Posted on Jun 11, 2008 in Race Reports
Another year of disappointment at Alcatraz….last year I had a hematoma in my piriformis(aka butt) four days before the race that made it impossible for me to run…..this year I managed to cross-thread one of my bike pedals. It was just plain bad luck as I have put my pedals on my bike at least 100+ times, yet the one and only time I ever cross thread the pedal was for this race. I even biked on the pedals the day before the race for about 40 minutes and didn’t notice a thing.Sadly, the race was going great up until the pedal left my bike! I had a good swim and was the second woman out of the water only a few seconds behind Linda Gallo. Once on the bike, I charged to the lead and was winning until about 7 miles in when climbing out of the saddle my entire pedal still clipped into the shoe came out of the crank. After laying on the ground in shock for a few moments, I quickly got up and wanted to continue. The first problem was the pedal still stuck on my shoe. Some race officials helped me to take off my shoe and after a few minutes of tugging we finally got the pedal off the cleat. Then, I tried to screw the pedal into my crank, as I wanted to get back on the bike ASAP thinking I might still have a shot at the top ten. The pedal would not go back into the crank…I tried for ten minutes, a race official tried for ten minutes, another official tried, a volunteer tried, a random guy on the side of the race course tried, another random dude tried, I tried again….eventually we realized the the crank was stripped. But on the positive side, at first it appeared that I had trashed another front wheel but after fixing the skewer the wheel was fine. On the side of the road, I watched all the elite women pass me heading out on the bike course. Then about 20 minutes later watched them all pass me heading back on the bike course. After waiting on the side of the road for about an hour, I decided to one leg pedal back the start after pedaling and walking my bike up the hill back towards transition for a mile. I ran into the bike mechanic (funny how the race officials never mentioned that there was a mechanic up the road). The mechanic was able to use a tool to force the pedal back into the crank; he warned me that this would really ruin my crank but at that point I didn’t care. After a brief debate in my head, I turned around and started back out on the bike course to complete the race. After losing an hour standing on the...
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Posted on Jun 11, 2008 in Race Reports, Ramblings
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Posted on Jun 11, 2008 in Race Reports, Ramblings
My trip to Madrid was a blast. The city was beautiful with amazing architecture that obviously made it through WWI and II without being destroyed and has been restored meticulously. We stayed right across the street from the royal palace and gardens. The little bit of time we spent exploring the city just made me really want to go back on a “real” vacation. Not only did I love the city, but I have a great travel companion, Jenna, and really enjoyed spending time with the rest of the US contingent. The race site was in a park in downtown Madrid; it was so rural considering its in the middle of the city. There were a few women of the night working in the park as Jenna and I saw on Thursday night during our jog but they were gone by race day. I loved the race course; the bike was challenging with a decent hill on each of the 8 laps, and the run was flat and shaded. The only bummer was that the water temperature was just under the cutoff so it was a wetsuit swim. This makes the swim much more intense as the differentiation between the slower and faster swimmers is less pronounced.I had some nerves and only sleep a few hours the night before the race. The race didn’t start as planned. I had a good swim and then right before the first buoy I was dunked by another competitor just as I was taking a breath. As a result, I started hyperventilating and stopped dead in the water trying to regain my composure. Even though I only stopped for @ 10 seconds, a sea of other swimmers swept past me. When I finally started to swim again…tentatively, I had lost the front pack and to fight my way back the rest of the first lap and second lap. Unfortunately, I didn’t make up all the time I lost and started the bike in no-man’s land. I biked hard to catch the front pack and after 2.5 laps finally caught the group and was able to relax and recover a bit. By that time there had already been a breakaway of 4 from the front pack so I was upset that missed the opportunity to be among those girls. I rode with the pack and during the last lap launched a small breakaway to get into transition with a small lead over the rest of the pack. I headed out of transition ahead of most of the pack and felt good right away on the run. For once, my turnover felt great and everything flowed. I felt great until the last 3K on the run and then my legs started to cramp and even my arms were cramping. I backed off a bit since the main goal was simply to finish in the top...
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Posted on May 10, 2008 in Race Reports
The Olympic Trials were on TV last Sunday. We don’t get cable here in Thornton, but my mom was nice enough to tape it for me. I just got a chance to watch the tape and was definitely impressed with it, nice voiceover Siri. I just wish there were less commercials and more coverage.Here are some pictures from Trials and link to the humorous You Tube video of our two-block parade. That is me on the far right of the swim start…I was last to pick my spot. And in the second picture, I am at the front of the 2nd pack on the bike. Here is the link to the Parade: (if you’re really into it you can check out part 2 as...
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Posted on May 10, 2008 in Race Reports
I arrived in Tuscaloosa feeling very excited. I healed well over the past two weeks and was ready to roll. The only difficulty post-crash was getting the wetsuit on and off my arms. The entire weekend was a ton of fun and organized very well. They had a parade for us on Thursday…a two block parade but still it was my first time riding in a parade. There is pretty neat You Tube video posted of the parade if anyone’s interested in what a two block parade of 21 athletes looks like….. On Friday, I had the opportunity to speak to a local school about triathlon and try to get the middle school kids interested and excited about the sport. It was a great experience and the kids had some very thoughtful questions. We did a short race to see who could get on their running shoes fastest, simulating a T2, and I lost badly. I guess I have some work to do. I hope that the kids enjoyed the presentation as much as I did and that some of them are able to continue in sports through high school and make it part of the rest of their life. Maybe even a few will do a triathlon one day. The race was on Saturday after the collegiate race. I woke up feeling great…well rested and excited to race.The race started off well, since there were only eleven of us on the start line, position wasn’t too much of an issue. I tried to get out hard and hang on to the feet in front of me. I didn’t have a very good swim. Not only did I struggle but I was also at the back of the pack and the last one to see as we went off course and the last one to correct the error. Swimming even slightly longer than the course is a mistake that I couldn’t afford to make. I exited the swim way off the back of the leaders and knew that I had a lot of work to do on the bike. My goal for the race was to never give up so I decided to go after it on the bike. I caught up to Becky Lavelle almost immediately and we worked together to catch the 2nd pack of riders during the 2nd lap. I went by strong and yelled for them to grab on as I wanted to help us catch the lead pack. Sadly no one came with me, I ended up in no-mans land and got as close as 35 seconds from the lead pack but wasn’t able to bridge the gap on the strong group of four working together. After fighting by myself for a lap or two and not making up any ground on the lead pack, I eased back a bit to wait for the...
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Posted on May 10, 2008 in Race Reports, Ramblings
I arrived back in LA a bit of a mess; I wasn’t able to swim and my whole body and head still were in a lot of pain. But in than 2weeks, the Olympic Trials will be held in Tuscaloosa Alabama. I am scrambling to try and plan my last minute travel down to Alabama and find flights that aren’t going to cost me an arm and a leg. Since I don’t have funding from the national team, I will have to pay for everything and hope they reimburse me something in the next year. Plus the reimbursement has a cap so I am trying to keep the travel under that so I don’t have too much out of pocket. This week it is very hard still not being able to swim. Each day that I can’t get into the water is tough, I am definitely concerned since tapering and traveling for the past 2 weeks along with not being able to swim this week after the crash is going to hurt my chances of keeping up in the swim. I can’t afford to miss 3 weeks of swimming leading up to a race where Sara McLarty and the other girls are going to be on fire in the water. But at this point there is nothing I can do to change what happened in New Zealand so I just am just going to focus on what I can do. And on the bright side at least I am no longer feeling sick and nothing is broken. Here are some pictures from the race in New Zealand courtesy of my amazing home-stay family: The photos above are from the race…pre-crash. This photo below is me and the girls post-crash. You can see my arms are pretty bandaged up and I have some nice cuts on my forehead and...
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