Buffalo Spring Lake Race Report-Olivia

Waiting on the beach to start the Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake Triathlon I found myself reviewing all of the days I got up early to train, all the hard runs I had done, and the long bike rides I really did do. I had to do that to remind myself that I was trained for this distance. When the horn sounded to start my wave I stopped all that. It was time to get down to the task at hand. As I made my way through the first half of the swim I felt comfortable in the water, and was pleased to be swimming in what was a relatively straight line. Rounding the final turn I was starting to get warm in my full sleeved wetsuit but continued in the smooth rhythm I’d established, passing swim caps from the prior waves, and ultimately seeing the shoreline and the wading volunteers who were helping racers safely out of the water. I was grateful for three of those volunteers for helping to pull my wetsuit off, I’ve been struggling with that lately and dreaded the idea of a three minute transition trying to get that thing off.

As planned, I took it easy directly out of transition so as to take on the first 7.9% grade hill without sending my heart rate into zone 4 where I’m sure I’d struggle to get it back down. I knew that the seven total climbs over the 56 mile course were going to take some planning and I was determined to manage them wisely. As I neared transition and the final 8.9% grade climb I realized that I had put down an under 3 hour bike time, a PR for me. That was a great feeling to take with me as I started the run.

By mile three in the run, though, I realized that I hadn’t planned as well for that final leg of the race as I had for the bike. I wasn’t sure how hard to push and where or how conservatively I should be going and where. My heart rate was in zone 4 for the whole run, and on some of the hills neared 5. I kept thinking I needed to bring that down or I’d really blow up. That thinking probably caused me to err on the conservative side. I ended up with a 2 hour half marathon, which was disappointing after my bike split.

My final time was seven minutes better than my last half iron distance race from last year. I was pleased to have finished 6^th in my age group and to have been offered a slot to the 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater, FL, which I declined. This was a challenging event which I was glad to have had the chance to race, and it proved to be a great start to my longer distance racing for the 2007 season!