June races... well the last two weekends, anyway...

FIRST OLYMPIC DISTANCE TRIATHLON... June 22nd, HyVee Triathlon, West Des Moines, Iowa. For my birthday, Ryan registered me for this race (and did like five million other things for me:)) and trained me for it during the last semester of school (although I didn't find out til my birthday that I would actually be doing it). I've noticed that ever since Ry started training me, I haven'tbeen getting hurt! This is great news because I'm usually hurt like every other month from running (probably too much); so far I've made it three and a half months without being hurt! Anyway, so race weekend is finally here... I went with Ryan, his brothers (Jason, 10, and Alex, 7), and his dad. Jason and Alex were signed up to do the Kids Duathlon (long story short, the Triathlon was changed to a duathlon like two weeks before the race and then changed back three days before due to the terrrrrible flooding in Iowa). The Kids Duathlon was on Saturday, and they both did awesome! Jason came in fourth out of like sixty kids and Alex was ninth out of the sixty kids in his age group too. It definitely set the mood for the weekend and made me even more excited to race (and nervous too!). After their races (we were outside like all day...my sister noticed when I went into work on Monday super tan!), we set up our bikes, worked out a little, and then headed back to the place we were staying for dinner and early bed.

330am wakeup call was NOT very fun on Sunday:( But usually once I'm up, I'm good to go for the day. So we drove over to "T2" (which means the second transition stop... in most triathlons there is only one transition, but due to the flooding, they had to basically redo the whole course and everything and it ended up having two transitions), set up things and headed back to make sure everything was fine in T1. Before I knew it, it was time for Ryan to head off.

As Ryan's wave went into the water, I was more nervous than ever. Four more waves then it was my turn... but something happened with the wave before us and that delayed our start, which of course made me more anxious than before. After I found out that it was goin to be a duathlon, I really stopped swimming, so when Ryan told me that the swim was back on, I wasn't too happy. But, for the 1500 swim, I made it the whole way in 35minutes, which was under the time Ryan thought of 40minutes!

My transitions were TERRIBLE... I have no idea what took me so long, but when we looked at the results, it was almost 3 minutes! Well, I finally got my bike and couldn't get my feet in the shoes that were already clipped in, so had to pull my bike over and unclip the shoes, put them on my feet, and clip them back in. I was NOT very happy going onto the bike. It stunk even more that the first thing we encountered was a STEEEEP hill (we biked down it the day before, so we knew what was coming!). But I ended up averaging 18.4mph on the bike!

Onto the run...my strongest part:)... Well, I didn't see mile marker four or six, but the times that my watch split were 640-645... except that I had to stop to go to the bathroom, making my overall time a 7min average, yuck. BUT I finished the race with a lot of energy left and ready to do another one! My final time was 2hours 44minutes and 16seconds. Ryan thought I'd be in between 2:30 and 2:45. As soon as the race was over and we were back at Jimmy's house (where we were staying), I checked to see if the LifeTime Fitness Triathlon in Minnesota was full... luckfully (Ry's word) it wasn't! so I signed up right away!! I'm hoping to be under 2:40 at LifeTime (which I've wanted to do since Tiffany and Stephanie andI talked about it in high school!). That race is July 12th, so I'm training like crazy until then to be ready for it!

NEXT RACE... RACE TO TASTE... June 29, Chicago.
I've always gone to the Taste of Chicago, but oddly enough, I've never done the race... you'd think coming from a family of runners, SOMEONE would have known about the race, but nope, didn't know about it until Ryan told me he was going to do it. The last 5k I did before this one was the Jim Gibbons 5k on Thursday, June 19th, and I ran a 19:04...which I did at the Notre Dame 5k course when I was sick and couldn't talk... so really, I should be under 19 no problem. So I told Ryan that's what I wanted to do for my next 5k and he had me do some workouts to do that.

Race day came and it was a cold morning, so I thought for sure it'd be a great day to get a good time. Except that it started warming up. And then got really humid. The first mile was long (1.1 to be exact) so I just relied on my Garmin for the race. The first mile was a 5:50, just like it was at Jim Gibbons... oddly enough, my second mile (603) was the same as Jim Gibbons too! Right before the third mile, there was a slight uphill and I could really feel it was humid out... once again I felt like it was hard to breathe (but this time I didn't panic and cause my throat to close up!). John (Ryan's best friend) was having some chest pains going into this race so decided to hold back and run with me. Ryan caught back up to us at the end (you know, as a cooldown for after winning the race) and they were both encouraging me the whole way. We got to the third mile (616) at 1820 and I thought I'd for sure break 19 now! Ryan and John told me to pick it up and sprint, but at this point I just could NOT breathe will at all. Third place (this was a money race, top three places got money) was 13 seconds ahead:( I crossed the line in 19:01. It was not the highlight of my weekend to say the least, but on the bright side, this was a hillier course than Jim Gibbons! My next 5k will be under 19 for sure and I can't wait for that one to happen... my mom wants our family to do the Crystal Lake 4th of July 5k, so I'm thinking of doing that.

NEXT RACE: Barrington 10k on the 4th of July.