2014 Title 9 Women Only Sprint Triathlon, Hopkington MA

This past Sunday, I participated in the Title 9 Women Only Sprint Triathlon in Hopkington, MA.  It's a .25 mile swim, 10 mile bike and 3.1 mile run.  I trained by doing each activity individually but only twice did I do some running after biking.  And never once did I practice swimming in open water.  I trained only in the pool.  The course was MUCH more challenging than I expected.  For some reason, because it was a women-only event and there were going to be a lot of "newbies," I had assumed it would be easy.  Wrong wrong wrong.  The bike didn't have a single flat spot.  Thank god the last 1 mile of the run was flat.  My overall time was 1:21:25.  Here's the break-down:

Overall placement:
Swim:  26/610; 3/92 in 40-44 year old division
Bike:  122/610; 26/92 in 40-44 year old division
Run:  85/610: 16/92 in 40-44 year old division

My swim was decent but I thought it could have used improvement.  For one, I needed to actually swim in the 2 weeks prior to the triathlon.  My local pool closed during these 2 weeks and despite good intentions to visit another pool, I didn't happen.  And now my back is really sore!  Also, I needed to sight my swim pathway more often.  I kept swimming towards shore instead of swimming in a straight line and once almost ran smack into a huge orange buoy.  When I do another triathlon next year, I will need to practice some open water swimming.  I will also plan to buy a swimming wetsuit so that I can do some ocean swims.

I felt good on the bike, despite the hills.  I averaged 15.0 mph, which I thought was pretty good given the challenging course.  That being said, it was clearly the worst of my 3 legs of the race.  I definitely held back a bit knowing that I had to get through the run.  I think I was at 90% instead of 100%.  As I do more triathlons, I will hopefully get a better sense of how to pace myself.

I was really proud of my run.  I averaged an 8:26 min/mile pace which is REALLY fast for me.  When training, my fastest average was roughly 8:45 min/mile pace and usually it was slower than that.  I didn't have any more to give on the run and so I know I gave it 100%.

I can't wait to sign up for some more races next year.  I found out that my neighbor also is interested in doing them and so I'll have to coordinate with her.  I plan on doing an Olympic distance triathlon next season (.9 mile swim, 25 mile bike and 6.1 mile run), which will require more dedicated training.  And I need to figure out how to get faster on the bike.

Ian's First Day of Kindergarten!

Ian had his first real day of kindergarten today.  He was so proud of himself and I was so proud of him!  While he has been in "school" for almost his entire life, this is the first time that he was out of the daycare environment.  As usual, I didn't have to worry about his transition to kindergarten.  He has always been happy to make upward changes (ever since he was in the mobile infant room at daycare, banging on the glass door because he wanted to get into the adjoining toddler room).

His schedule is a bit nuts since public school kindergarten in our town is only a 1/2 day.  So he is going to public school kindergarten every morning during the week.  Then every day except for Wednesday, KinderCare picks him up and he does their afternoon kindergarten program and after school program.  On Wednesday, he'll be going to our local temple for their afternoon kindergarten program and then religious school. What is nice about that is that he's getting his "Sunday school" experience during the week so we don't have to try and force yet another activity into the weekend.  If he really likes the temple experience, we might send him twice a week instead of once a week.

I'm still sort of amazed, shocked and awed that my first baby is already in kindergarten!  This kid is going to knock their socks off - he's already reading complex sentences and words without much effort.