Texas time!

The first race of the season is now in the books! Since IMAZ I have gone through a bit of Triathletes Anonymous rehab. This included Tons of family time, riding dirt bikes instead of Tri bikes, many beach vacations chasing turtles, and plenty of laughs. As 2011 was rolling on I decided to pick up my training and just enter a 70.3 for the "fun" of it. Mostly to get my butt back in shape but mostly because I missed the active training for sport. I love to workout, but I need a purpose to make those workouts count! So Texas 70.3 in Galveston was the easiest to get to and did not interfere with my daughter's swim meets. Fast forward 3 months and what does a triathlete who has little training under her for the year do? That's right a two week vacation on the beach!

Once I got back from Hawaii I had ten days to train for Galveston, no worries!! I got this, and altitude is on my side. We flew into Houston late, late Friday night and our hotel room had just been painted with no other rooms available. Uggg, major fume headache for three days! We also figured out that we had left the majority of our race nutrition at home! Great, this being a PowerBar sponsored event no Carbo-Pro sold at the expo! Okay so my nutrition plan is now going to be all gels all day, yumm! What's a girl to do but head to the BEACH!

Race morning was very fun thanks to Tracy, Katey and Paige! We chatted, laughed and spent over 2hrs getting to know each other! As we watched the pro's come in, the men come in and some of the women we noticed that the wind was picking up dramatically. The calm waters of the waves ahead of us were long gone. In it's place was major chop and big swells. Through the swim and onto the bike the wind was crazy, and the sun was blazing. I knew it was going to be a tough day. In the first 3 miles two girls in my age group passed me, I thought about going with them but decided to ride my own race and kept it steady. I passed both of them before the half-way point on the bike! I came into T2 feeling great, maybe I rode too easy?

The run at this race is 4 loops of boring, hot, cement miles. The best part is the aide stations, the volunteers did great with what they had. And sometimes that was not much, many ran out of cups and people were grabbing cups off the ground in order to get water or sports drink. It was very hot and windy and I tried to pace my loops so that I did not fade too badly as the temps rose and I got tired. I definitely had one too many caffeinated gels as it was tough to fall asleep that night.

I have been recovering this week and already the wheels are turning. What's next you ask, well I took a 70.3 World Championships spot. So I will be racing in Vegas in September, more heat please!! I was not going to take the spot but I have not been to Vegas in a long time and hopefully it will be less of a cheat fest with the hills to break up the packs that plagued Clearwater. I am back to swimbikerun, and loving it!

Cheers!