Epic Boulder PeakTriathlon

This event, Boulder Peak Triathlon, turned out to be quite an event, and I don't necessarily mean just the race itself. The traveling went really smooth aside from some lightning on our last plane ride home. Thankfully, it was far enough away that it didn't cause any problems.

Leading up to the race I had workouts everyday and it was my plan to get in the water each day as well, since I was told that swimming at altitude is like breathing through a straw. However, on the first day I went to the reservoir to swim there was a lightning storm, and I guess you are not allowed to swim in that type of weather. Some of kind of safety thing :P On a side note, I thought it would have been a fun experience. The next day, which was the day before the race, I was to swim, bike and run. I did the bike and the run first and was planning to leave the swim for last. You know, wash off all the sweat from the previous two exercises. Nah, actually I just like to leave the swim for last. Anyways, I finished the bike and run and was just headed over to do my swim when all of a sudden Thor got really mad (at who knows what; yes, I did just watch Thor and the Avengers) and brought on another lightning storm. Lifeguards seeing this, started to herd everyone out of the water.

At this point, I was really starting to wonder what Thor's deal was. Because everyday he brought on a thunder storm. I will have to admit though, on the first night he gave us (me and my sisters) a marvelous show. The only noises you would have heard from us that night was a bunch of whoas, ahs, and oooos. On a more serious note now, I guess I just was not meant to swim before the race.

Swim caps can be such a pain!

It was finally race day and I would be hitting the water at 7:07. Through the course of the race I would be racing at 5,202 ft up to 6,394 ft. elevation. Like the race at Pacific Crest the weather was perfect. Nice and cool in the morning and it wouldn't be heating up too bad until the time I finished. Usually, at most of the races I've raced the waves have colored specific swim caps. Here they did the start different by allowing the athletes to pick which wave they wanted to go in based on their approximate swim time. So all the women wore pink and the men green. This confused me a little at first but it didn't take long for me to remember why. Then there was the Elite group, that I raced in, and you had to have certain time qualifications to race in that wave.

I was the second wave to hit the water and it always seems like it takes forever for the start. Plus, it was weird being in a wave with only 9 girls... The men were off and now there were a couple minutes before I would have my turn to run into the water. 5...4...3...2...1 GO! I took off towards the water and tried to get ahead of a few before starting to swim, but there wasn't enough land to make a huge difference. Right before I hit the water my knee buckled backwards. I'm still not really sure how that happened but I'm guessing the sand had something to do with it :/ I felt it a little for the first few 100 meters and then forgot all about it. All the way out to the last turn, which was the only turn, I was pretty much by myself but still could see a few of the girls ahead of me. The water was so nice and flat that it made for a great swim, almost as if I wasn't racing. Then all of sudden as I turned and was on my way back I started to get passed by the wave behind me. My once calm water now turned into an angry, rage of sea monsters! This was quite disheartening getting passed but I knew my swim hasn't been super strong this year so I tried to make the most of it by trying to latch on to some of the athletes who passed me. As mentioned earlier about swimming at elevation, I didn't find it difficult to breath at all. Felt the same as going for a swim in Foster Lake, which is just over 500 ft elevation. Now it was on to phase 2. The bike!

This part of the race turned into a first time event for me. I was about 2-3 miles in to the course and being that the roads are still open to traffic there was a commuter bus stopped just ahead. The athletes that were in front of me were going around it on the left. I was about to go that direction as well but then the bus started to move forward so I figured I would stay on the right like we were suppose to. Apparently, this bus driver was unaware that there was a race commencing right then and decided to turn off to the right without using his signal. At this point, I was about 8 yards behind him and when I noticed he was turning I slammed on my brakes. I didn't have enough time to go around him and I ended up slowing down just enough that I hit the back of the bus lightly. I almost fell over as well but was able to get my foot un-clipped in time. It took me a little bit to regain myself but was able to get going without too much lag time. As I passed the incompetent bus driver I may have said a few unpleasant things that aren't worth repeating. Now that I got myself composed again it was time to climb the 1,283 foot hill. It was a fierce climb! But it was nice to have all the spectators cheering the whole way up. The rest of the course was more mellow. A fair amount of downhill and a few rolling hills.  

The run was not any better than at Pacific Crest. If anything, it may have been a little worse. As I look back on my run there shouldn't have been any reason for it to have been worse. First, I was able to get in a couple more weeks of running, even a couple track workouts (that went great!) Second, the course was flat. Lastly, it was warm but not hot and there was an aid station every mile. So I have concluded that my mind was not in the right state and therefore, I sabotaged my run. I'm sure I could blame some of it on the elevation, but honestly I don't believe it had much of an affect. As far as elevation goes, I think most people struggle with it because everyone always makes a big deal out of it. But people forget to realize that the body adapts very quickly. Therefore, I can not blame my performance on elevation. I'm sure it sounds like I'm being very hard on myself, and maybe I am, but at least I can learn from what happened and what I did and work on those things as to not repeat in future races. 

Starting the run.

On a happier note, my main goal for this race was to qualify for the Hyvee Triathlon in September, and I qualified!!! So this made for a bitter/sweet race. I was 8th in the Elite division and 7th in my age group. I finished in the time of 2:29:02.

On another awesome note, this race also had a Pro division. They started about an hour after the age groupers so I was able to at least watch the run, which was a pleasure. Lisa Norden raced. If you don't know who that is, she was the silver medalist at the 2012 Olympics. At the awards ceremony I was sitting about 5 feet away from her. I had the perfect opportunity to go talk to her but I was too much of a chicken. Next time though......right?!?!? :D

Had some fun exploring Boulder.

I'm so strong! :)

My Journey Through Pacific Crest Triathlon

Leading up to Pacific Crest was definitely a challenging time for me. Especially, after having a great performance at Wildflower. I originally was set to race at Blue Lake and Tri Monroe but had to pass on these two events and settle for racing at the Pacific Crest Triathlon before my race in Colorado. Right after Wildflower I came down with a cold. I was so excited after my win that I wanted to get right back to my training and I think this may have put too much stress on my body because I came down with a cold a few days later. This wasn't really a surprise, considering the effort put out in the race, the pressure I put on myself and the long drive back to Oregon. With all this I didn't allow my body enough time to recover. So I guess this was my body's way of saying "settle the hell down and relax!". Of course, this is not an ideal way to recover! I will definitely try to find a way to avoid this in the future. It took me about 2 weeks to get back to consistent training and then the following week I got injured!

I was so excited to be back running and to do an actual workout. I decided to do part of it on a trail that had a slight incline to add some "hill" training to my workout. I was on the second to last interval and right when I was turning around to take off I rolled my ankle on a rock going downhill. Instantly, it started to swell and the tears started to roll down my face. I've rolled my ankles plenty of times while running and most of the time I can just continue to run on them and they're just fine, but that was not the case on this one. The journey back home was awful. I was about a mile and a half from home and had no way to get a hold of anyone to pick me up. So I ended up gimping all the way home. At this point, I was glad I could still walk on it. Once I got home and my family sympathized with me some I then headed off to go take a shower. I wasn't able to put much weight on my ankle during that time and when I went to get out I almost fell. Turns out that during that 10ish minutes my ankle swelled even more and now I was unable to put any weight on it. Then the tears returned. I was so upset. Not only because my ankle hurt and I couldn't walk on it but because this would set me back in my training and I didn't know how long that setback would be.

I usually hate seeing pictures of injuries and such, but I figured I show those of you that like to see those kinds of pictures ;)

The initial sprain

A few days later, now the swelling was in the whole foot and up the leg.

This is several weeks later, swelling gone down,
but bruising in the toes and ankle.

I ended up going to urgent care. My family was worried that I might have broken something. Thankfully, that came out to be a negative. I had just sprained it really bad. I ended up having to be on crutches for about 3-4 days. From there I slowly started to put some weight on it. At this point, I wasn't able to workout at all. After about a week I was finally able to swim but couldn't kick much. My training eventually became a swim intensive block. Most of these swims were at foster lake so I wouldn't have to worry about pushing off the wall. Open water swimming is a bit difficult to get in some good speed workouts, but I did get plenty of open water/endurance work. A week after that I was able to add in some stationary biking. Finally, the week before Pacific Crest I was able to get in some more consistent workouts but was still unable to run much. The week leading into the race I was finally able to run without having to stop and I got in about 3 runs, none being more than 30 minutes.


I usually don't like to race unless I know I'm in good shape and can be a contender for overall female winner, but I needed to get in a race before Colorado to check where my fitness was and to get another race under my belt since it'd been awhile since Wildflower, which was the first weekend in May! Here is how the race unfolded...

Gettin' my race face on!

The morning of the race was perfect weather. Sunny, about 65 degrees, barely any wind and the water was perfectly flat. I was in the second wave and it was an in water start. The swim course was two loops. This is the second time I've done a swim with loops and I actually didn't mind it since I didn't run into any of the later waves. The first loop took me awhile to get my rhythm but once I was starting the second loop I finally got a little more relaxed and consistent in my stroke. I'm not sure how my placing was when I exited the water but my swim didn't feel like it was super fast.

Swim start

First transition went pretty smooth. I was a little nervous on how the transitions were going to play out since they were at two different locations. The first one was at the lake. Here you had to put your wetsuit and anything else you had at that transition in a bag that had your race number on it. The race volunteers/officials would gather all the athletes bags so you could pick it up after the race at the second transition area.

The bike course was a one way from the lake to the second transition, which was at a middle school near the Sunriver Village. There were a few rolling hills but it was mostly flat. Since I felt that I didn't have a very good swim I tried to make up for it on the bike. I passed quite a few people, both female and male. There were other racers on the course since this event also had a duathlon, bike race and I believe a few others. There were so many racers on the course that it gets difficult to tell which ones are in your race or not, but I'm pretty sure I passed some that got ahead of me in the swim. I was so uptight for this race that a few muscles in my back started to cramp up. By the time I got to transition they subsided. Second transition also went pretty smooth. By this time, it was starting to get pretty hot.

Almost to transition 2

Now it was time for the run, which is what I always look forward to since this was my sport for so long and I am a strong runner. However, at this race I did not feel strong. My legs just wouldn't move like I wanted them to and I felt exhausted through the whole 10k. It took a lot of mental toughness to get me to the finish line. All I wanted to do was stop. I would look forward to each aid station and that helped get me through by pushing myself to get to each one also since I was feeling very dehydrated. Finally, I came to the 5 mile mark. I had only one more mile to go! But that last mile felt like it took forever!!! I was so glad to be done.

Final stretch of the run! Yay!

Even though this race did not go how I wanted it to I still did well after coming off an injury. Also, I was very grateful that my ankle didn't hurt at all during the race. It still has some swelling but after putting it through the race it is definitely getting stronger and I shouldn't have to worry about it too much longer.

Done!

I ended up finishing 5th overall and was 1st in my age group according to how they did the awards. But in actuality, the first place female was in my age group. So I would have been 2nd. Now that I finished this race I knew what I needed to work on to finish out the season strong.