Woooooow, I know. I wanted something exciting but I need a chain. And last but not least on my list of prizes: a trophy made from a ship hull! So I guess it’s steel? It’s definitely unique, which I like. The trophy and water bottle are both in keeping with the event’s sustainability goals. As for the event itself, I think it has the potential to be a really great race. It’s only in its third year so I am sure there are still a lot of kinks to work out. The course is fantastic, and very convenient if you are willing to spend a little money on accommodations and parking. That is a big plus in a sport that often involves 30+ minute drives to the race start in the wee hours! I am not sure how they would handle a really large field (i.e. 1,500-2,000 racers, Sunday’s event had about 600) mainly because of parking, but there has to be a traffic engineer out there somewhere who masterminds these things. The main problem I see with the race is the fact that they ran the Olympic and Sprint races concurrently. It was an unnecessary mob scene. It would have been a lot more pleasant and a lot safer, not to mention less confusing, had the Sprint race started 1 hour after the Olympic race. Separate number sequences or number colors would also have been nice, but that’s incidental.
All in all, it was a great weekend and a great race. Thanks for reading!
CourtenayBrown.com
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