Saturday, September 13, 2008

Skirt Victory


Pink Paradise has done it again! As I mentioned yesterday I'm trying to have a little fun in my last week of unofficial training. So this morning I woke up at 4:56 am (I have a tendency to wake up before my alarm goes off). I grabbed my gear and drove down to the lake. I ran a nice easy 7 miles around Tempe Lake and got some hills in to test out the adjustments on my orthotics (they are working great btw!). I finished my run just in time to grab my gear and head over to the Splash and Dash. With 15 minutes to go until race time, they opened the water for warm-up so I jumped in and swam a little bit. I decided that I would like to wear my wetsuit even though the water was warm. I haven't raced since June so I wanted the safety net of buoyancy on my side. Have you ever tried to put a wetsuit on while dripping wet? Not the easiest thing in the world to do! Now 10 minutes to race start, I begin struggling to get my suit on. By the time I had my legs on, my hands were totally cramped up and I could hardly use them. Thankfully, there was a nice guy next to me who helped me get my top half on and get zipped up. Definitely wasn't on correctly for a long swim, but I figured it would get me through the 1000 m swim. As always, when the gun went off my HR skyrocketed and I immediately am breathing heavy. I look around and see way to many swimmers next to me. How am I not out in front? (I was one of a dozen or so athletes wearing a wetsuit) I was baffled. I begin the bargaining process with myself... if you make it out of the water alive, you can bag the run and just rest. Seriously, where do these thoughts come from? I've done Ironman for pete's sake, I'm not going to let some silly little S&D take me out. So I slowed a little to catch my breath. By the time I turned the first buoy I was under control and realized that I was now passing those people who took off even faster than me. The water was fairly choppy and even though I wasn't getting hit by anyone, occasionally another swimmer would be tossed in front of me or on top of me by the rough water. When the swim was over I dashed through transition, whipped off my wetsuit (gotta love the Blue Seventy Helix!), pulled on my Race Belt Skirt and dashed off. The run was about 1.75 miles- down the path, through the park, halfway up Curry hill and back. By the time I hit the park, the leaders were coming back from the turn around. I passed one woman in the park and headed up the hill to the turn. Just before the turn I saw the first two women and realized that I was running in third position! I hit the turn around and counted 5 women behind me within a tenth of a mile. I knew I could sail back to the finish line so I picked up the pace just a bit. My stomach tightened... which is typical when I drop below a certain pace. I hate that feeling like you're going to puke. I kept pushing. One guy passed me and after that I didn't hear any foot steps behind me. When I saw the last couple of tenths I gave one last push and flew through the finish- maintaining my 3rd place finish! Another victory for Pink Paradise! Unfortunately I couldn't stick around to collect my prize as I had to be at work at 9am. I took a "whore's bath" in the sink at work and sprayed some Bath and Body Works body spray on. Yikes! I figure I only have to work 4 hours and then I can take a real shower! Hope my clients don't mind...

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