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Race Result

Racer: Jen Tallman
Race: Kinetic Sprint
Date: Sunday, April 20, 2008
Location: Spotsylvania, VA
Race Type: Triathlon - Sprint
Age Group: Female 30 - 34
Time: 2:07:08
Overall Place: 145 / 197
Age Group Place: 35 / 46
Comment: Squish Squish Squish!!



Race Report:



What a way to start the season! Following a beautiful week of sunny warm waether and lots of hard workouts in rolled a downpour for race day!!

Kinteic was a training race for me, as I am really only concerned with finishing TTT and Ironman this year... Everything else is just to get me to those goals or just have fun racing. So, the week leading up to Kinetic was full of long bricks, and hill repeats. The day before Kinetic, I spent digging holes and planting trees. The evening before Kinetic I bricked for an hour and tried to sleep while waking every hour to recheck my list of race stuff for the morning.

I craweled out of bed at 5am on race morning, got together my last minute gear, made a smoothie, took care of my pups and loaded up my mom's car, mourning the fact that my bike was getting rather wet on the bike rack. : (

I finally slept on the way down to Lake Anna... As well as you can sleep in a vehicle anyway...

I checked in, got my race number, my shirt and my socks... odd how the VA Tri Series always gives you a pair of socks... Got my chip and headed back to the car to stay dry until I had to go set up transition.

My mom is the best Tri-Sherpa ever! She helped me lug my gear over to transition, where I debated about trying to rig up trash bags to keep things dry. I decided it was pointless, since everything was pretty soaked from the walk across the parking lot, and it was likley to be soaked even further during the race anyway.

I got into my wetsuit at about 9:20, realized I left my goggles in transtion, made my way back to my bike to find them, and realized I was right not to try to keep things dry, as transition was already turning into ankle-deep mud! I got down to the water just in time to find my training buddy! I took a quick warm up swim... that wasn't really warm at all, but not as cold as I was expecting! I listened to the pre-race announcements, and stood in line with my wave...

I started to get the pre-race butterflies as I as I was waiting for my wave to start... ugh! That always makes it hard to breathe in the swim!

Before I knew it, I was in the water with all the other pink caps! I caught a draft on someone, but she was too slow... wow so different than my first ever tri last year, when I had no idea how to draft, I passed no one, and I felt like I was in a blender the whole swim! I passed several people, and was totally not nervous about being kicked when it happened... I did find myself getting off course a few times, but I was able to increase my sighting intervals and straighten out.

Back on the beach less thatn 20 mins later, I ran up to transition, easily removing the wetsuit! For once my right hand didn't get stuck!! I managed to get all of my wet muddy bike gear on, grabbed my bike, and squished my way out to the bike course. I had to stomp my feet to get the mud outta my cleats before I copuld clip in, but I was happy that there didn't seem to be too much mud actually inisde my shoes.

I don't remember many details of the ride. It seemed that there were more uphills than downs, and that I was really being cautious on the downs and in turns so as not to slide. I had on sunglasses so that the rain wouldn't pelt my eyeballs too badly. I remember running down three different girls in m,y age group! Something I didn't do at all last year! The highlight of my bike course experience was passing a 34y/o male on an uphill... Like he was standing still!

Seemed like no time later, I was back in the park and rolling back into the mud! Oh my poor bike!! I put on my soggy rnning socks and shoes and took off... 3.1 miles to go!

It started raining even harder as I ran, but I was nice and warm and I was actually kind of enjoying the feel of the water! It felt very natural to be out in the rain under the trees!

I got passed by two of the women in my age group that I had run down on the bike... Oh well... I couldn't catch them. I held a nice steady pace througout the run, and was soon hearing the announcer and the soggy crowd cheering at the finish line.

I came out of the woods and sprinted for the line! It wasn't quite the high that corssing the line was at Patriot's, but there was still a little flutter of giddiness as I grabbed my mylar blanket from the paramedic and hiked up to meet mom and get some food!

Mom was soaking wet! She is a great sport! The food people were nice enough to scoop me up some veggie pasta w/o cheese!! I ate till I was freezing, then went to clean out transition.

The bag mom carried back to the car was probably three times as heavy as it had been when we arrived due to the water that everything had absorbed!

Back in the car, I changed into dry clothes, turned on the heat and went back to sleep until we rolled back into Burke! At least the rain washed most of the mud off my bike on the way home!

All in all, it was a great race... more good mental training for Placid, and so much better than the 2 hours I'd have put in on the trainer had I been at home!

Thanks to my mom, my coach, Ryan, Bob from Wheelie Fun Multisport, my non-tri friends who put up with me training and talking tri, and all my tri buddies out there!