WEEKEND UPDATE--Indoor Tri, 2-17-08.

Another one done. This event is more relaxed than the indoor tri in January. The format is somewhat different, and after the initial first tri of the year, the second one goes easier because you know where you have to improve on your training.

(Here we are at the beginning of the swim, and no, I hadn't been drinking before!)

Jan and I did this last year as well, and this is Jan's third year doing it. The location is about 40 miles south of Grand Rapids, which was lucky yesterday, due to more weather "issues." The forecast for days had called for another winter storm to move in Saturday night/Sunday morning, but by Saturday, they were calling for freezing rain instead! Either way, it was going to be a harrowing drive.

Naturally, because of this, I woke up every hour on the hour Saturday night/Sunday morning worrying about the weather. Not so much the weather, but Jan's driving in the weather. LOL! I'm not claiming to be the best driver in the world, and anyone who knows me knows I hate driving in bad weather, but I hate riding with someone else even more, especially when that someone tailgates going 75-80 mph! However, she insisted on driving, because she felt that her car, a Jeep, would do better in bad weather. Whatever! I think it is more of a control thing actually. LOL!

So I was very relieved when it was finally time to get up and I found out the freezing rain was north of town, but south of town it was only raining. But it was pouring! By the time I left the house to meet up with Jan, there were many intersections and sections of the highway flooded over, mainly because with all the recent snows drainage was a problem. The ride to the tri then was mainly dodging flooded out lanes of the highway and trying not to get in a situation where we would hydroplane. There were several cars that had spun off into the median, and I was hoping we wouldn't become one of them.

We made it about a half hour from our starting time. The facility was a health and fitness center connected with a hospital in the area. It is a very nice facility, with a 6 lane pool, warm pool for those not wanting to do laps, and an area sectioned off for handicap access. There was already a heat in progress when we arrived, some of the big guns in local triathlon. They probably had to go out and run another 10 miles after or something!

The format for this tri is swim 20 minutes, bike 20 minutes, run on a treadmill for 20 minutes. Its one time I am glad I spend so much time on the treadmill. We had 2 other women besides Jan and me in our group, and at the last minute an older guy got thrown into the mix. It was hard to judge the ages of the other women, but I figured they probably were in our age group, since they have 10 year age groups.

I seem to do better in all events with just that added 5 minutes. The swim started out well, even with the distraction of the older guy floundering in the lane next to me. He couldn't swim at all, but nothing in the event information says you have to do any particular stroke. He and the two other women side stroked, back stroked, dog paddled, etc. Twenty minutes is a long time for a lot of people to be in the water, especially when they aren't swimmers. Somewhere around the 9 or 10 minute mark, I started getting that nauseaus feeling I had for a few months last summer. I don't know what causes it, and hope it isn't motion related, but it finally went away in the final minutes. I had really hoped to do 40 laps, but ended up with 38 1/2, and felt I did okay. That was still over 1/2 mile, and I was hoping to do at least that.

The bike portion is on Life Cycles, which for the most part are okay. Its always a trial and error on any bike until you get your rhythm down anyway, so I probably could have pushed it harder, but the level I was at (10 out of 20) put me at around 18.1-19.1 mph and 82-85 cadence, so I knew I was putting in a good effort. I ended up with 6.02 miles and again was hoping to get at least 6.

The run was on nice treadmills, overlooking the pool. We could see the last heat in the water, so it was nice to have something to look at instead of just watching the seconds ticking away. They walked us through the start-up process and then we could start anytime we were ready. Very laid back. I immediately started at a 10 min. mile. I decided not to play around with the speed in the beginning minutes like I did in training, and figured I would hang on as long as I could before bumping up the speed further. This actually proved to be a challenging but do-able pace, and I continued on with this until the last 5 minutes, where I then went up in speed for the next 3 minutes before going to a 9:13 pace in the final 2 minutes. There was a few minutes of distraction from the older guy again, when he hit his stop button and his treadmill completely stopped. Someone finally got him started up again, giving him 10 additional minutes, but it was a little aggravating having someone standing practically on top of me while they got him up and running again, and I had to laugh when he said he was "way over a mile" at 10 minutes. I highly doubt it! He wasn't running fast enough to be over a mile in 10 minutes, but if that was his fantasy, who was I to burst his bubble? LOL! I ended up with a little over 2 miles in 20 minutes, and I was hoping for 2.

After the event, they offered free massages. That made the $40 entry fee well worthwhile! They were only supposed to be 10 minute massages, but I think mine was actually 20 minutes. The massage therapist guy was very thorough in stretches, and worked extra long on my neck and shoulder, releasing a muscle that had tightened up preventing me from turning my neck freely (a lingering side effect of the accident).

We then showered and went to check out results. They weren't complete yet, but we did see most of the women's results and out of 10 women in the AG, Jan was 4th and I was 5th. I was happy enough with that.

And the weather had actually cleared up quite a bit for our ride home, so I could finally relax.