Race Report: Luna Chix Triathlon

A sprint triathlon! Uh-huh, that's right.  My first shorty in about four years.  I never realized that I had become such a distance freak.  But when the opportunity to race an all-women's sprint triathlon close to home, I couldn't resist.

The race was held at Blue Lake, scene of the Blue Lake Triathlon (I wonder where they got the name...) But, obviously, was only half the course, since that one was an Olympic distance.  And of course, every competitor was a woman.

I got to the race slightly behind schedule (having misjudged the drive from Corvallis to Portland again), and had to hurry to get everything set-up before my wave start.  But, 35 minutes, as it turns out, was plenty of time to get my registration packet, rack my bike with the duathletes (my rack was full and I didn't feel like asking anybody to move... had a bad experience with that one time as you may recall), goo and loo (a.k.a. apply gooey lube to my saddle, shoes, and body, and go to the bathroom), and even get a warm-up in the water before they called up my wave. I was in wave number 4 with all the 20-29 yr. olds.

Being in wave #4 means that three waves are ahead of you.  If you fixated on the obviousness of this statement and failed to take in the subtleties that it implies, I will explain.  That means that approximately 200 women were churning the water on the course before I came along.  So, within two minutes, I was careening through pink caps, narrowly missed a kick in the head, but generally avoided swimming over any newbie swimmers (I didn't want anybody to come out of the water and say "I'm never doing this again.  I was nearly drowned in the swim.").  I also looked a round a few times and was astonished to see swimmers spread out over a 100 yds in either direction, clearly not swimming in anything resembling a straight line (I could so help with this).  At one point I had to put my head up and do some breaststroke to redirect around a clump of pink and green caps swimming and chatting away.  As I reassumed my freestyle I heard "go blue cap".  That's my name, don't wear it out.

The run out of the water and transition to biking went like I have done this a hundred times...probably have between racing and practice.  Yup, I practice transitions quite a bit.

The bike was flat and fast with a small lump (I shall not call it a hill as I did not get out of my big chain ring).  I really enjoyed rolling out on the out and back course.  Really gave me a chance to test my top-end speed.  On the way back in, I got to watch the whole triathlon unfold behind me and I tried to give everybody I passed a good smile.

Transition again, just concentrating on getting everything moving.  There is always one thing in every triathlon that I could have done better, and a sprint tri is no exception.  I kept dropping my hat as I ran out of transition.  I dropped it three times!  I kept thinking that I look like a squirrel dragging a nut back to its tree.  Oh well, I had it in place by the time I ran past Erika and Bill and was able to give Erika a big High-five-o on the way out of the park.

5K... probably a little long, but not by much.  I didn't even bother looking at my splits or my watch.  I passed the last woman in front of me just past the turnaround and it was a nice cruise to the finish.  I even got in a decent cartwheel across the line, flipping the butterfly on my Splish suit head over tail.

And then my favorite part, my cool down back along the run course where I cheered and encouraged the other racers.  My favorite cheer today "smile like someone is taking your picture!"  It got some flashes of pearly white.