Next weekend I'll start off my first season as an elite triathlete with an Olympic race down in North Carolina. It'll be a smaller race at Belews Lake in Stokesdale, at the northern part of the state. I'm not sure who will show up to compete but there will be some fast athletes regardless of the size of the race. I already told my boyfriend what my goal was gonna be for the day.. to beat him! I've never beat him in a race before, but I've come close!
He's a pretty seasoned triathlete who's done a few ironman races and has been able to compete at Kona the last two years. We've been training together a decent amount over the last year and a half, so we've done a few of the same races since I met him at Penn State. My goal from the first race we were in together was to stay ahead of him for as long as I could. I love having that competitive drive and being able to race against someone you know. It makes the race fun.
We were starting to get really excited about the season this past weekend after watching the live feed from USAT collegiate nationals in Tempe, AZ. We watched some of our teammates from PSU finish Saturday afternoon as we were wrapping up day #2 of the USMS colonies zone meet at GMU....Which was a surprisingly good meet for me! I used to be a sprinter in college but I've been learning to train like a triathlete and slowly becoming a stronger distance swimmer..I swam a bunch of events throughout the weekend from the 1650, to the 50 fly. One event that I surprised myself in was the 200 free. I got a best time with a 1:57.6 which was about a second faster than what I swam last year at nationals in Indy. I also got down to a :57.5 in my fly, only about 1.5 seconds off my best from my junior year in college 4 years ago. It was awesome being able to pull off those times when I'm not tapering or training specifically for swimming anymore. I got best times in the 500 free and 200 fly too but I haven't swam those since I was in club swimming age group. I'm ready to be done with swim meets. This one was fun this past weekend since I could catch up with some friends from the BUMS (Binghamton University Masters Swimming) but I've been noticing I don't have that drive or adrenaline rush like I used to before my races. I have that feeling for triathlons now..
It was awesome hearing about our PSU teammates and how well they did at nationals in Tempe. I remember it last year pretty well when we went out for the race. It was my first race ever where I actually flew to compete. We spent a few days out there with our team, hanging out, training, and racing hard. It was beautiful and so different then State College. We were all ready to have a great weekend. It was my first race on Roxi, my tri bike. The girls started after the boys and were in the heat of the day as we were finishing, making it a tough way to finish the run. Even though my bike felt awesome, I learned that I needed to hydrate and maybe back off a little bit on it so my legs were more prepared for that hot run. It was my first time at a race that competitive, I was hoping to do better than I did but it was such a fun experience that I knew I couldn't dwell on my performance and make the rest of the afternoon bummy, so I just moved on right after cooling off, and immediately thought to myself, I'll just kick some butt at my next race..ready to rock and roll for my first race of 2014(: