Race morning dawned at 3am for me (midnight in CA). Surprisingly, it was not that bad. I ate my oatmeal and hopped on my bike to wind my way through the village, past all the drunk partiers who had yet to find their way home, and cruised up the bike path to transition. Once I got to transition it started raining, and it pretty much didn't stop until half-way through the bike. It wasn't a cold rain, so not bad.
Goggles on. And raining...
Our swim start was delayed about 45 minutes - not due to weather, but because someone had crashed their car on the bike course and spilled oil all over. So while oil cleanup took place, we sat by the river and watched it rain.
Pro women swim start - there were 16 of us. I'm in the middle somewhere.
I need to keep practicing diving because I got a bit of water in my goggles - not as bad as normal, but not a clean dive. For some reason even though it was super windy and raining, I didn't think the swim was going to be choppy. Within about 100m I felt as if all the girls had swum away from me (because they had!) and I was left flailing around in the washing machine chop. We swam right into a headwind, so every time I picked up my head to sight (& breathe), I couldn't see and got a mouth full of water. It was annoying. And anytime water went in my mouth all I thought about was how I really did not want to get some random disease from the Hudson. And I also couldn't figure out why the water was salty. This continued for what felt like forever, but in reality was only 16 minutes. The run to transition is long and I got passed by a girl there also. There were two bikes in transition when I got there. And I think the last pro girl passed me right after I left T1. So it was time to do some work...
Much of the bike was spent trying to keep the rubber side down. There was a lot of standing water. And potholes. And water was falling from the sky. It was basically a sopping wet bike ride. With some nice tailwind, nasty headwind and sketchy cross-winds thrown in. It was kind of like riding in a maze of avoiding large puddles, potholes and anything on the pavement that was painted.
I did not ride as fast as I wanted to (1:10). And I also did not crash. I came off the bike in 11th.
I have a tendency to go out too hard on the run in shorter races. Today was no exception, since I could see a girl to chase down. I got an awesome side stitch by mile one, but thankfully got rid of it by mile two.
Racing in NYC was awesome. The volunteers were amazing, and even those people out for their Sunday workouts in the park were cheering. I loved it.
I ran 38-high to finish in 2:11 in 9th place.
THANK YOU to my sponsors, Steven for not only chasing me around NYC while I raced, but loving every minute of it, and the classy and friendly girls who push me in races.
I get to enjoy a few more days in NYC, then it's off to Chicago and on to Michigan for Steelhead 70.3 next weekend. I have lots of fun non-race pictures I will try to post this week...
