For once I'd really like a triathlon to be boring. No surprises, just race hard and go home with a tan. Oh well, this is triathlon after all and things will probably never go on 100 percent the way you expected. This is my first race back after having a foot injury that took five weeks to heal. I've also switched coaches mid season and am now working with Justin Trolle (Vanguard Endurance) and its been going well. We have changed my biking position and I have a good feeling it will help with my bike split and having less pain on the bike. I've had this annoying adductor cramp/pain every time I race and haven't been able to push it as hard as I feel I can on the bike all year. So I have high hopes for this race. The pro start time was 11:30, so a little later in the day and after all of the age groupers.
Race day morning I wake up and have a horrible crink in my neck, a stinger. This is basically one of my worst nightmares come true. I have problems with this off and on, but usually only get it once or twice a year. It's an impingement of a nerve between the clavicle and you can't move your head at all to one side (my left this time) or to look up. Interestingly this is a common football injury, they get it from the impact of a linebacker charging into their shoulder/neck. Usually when I get this injury I don't go near the water because it's far too painful. Not an option today, I'm racing whether its painful or not. I accepted the fact that the swim is most likely going to be slower than I want, but no reason to be distressed. There are two other elements to triathlon and I can race those as hard as I can and compare my times to the rest of the athletes.
I head down to the race start and set up and start doing my warmups. My neck was even incredibly painful just on my warmup run, this was a bit stressful to me but surely it will loosen up a little bit...It's time to start heading down to the swim start and getting a good 10 min warmup swim in today is incredibly important. The race organizers have warned us that its going to rain but will only last about 30 minutes and pass through. During my warmup swim I had a really hard time trying to turn my head to breathe which prompted a lot of panic. It's not a calming effect to have your head face down in water and no good way to get air. So again I accepted the fact that this is going to hurt like hell and you just gotta do it. No excuses. Gun goes off and I swim as hard as I can, but am already behind a bit before the first buoy. I'm trying hard to not let them get too far ahead of me, thankfully there are two other girls still behind me.
Coming out of the water, it is raining. I had a pretty good bike even though it was down pouring the entire time. I didn't have ANY adductor pain and was very excited about that. I guess alot of people were crashing on the corners because they were very adament about slowing down and being safe. No crashes for me today. Don't need to add that to my list of injuries.
Onto the run, I caught one girl but suffered through the rest of the run. I'm not feeling the strongest on this element since I haven't gotten much run training due to my foot injury but still had a competitive time in relation the the rest of the pros and was right in the mix. I finished 14th today, but I'm confident that one of these days all elements will come together on race day.
