Kristin vowed to try anything once, triathlon included, so this is the one she agreed to do. She at least needed to experience what it's like to be on the other side of that mesh fence, and she might as well get it over with. Race morning was cold, rainy, and less than enticing. Thankfully, the rain cleared up and the temperature was great. Otherwise I think I'd have been in big trouble! We got our stuff set up I transition and Kristin had a veteran racer racked right next to her to help her out (haha). We walked through the major steps of the race again and took off on a short warm-up run. We both munched on the new PowerBar Harvest Energy Bars before the race. They are so good! We both highly recommend them.
We actually got put in the same wave, so that was cool. So were Jill and Jill, and a few other friends of ours. As we were lining up on the beach, I caught glimpse of a face I recognized from swimming USS a long time ago. I decided that I'd draft off of him on the swim and see where the rest of the race sorted out. I said good luck to our group of friends and lined up on the front. The horn went off and we were out into the water and around the first buoy in a matter of seconds. It's a short swim! Off and around to the second buoy, just trying to stay on the feet in front of me. All of 2.5 minutes later, we were on the beach and running into transition. Kristin's swim would take longer, apparently the first buoy turned into a log jam and people could barely swim. But she survived.
T1 was a blur, found my bike, slammed my shoes on, clipped my helmet, and ran to the exit. First out of T1, barely.
The bike was going to be fast for about 80% of the course, due to a ripping wind. We climbed the first hill out of transition and to our shock, there were no course marshals directing traffic. I was in the process of re-passing the leader (had some trouble clipping in...), and couldn't see around him. Turns out there was a car right but all he could yell was "ah!". Thankfully the car slowed from the crawl it was already moving at and no one got hit. Keeping that in mind for the rest of the race, at the next stop I actually stopped and ended up having to wait 10 seconds or so for traffic to clear (despite there actually being police officers at the intersection, they were all chatting on the gator atv). Thankfully, I still had a decent gap and managed to build on it over the bumpy roads. Then we turned into the wind for 1.5 miles. The longest, bumpiest 1.5 miles in recent memory. I just put my head down and tried to find a solid rhythm. Finally, the route turned back to a well-sheltered cross wind and I flew back to transition. Kristin would later complain about how windy it was, yet she managed to knock out a 16+ avg on a hybrid bike, despite only riding 3 times this year!
T2 was in and out. Flying dismount on the bike, shoes slammed on, visor in hand, and gone. As I bolted out of transition in my bright orange Saucony A6 shoes, I heard the volunteers telling the next athlete where to dismount. I probably had a 45 second lead.
Good thing I knew where I was going. The course was not very well marked and not all of the volunteers were at their corners yet. In fact, I followed the truck that was dropping them off. Still a great grassroots race though! I kept looking back to see where the next racer was but didn't see anyone. For a moment I almost let up, but remembered that there could be someone in wave 2 and forged on. I had a great run, thanks to some inspiration from Mrs. Jones (positive vibes), the minivan driver who nearly killed me in a crosswalk (angry vibes), and thinking about how Kristin was doing the same race (positive vibes). After what seemed like an eternal stretch, I came around the corner to the final straight, zipped up my Michigan Awesome kit, straightened my PowerBar visor, and cruised across the line with a big smile.
After waiting 7 minutes and stalking every finisher to get a glance at their race number (numbers determined race wave), I could be certain that I took the overall win, FINALLY! I walked back up to watch Kristin finish, she did great. One of her fastest 5k runs yet (if not the fastest, she doesn't really track that sort of thing)! Congrats to her, we'll see if we can convince her to do another, though she vowed against it. Also, great races to all of our friends as well. You guys did awesome.
Thanks to my dad for coming up to support the two of us, JMast too. A nice post-race lunch at Spanky's pizza, a local favorite, was well deserved!
Next week is TC Tri, so I'll post up another update next week on that. Time to prepare to defend my title there...keep dreaming!
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