Hello Hello! How are y’all doing? I hope you’ve had a great weekend and are all set to make this a wonderful week. My weekend was pretty fantastic as I opened my racing season with a local sprint triathlon, so for today’s post I will give you a race day recap…..

5:30AM — Beep beep beep!! Time to rise and shine!!

6:00AM — Breakfast in hand and I am headed out the door.

6:15AM — Arrive at Stumpy Creek Park on Lake Norman.

6:15 – 6:45AM — Last minute bike tune-up, transition set up, body marking, and collecting my timing chip.

6:55 — National Anthem.

7:00 — The first wave is headed to the start line. Time to start warming up.

7:12 — My wave heads into the water [read: muddy bath water].

7:15 — The gun goes off and I am off to the races. I started off maybe a bit too hard and got myself out of breath early but by the second turn I felt like I had found my groove. Then…myself and what seems like the rest of the sprint triathlon mis – sight the third turn and start to cut back towards shore a little early before seeing the correct third turn way to our right. I think its pretty likely at this point my 750yd swim has easily turned into an 850yd swim. I make it around the third and fourth turns and head back to shore. Total time 16:02.

Transition 1: In and out, speedy speedy! I had some time to make up after my slow swim. A little over :40 seconds to get from the swim to my bike. Coming out of the swim I wasn’t on the leader board but by the time I exited T1 I had gotten myself into 7th place.

 

Bike: The bike course was tough. Very hilly and truthfully quite a dangerous course. I always appreciate the police and volunteers out on the course but unfortunately in this race things were a bit rocky. I had to duck under a truck’s mirror at one point and my dad watched several others have near head on collisions.  Throughout the danger and rough roads, I was still able to pick off quite a few more throughout this leg. I averaged 18.18mph to be the fastest female on the course. By the end of the bike I was in second place amongst the age group women.

Transition 2: Again, in and out. With a quick flying dismount and a change of shoes and I was on my way to the run.

Run: BRUTAL. Holy Moly it was hilly and hot!!! I definitely didn’t have the run I had hoped for. I managed to average an 8:45 pace which wasn’t terrible but far from what I am capable of.

Finish: 1:24:18 and 2nd place OVERALL the women!!! A podium finish for my season opener!!

Overall thoughts of the race….I still hate sprint triathlons. Something about going as hard as you can the entire time and not being able to find a rhythm the entire time is just not for me. More specifically to the race….not impressed. The swim was fine, very rocky start but nothing out of the ordinary. The safety personal on the water though…lacking significantly! Mom said she thought she was going to watch someone drown out there. The bike was well…dangerous! The fact that bikers were crossing in front of traffic and in front of one another was not good. They need to have a better plan going into next year. Run, nothing really notable. It was a tough course but that is nothing to complain about. Didn’t love the “off-road” section to the finish but still it wasn’t a bad run.

So there you have it, my season opener at Stumpy Creek. What’d you do this weekend? Anyone else race? Let me know in the comments below!