I've been wanting to do the LifeTime Fitness Triathlon since Tiffany, Stephanie, and I talked about doing it as a team my sophomore year in high school. Most of the weekends that it's been on, I've been working so would watch it on tv. Well, this year, my triathlon loving boyfriend got me much more into tri's than I have been before, and I signed up for it the second we got back from Hy-Vee.
We left for Minneapolis on Friday at about 7am and got to the Expo a little after 1pm. We got our race packets and got a surprise... a NICE TYR/LifeTime Fitness backpack. I'm sure Ryan will have pictures of it up soon on his website, so be sure to look! Anyway, the Expo was pretty disappointing coming off of the great Expo at Hy-Vee. Ryan says I was spoiled by having Hy-Vee be my first tri, because normally they arent' all that great. Anyway, after we went to the Expo, we went to the race site and did a couple of loops from the course on the bike and by running. After, I had a thought... we were in MN, that's where LifeTime Fitness headquarters are, why not go to the main Corporate office LifeTime? We looked it up and saw that Chanhassen was only about 20minutes away from where we were, soooo drove there. Well, I'm not gonna lie... I was pretty disappointed to see that all it was was a fancier version (lighter material color on the outside of the building, darker colored wood on the inside) of the LifeTime I work at. Oh well, I guess I can say that I've been to the Corporate LifeTime.
Anyway, we were staying with my aunt and uncle so went to their house (which I wish I took pics of because it really is just such a unique house!). My aunt took us out to dinner...we went to the Cheesecake Factory (my alltime fave restaurant!) and got WAYYYY too much food! But of course it was all delicious:) We walked around the mall for awhile and noticed the super long line coming out of Apple (the new iPhone was just released). Well, when we got back to the car, we noticed that it was still really hot (I forgot to mention... it was 95 degrees and really sticky/humid out) but now it was really windy and the sky was yellowish. We drove to my aunts, unloaded my car, and got inside JUST in time. It started getting even windier and started raining just as we finished! Luckily, my uncle (who was flying in from yet another travel trip:)) made it in and was able to see us before we went to bed.
The morning came quickly as it always does before triathlons. We woke up at 445am to go get all of our stuff set up at the transition area (in this tri it was normal and only had one transition area). My race number was 640 and it was kind of nice because it was an easy location for me to find every time. The time that we had before the race flew by really fast! We had to fix the brakes on my bike, set things up, get our wetsuits on, make last minute bathroom breaks, etc. Before I knew it, Ryan (racing in the Elite division) was up! I had about 20minutes before his so just stood around watching. I was finally up! I raced in the age group race, 20-24 female. There were 36 females in my age group. This set up was different from Hy-Vee; we didn't all start at the same time. Rather, we started in number order. 639 went first, then 3 seconds later, I got my running start into the water. The swim was a triangle, and for the most part I swam straight, so that was nice. I came out of the water at 34:16 and in 19th place, yikes. I had a lot of catching up to do! I knew a lot of people passed me (I need a LOT of improving on my swim!) but didn't realize so many. My transition was SLOW... about 2:30. My bike felt awesome! There were a lot of sharp turns, so lots of slowing down, but the time was about the same as at Hy-Vee, which I was disappointed with until I realized how different the courses were. Onto the run... I ran about the same time as I did for the Barrington 10k, 41:54. I had the third fastest run split... and a girl who runs a 4:30 mile had the fastest, sooo I don't feel too bad about my time!
Overall, I finished 6th in my age group with a 2:41:54. I was planning on breaking 2:40 this race, so I was pretty bummed when I saw my finishing time. However, Ryan was there (as always:)) to comfort me at the end. He had been done for over 40 minutes (about 2:02, and he started 20mins before me) and was looking at the results and saw that everyone who competed at Hy-Vee was slower at LifeTime than Hy-Vee by over a minute, and I had improved by over 2! So that was much happier news than my time. Ryan didn't have the race he wanted, but still did really well for all of the hard training and racing he's been doing. We are for sure going back next year, only this time, we will go up earlier (so we aren't tired from a 6 1/2 hour drive the day before) and can shop at the Mall of America and go out with Andrea after the race!
After the race, we drove another six hours to go to The Island, an Island off of Door County, WI, for a family reunion type thing for Ryan's dad's side of the family. It was a LOT of fun:)
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