The practice tri did not kill me...

But, jeez, it sure tried! What a great exercise we had on Saturday... I don't know how women manage their first Danskin without a dry run.

Our training group met up with the 5 other Austin groups out at Decker Lake (where the real thing will be a week from today!!!) with all of our gear that we had planned for race day. The coaches set up bike racks and we were shown how little space we would have for our transition space. We set up our gear in nice little bike/run piles and then walked through changing out of our swim gear and into our bike gear then out of the bike gear and into the run gear. Then everyone completely reorganized their spaces (almost all of us first had our bike/run shirts folded neatly on our towel, so when running up, we all put our helmets on first... Doh! The reorg included folding the shirt up in the helmet so you wouldn't forget to put it on first).

Then we did a mini tri. We jumped in the lake by age group and swam about 200 meters or so, then (I at least) slowly staggered up the hill (some ran) to transition and did a reasonably non-stupid job of getting into my bike gear. We rode a short loop of maybe a mile or so, then came back to transition to get into running gear. For me the trickiest on and off is the damn camelbak, but I haven't learned how to pull a water bottle out while riding the bike, so I need it. So then we (crawled?) sort of jog-walked a third of a mile or so along the hillside.

While it didn't kill me, I also didn't do it twice (yep, some did). I feel a little better about race day, bearings-wise. Plus, it helped to keep hearing that the chaos factor would be high since hundreds of women would be showing up having never done the race before and having no idea where to go at each leg. That is something that would have royally pissed me off if it had been a surprise. Now I know to let go of that frustration ahead of time.

Anyway. Thank you all for your patience through this madness. I will actually be knitting on the shell tonight while watching some motogp action with my most fantastic boyfriend. Pictures after I get back from Atlanta on Wednesday night.

Training:
Sat - MINI TRI see above!
Sun - Swim/Bike brick. We are not supposed to do the race distances anymore (this is the "taper week") This means I will be doing the race having NEVER biked 12 whole miles. I'm sure it will be fine.... (She said, forebodingly.) Anyway, I did 460m in open water (no backstroke for the first 230, YEAH!). Managed the first 230 in 6:27 mins and the whole thing in 13:44. My trick this time was to swim as slow as I could stand. The coaches say this makes you faster, and they are totally right! Then I did neighborhood biking of 5:24 miles in 27:15 mins. Average speed was low (11.57 mph) but my top speed was over 26 mph! This stuff is becoming more and more fun (in a weird, new way).