Race for a Reason/Athletes in Action Sprint Triathlon Race Recap

First of all, yesterday morning was a beautiful day for a race!  The sun was shining bright, the sky was clear, and many of the budding trees in Athens still have their beautiful pink and white flowers.
 
The swim was in the OU Aquatic Center pool.  I started towards the back like usual: I'm not the fastest swimmer and I hate getting passed.  There was a small group of us from a group I've been training with and we enjoyed chatting and cheering on our faster friends as they hopped out of the pool and ran to transition.  The start of the swim was just jumping in, one at a time  The swim was 500 meters and I felt pretty good, especially considering the fact that I haven't been to the pool nearly enough lately.  And I'm not going to lie: I really appreciate races with a pool swim sometimes.  It's so much less intimidating than open water swimming. 

The bike was a very hilly 15 miles.  I felt ok with it: didn't feel like my best or my worst.  The scenery was gorgeous and there were some very friendly spectators on the way. The only problem was having to stop for a car by an intersection (at a point when I was cruising along at a great speed-go figure).  This jerk passed me and then stopped right in my way waiting to get unto her street.  She was over to the right far enough that I couldn't get by.  Grr.  I remember yelling, "Are you kidding me?!"  Luckily it wasn't too long, but still enough to throw me off for a little bit and halt my forward progress for a minute (every second counts during a race).  Other than that incident and a little twinge of hip pain, the bike split was not bad.  The section with the gently rolling hills past a bunch of freshly blooming trees was my favorite part of the whole race.

When I got to the run, I was booking it!  I zipped passed person after person, weaving through the groups of walkers and other runners.  That was my only real issue with the race by the way: the 5k for the triathlon was the same course as the regular 5k.  Many of us were still doing the triathlon and had to deal with all the people in the way.  I felt really good about my time on the run (I think it took me about 22 minutes, but I could have done even better without having to go around so many people).

The finish was pretty cool.  We ran off the bike path accross a grassy field, where the 'fitness fest' was, greeted by the excited crowd.  As I crossed, I heard a couple people yelling my name really loud.  That's the beauty of smaller races like those in Athens: it's super easy to find people you know.

I'm not sure what my finishing time was and am looking forward to seeing the results.  This race was an overall good one, with a lot of the registration fee going towards charity as well, and I hope it fits in my race schedule next year.

**Edit: The results have been posted (only 2 days later: not bad at all).  I finished in 1:49:06, meeting my goal of under 2 hours, and came in 4th place (out of 8) in my division, collegiate women.