Beaver Freezer Race Report!

Yes, Carson is in her jammies in these photos - what can I tell you? She'd never get out of them if we didn't force her to. Check out my race report after the photos!











At long last, the Beaver Freezer has come...and now it's gone.

The Freezer, like many indoor-swim triathlons, has multiple heats to try to get everyone in the pool. There were 10 heats, with 32 people in each heat. Eight lanes in the Dixon pool at OSU, with four swimmers in each lane. Everyone had preassigned lanes and starting positions - I was in lane 1 (closest to the exit door - nice) and started 2nd in our lane; five seconds after the first swimmer started. The swim was 500 yards and I had a good swim (6:56), but never caught the girl in front of me - she was fast. We both lapped the swimmer that started third on our last lap, so I felt we were moving pretty well.

I had a decent T1. Nothing special, but not too slow. I wondered for a moment about gloves and jacket, but decided to forego both and I'm glad I did. The weather, after raining all week, was absolutely gorgeous today, with sun and very little wind. I felt bad for the early heats, the first heat went in the water at 7:30, because there was frost on the ground at that time this morning. Their ride must have been chilly.

The bike went very well. As always, this was the leg I was dreading, but I finished about five minutes faster than I was shooting for, so I was very pleased there. I even passed a couple of fast bikers on a good downhill - I told them if they were fat like me, they could go faster downhill too! Of course, they passed me back up on the next uphill. The old Softride is still a treat to ride - I love that bike.

T2 was fast, although it actually looks sort of slow on the results because the run to the end of the bike racks, then back to my rack, was loooooong.

The run felt slow, and was pretty slow. After about halfway through, I just felt like the tank was on "E". I just told myself to keep plodding along and when I saw, on the third and last lap, that my time was going to be pretty good, I tried to turn it up just a bit. I don't think it worked - I plodded right to the finish.

Overall though, I was about as fast as I wanted to be for this first tri of the year, and much faster than I was afraid I was going to be for this first tri of the year. Fast enough to get a pretty, green, fourth-place ribbon for my age group. Yah!

Day off tomorrow, then back to work on Monday. I think I'll look for a run, maybe a 10k in a few weeks, then the Heart of the Valley Tri on Memorial Day for my next tri.

One in the books for 2009!