Black Diamond Race Report

Last weekend, I completed my first Olympic distance triathlon. All summer long, I had hoped to complete this distance, but I still had some knee tendinitis and I wasn't sure if this would happen. What my injury didn't realize was that I was much more persistent than it was. A friend wrote this quote...

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

PRE-RACE MEAL:
Bowl of Special K with soy milk and 1 cup of coffee.

DRUGS: 1 all day Aleve

SWIM: 1.5 km
The Tri-It, Sprint, Relay and Olympic distances were all on the same day and we all went out in 4 different waves. The swim course was littered with 7 large white triangular buoys. If you were doing the Olympic, you had to loop around the outer buoys twice, if you were doing the Sprint, you had to loop around the inner buoys, finally if you were doing the Tri-it, you had to loop around the guy in the green kayak. Confused? Well many people went off course, luckily I did a decent job sighting. This swim took me 40 mins.

BIKE: 40 km
This did not go too well. When I came back to transition, there were not very many bikes left. It was a little surreal. The swim had left me really thirsty and I tried to drink as much as I could in T1. While biking, I noticed that I had a lot of difficulty, then I realized that I forgot to adjust my bike seat - it was too low. My ankles were bent weird on the downstroke and felt really awkward. The course was quite nice actually. On a couple occasions I almost swerved into the ditch while drinking. This bike took me 90 minutes.

RUN: 10 km
This was the moment of truth. The most I had ever run was 2 loops around Green Lake. I had never run this distance in my life but knew I could do it today if my knees would let me. I had decided to wear my Brookes Ariels as they have the highest level of motion control to fight pronation, unfortunately they are much heavier than my Mizunos. Most of the run course was on road. About half a mile of that was on this dirt road with huge rocks the size of my fist. Many people twisted their ankle there. The last 1.4 miles of the run was all trail. I pretty much ran the entire thing except to get water and on the really steep hills at the end. This run took me 1h 08 mins. My knees felt tight around mile 4 and I had to march on the spot every 5 minutes to loosen them up.

POST-RACE:
I was so relieved to see the finish line! Woohoo, I did it! When I stopped running - this sensation of fatigue really hit me, also both my ankles were really sore. I was limping. So I think it was my low bike seat had jammed my ankles too much and that was the cause of my pain. Luckily, after seeing the PT it doesn't look serious.

GREAT FIRST SEASON
When I looked at my time after the race and saw that I took 3 hours 26 minutes I felt a little disappointed at how slow I was. The thought did come across my mind that maybe I should have worked harder. But then again, my #1 priority was taking care of my knees and they didn't hurt after the race - phew! Lastly, I really enjoy the race and had a lot of fun out there. I found this distance to be much more challenging than the sprints.

Lots of records in this race for me:
- Longest open water swim ever
- Longest run ever
- Most physically challenging thing I have ever done - ever!

What an ending to my first season! Now I get to start training for Lake Stevens :)