Mini Tri Saga and Franklin 5000

Swag: The women specific shirts ROCK! They are cut and sized well. What a novelty in a race shirt! They also gave out good quality water bottles to drink from in the finisher's area instead of cups - part of the "race without a trace' idea. Finally the UNC School of Health and Wellness was handing out LED keychains and pedometers. Fun stuff!

Saturday's plan began to go awry on Friday. The idea when we signed up for the 5K race was that we would use it as the last phase of the "mini-tri" called for on our training plan. On Friday we realized that our pool wasn't open until 9 - which is not very helpful for trying to get a swim-bike in before an 8:30 race. THEN we went to packet pick up and found out our race in fact was scheduled to begin at 7:30. We scrambled a bit and found a pool that opened for lap swim (even on Saturdays) at 5:30 and sold one day passes. After taking the kids out for Chinese food with friends, Donna and I drove out to the Sportsplex and did a walk thru at the pool. We also clocked the mileage out there. It was just a little bit less than an hour's bike ride away. Perfect! The new plan was to be at the pool at 5:30, swim, T-1 through the locker room and at the car, bike back home, T-2 in the car as John drove us to the race start, run the 5K at 7:30.

We packed, loaded our bikes, double-checked our lists, got stressy and edgy with each other, and finally went to bed a little on the late side. Saturday the alarm went off at 4 something and it was very, very dark. According to the computer, sunrise was scheduled for 6:29. Dammit! (Light in the middle of the Eastern Time Zone is very different from light on the Eastern most edge of the Central Time Zone. I'm still not used to it in a lot of ways.) It is one thing to get up and run in the pre-dawn. It is another thing entirely to need half of your bike time on country roads to happen in the dark! We scrapped the new plan and went back to bed until the 5K. When we got up to eat our pre-race meal we discovered that the bagels and the peanut butter were gone. (Teenagers! They are LOCUSTS!) We managed to have jelly on the heels left from the loaf of wheat bread. (We were learning lessons just right and left I tell you!)

The Race:
The only negative I have to say is that the timing "chip" was actually a flat piece of paper with a wire that slid into a pocket behind the race number. I can see that this is helpful in the finisher's area because you just slip it out and hand it off, but it SUCKS. We were required to pin our race numbers flat to our fronts. No race belts, no creative solutions. Pin it flat and high or don't be considered a finisher. I hate putting holes in my expensive running shirts and I am terribly uncomfortable trying to pin something big and square "flat" to my chest. I realize the organizers are more interested in catering to the vast, ectomorphic majority of runners than to the curvy minority but why not use the standard timing chip which is comfortable for everyone?

Ok - the actual race (finally!) It was fantastic! Beautiful course, winding through downtown Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Shady, a few good hills, fantastic volunteers, well marked turns, great finishing area with plenty of food and drink options. It was a terrific experience. Now, we had expected to already be warmed up from the swim and bike. Since that hadn't happened we didn't quite know what to aim for. We started off a bit faster than our typical time and ran a 10:58 first mile. The second mile was 11:28 which made the last mile + the slowest pace of all as my official finish time was 35:04. Overall average pace was 11:41. Clearly starting off fast and dying at the end is not the best way to race! (And it's not how we train.) However, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. This was mostly a way for us to practice nutrition, transitions, managing race day adrenalin, etc - and if we learned mostly what NOT to do next time, well...that's fine.

We hung out at the finisher's area just long enough to cheer for the other finishing back-of-the-packers and to say hello to our dream coach. She is so dang nice! We started to walk home but John intercepted us and gave us a lift the rest of the way back. (He was returning from dropping a child off at an extra credit project and then he had to head into work because they're doing some server migration thing.) Donna and I took Tallulah to the vet, picked the child back up, made sure everyone else was up, fed, set for the day and then we headed back out for our mini-tri! (I love, love, LOVE having a big family but it is certainly a challenge to keep coordinating everything all the time!)

We swam 500 yds (12:15), T-1'd thru the locker room at the community center and at the car (10 min - which included having to unlock and take our bikes off the car top rack!), rode 14.7 miles in 1:07 (over a course with rolling hills and minimal stop lights), T-2'd back at the car (loading bikes back up even faster than we took them off!), and "ran" for 10 minutes. I put ran in quotes because I wasn't able to run!! I had energy left. I felt great through T-2. I started to run and was completely startled by a pain I've never felt in my right knee. I felt like my knee was misaligned - bowed out to the right - like there was pressure pushing my knee off balance. I stopped and squatted down, stretched out my knee, walked a bit - no pain, felt great. I took a few running strides and it was back, tighter and worse with each stride! It was so strange. I tried to run through it gently, like maybe it would loosen up but it just kept getting tighter and walking started to hurt. It was so FRUSTRATING! It didn't feel like a muscle cramp but it did feel like something was clamping down - sideways. Normally my challenge with a brick is that my legs feel heavy and tired. I feel like I'm wading through mud to run. This time my legs felt tired but light. I was warmed up and stretched out and had energy. And pain. Grrrrrrr. I hobbled back to the car - not wanting to push it and injure myself (if I hadn't already!)

The good news is that I stretched and iced at home, took ibuprofen and have had only a tiny bit of soreness since. Today will be the test as it's my first run since Saturday. Luckily my knee wasn't even twingey on either the swim or the long bike. I am hopeful that it was a passing thing - whatever it was!

There you have it: good race, lots of learning experiences. I need to focus on nutrition and stretching; I'm proud of myself for being flexible and patient with all of the last minute changes; and I'm looking forward to more training and racing. Peace and Happy Training to all.