Island Lake triathlon RR (2nd tri)

It went pretty well. Again not 100% well, but I am improving and that's important.
My finish time was 2:21.36. Which is awesome because it is 6 minute improvement. This race is exactly the same race as that other one I did because it is organized by the same organisation, on the same course. Therefore I can easily compare times/splits.


Today: 29:03 1:43 1:08:44 0:50 41:17 2:21:36
last time: 29:44 2:25 1:11:48 0:48 42:45 2:27:28

Swim: Again, did not go as well as planned. BUT. I have learnt a new skill.
Water temperature yesterday was 82, it rained last night and it was 77 this morning thus they made it wetsuit legal. Not many people were prepared for that, therefore there were maybe only 4 women in wetsuits in the swim.
The gun went off and I found myself in the secodn place after about 200m. It meant either that I was in trouble and was going to die soon or that we had no speedy swimmers like last time. Later is right, because I came out of water in the second place even with that very lousy time.
After the start I was shoulder to shoulder with one gal who soon decided to drop back and draft off me. But she soon realized that I was just blaffing first 100m and that I was not really that fast. Plus I was still kind of zig-zagging. So she decided to pass me, which gave me a chance to try drafting off her. I have never drafted off anyone and was not sure how I was supposed to do it. So I just followed her bubbles. It was pretty sweet because she was going straight line, perfect. I did not have to sight at all, except for when I lost bubbles (I was still kind of zig-zagging) and had to look up to locate her.
We were moving at decent clip for the first loop but then she started to fade. But I made the decision to stay with her because why waste my precious energy if I can just tag along and I would have probably not swam that much faster anyway.
Unfortunately for her, she did not run to transition, she just walked. So I beat her. Not my fault, she should have run.
So swim was not that great, but I improved by a little. And I practised drafting:)

T1: Major improvement. I located the exit correctly and I striped the wetsuit off pretty fast. Although still quite a lot of work to do.

Bike: I improved by 3 min from the last time. Which is good on 40k, right? It was kind of painful from time to time. Man, I wish I had a bike computer. I suck at going at perceived effort (just look at my swim time) because I think that I could have gone faster! Nobody passed me on a bike. Last time bunch of men passed me but not this time. But also I did not pass that many people. Probably because last time there were more than 130 people doing Oly distance whereas today only 91.
By the end of the first loop I saw a men in front of me moving at decent clip and I made it my mission to pass him in next few minutes. And I did. And then he passed me back. We were going back and forth like this for a few kilometers but then he droped back. He was from the club by the way, although I did not know him, I knew only because he was wearing a club jersey. (I do not wear club jersey because it is expensive, 80 bucks from tri shorts and top. Forget that.)
I was also checking on the girl I swam with. She was not far behind but I was getting time on her, which was my mission numero uno.
I ate only one gel and did not drink that much water because I was just working hard and you cannot eat/drink and breath at the same time....
And btw, my flying mount was PERFECT. Much better than any of my practice ones. Flawless. Which mostly means that I have not wiped out.

T2: Not too bad although I start running with my bike helmet on so had to go back a few steps to get rid of it:)

Run: Hm, hm, hm. I improved, but I did not push it at all. I just pluged along because I kind of suspected that I was the first female by that point. Good thing is that I ran 6:40 pace comfortably, with the similar effort I ran 6:55 pace in May. My running is there but it just hurts and I am not used to hurting for that long. I need to do some workouts that get me out of my comfort zone so I practise hurting (but do not be too hard PPC please:)) and then I hopefully can improve my run split on this. I am not pleased with my run. But it is all my fault, I should have pushed it and made it hurt.
I did not take a gel. Again, hard to eat when you breath.

I again won wine and running shoes. Plus a gift certificate to a bike store because I was from the furthest distance (ok, this is not grammatically correct and it does not make much sense but I do not know how to write it). When the announcer asked who came from the furthest one guy from San Diego immediatelly jumped up because he was sure he would get that one. Sorry dude, I am from Slovakia.

I am happy about the major improvement, 6min is a lot, but there is still a lot of improvement to be made. Especially on a swim. And getting mentally tougher to push the run.

My legs hurt.