Another weekend, another road trip for a race. This time it was 4 hours south, to the coast, in Corpus Christi. The Corpus Tri is the oldest tri in Texas (25 years!), and they were doing a duathlon as well this year. The duathlon was the USAT state championship race.
I drove down yesterday, and got settled in to the Holiday Inn right on the beach. It was a little crazy with a bunch of high school kids on some kind of school trip. But I wasn't going to sleep the night before a race anyway :) When I went to down to packet pickup, who did I run into but Barbara Kuhlemeier, the woman I chased all of the Sriders Du and was able to kick past by just 5 seconds, last week. She lives in Corpus, and was doing the duathlon this week too, so we'd be out there competing again!
The race was pretty small, only about 120 people for both the tri & du, and 40 of those doing the duathlon. So I hoped I could be pretty competitive.
I didn't sleep much the night before the race, and finally got up about 4:45 am. The race hotel was less than 1/2 mile away from the start, so I just put all my stuff in my transition backpack and rode my bike over to the transition area. It was nice not to have to find a parking space.
The weather looked to be good, although warm and sticky. It was about 72 degrees and 100 percent humidity, but cloudy and not super windy. After getting set up in transition I hung out for a while and chatted with Barbara - she racked her bike right next to me. It turns out she was the treasurer for the group that put on the race, so everyone at the race knew her. I heard a lot of "go barb!" and "good job barb!" cheers during the race :)
Finally about 6:30, I ran out and did a mile and a half warmup. I felt pretty good but the humidity was killer, I was completely soaked when I was done.
The duathlon started at the same time as the triathlon swim start. We lined up to start the run course, and when they blew the horn for the swimmers that was our cue to start. I looked around the group of duathletes and Barb was the only woman who looked really fast. At the horn we took off, and she was starting out at a very quick pace. I planned to go out a little faster than last week on the first run, more like a 6:50 instead of 7:00. But that pace had me rapidly falling behind the lead group. I told myself just be patient, run my own race.
The run was on a nice paved bike path along the beach, one minor hill but otherwise flat. There were two turnarounds, so it was easy to see who was ahead of you. By the one mile turnaround, I was probably 50 feet behind Barb, and just trying not to lose any ground. She was really running strong.
I felt like I hit a good groove on the second mile, and tried to keep the leaders in sight. We had a nice downhill stretch going into the last mile, and I mentally tried to get ready for the bike. As we came in to transition, I saw the time said around 19:30, which was way too fast for a 5K. Afterwards when I looked at my Garmin, the run was more like 2.85 miles instead of 3.1. But since everyone was doing the same distance, it didn't really matter. And I did average my goal pace for the first run- 6:50's.
I actually made up a good amount of time in T1, and ended up starting on my bike right next to Barb. I decided to just keep with my race plan, be patient and stay within sight of her. The bike was about 18 miles, with the first 9 going southeast into a headwind. At first I didn't think it was going to be too windy, but once we started out I could feel it. I was still hitting a pretty good 20 mph for most of the outbound part though. I kept Barb in sight, about 50-100 yards ahead. For a while I played leapfrog with another cyclist, each of us would pass the other then get passed back. At one point he had just passed me, then slowed down a bit so I was only a bike length behind him, and I noticed the race official come by on a motorcycle, looking for penalties. I had to hammer to get out of his draft zone and pass him again so I didn't get called for drafting. Eek!
The bike course was very pretty, with the ocean right off to the side, and the sun coming up. Even with the wind I was having a good ride, not feeling like I was pushing too hard. It was paying off to just hang behind the leader, conserve my energy, and not try to take off.
At the turnaround we got our tailwind, which gave us a nice fast pace going back. I was averaging 23-24 mph for most of it, with a few pickups to 27-28. I edged a bit closer to Barb a few times, but then the lead would stretch back out to 100 yards. I just kept telling myself to keep her within reach and I'd try to catch her on the run. This was turning into carbon copy of the Strider's du last weekend! The only difference was I knew we were racing for first place, not first masters. I tried not to think about that, I didn't need any more pressure.
As we neared the end of the bike, I took my bike shoes off, leaving them on the pedals. I'd miscalculated a little and had taken them off a bit before I needed to, so I had to pedal with just my feet on top of the shoes for a half mile or so. Then when I did the flying dismount, one of my shoes came off the pedal! So I had to run back and grab it. But even with that snafu, I came into T2 right next to Barb. I did a really quick transition, and actually took off on the second run a few seconds ahead of her. I'd averaged 22 mph on the bike, and had the fastest bike split of all the women in both the du & tri!
I wasn't sure how hard to push, knowing I was in the lead. I tried to settle into a strong but manageable pace, around 7:20. When we hit the one uphill, I thought maybe if I held a strong pace up it, I'd build up a little lead. But by the one mile turnaround Barb had caught and passed me. So now I was back to the Strider's deja vu all over again- running 5-10 steps behind her, just trying to hang on. Luckily she was just holding a steady pace, around 7:15-7:20, not picking it up.
As we came down the hill to begin the last mile, I was trying to decide when to make a move. At Strider's, I'd taken off with a half mile to go, but this time I just wasn't feeling quite as energetic. So I held on, and soon we could see the finish. With a quarter mile to go, I decided it was time and took the lead. I could hear Barb right behind me. I kept pushing, trying to ignore how tired my legs were. With the last tenth of a mile coming up, I thought back to my last track workout "Boom goes the dynamite", where we ended each 800 repeat with 100m of an all out run. I told myself "Boom!" and dropped the hammer. I was sprinting as hard as I could, and flew towards the finish line. About 10 feet from the end I realized Barb wasn't behind me, and I was going to come in first overall woman! I couldn't believe it, what a great race. My patience and race strategy had paid off.
My final time was 1:28:33, and I ended up ahead of Barb by almost the exact same 5 seconds as last week! Talk about deja vu. I congratulated her for running a great race and really pushing me, and told her hopefully we wouldn't both show up to the next race, I needed a break from this hard of competition! She was very nice and introduced me to a few of the other folks from the Corpus tri scene.
Afterwards at the awards ceremony I got what has to be the neatest award I've seen, a hand-painted ceramic plate:
plus a really nice plaque from USAT:
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