Preseason

Preseason

My season got off to a rocky start. I originally planned to race a draft legal triathlon in Clermont, FL in early March. As race day approached, my nagging injury wasn’t going away, so I ultimately decided to not spend the time or money to go to Florida to race. My next race was going to be the 5150 Kansas in Lawrence on May 19th. My dad and I drove over there the morning of the race since it’s only about a 1 hour drive from my house. When we got there, it was just starting to rain. After racking my bike and setting everything up, I tried to find some dry land to hang out for a while. Long story short, the race got delayed, and then it got changed to a Duathlon. After standing in soaking wet clothes for over an hour, I was mentally not ready to race anymore. I was frustrated, cold, and wet and just wanted to go home. So instead of risking anything happening on the bike, I decided to head home. To this day, I still don’t know why I decided not to race. I’ve never backed out of a race, especially if I’ve already taken the time to drive to the venue. I still believe that there was a good reason for me not to race that day, I just don’t know what that reason is.

It’s now June and I have yet to race this season. My first ever Ironman 70.3 was going to be my first race of the season. I’ve only completed one Olympic distance race before and now I was going to tackle Ironman 70.3 Kansas. I was looking forward to this race all winter and spring. Leading up to the race, I was putting in quality brick sessions on the weekends and was extremely excited to see what I could do on race day. Prior to this race, I had yet to swim 1.2 miles in a race (1500 was the farthest to date), I had yet to race a 56 mile bike (60-63 mile solo rides on the weekend was my longest bike) and I had never run a half marathon before which is somewhat surprising since I ran in college. I’ve completed several long runs farther than 13.1, and with my running background I was least nervous about the run portion. In fact, I was really excited about the run portion because I think the longer run distance will only help me. I joined the Jewish Community Center and started swimming in their masters program last November. I could already tell that my swim had improved a lot so I was not worried about swimming five or so minutes longer in my 70.3. The bike was going to be the big mystery on race day.