UCSB 2008

This past weekend was all about Triathlon for some of my teammates and I. Richard and I got up in the dark to get up to Oceanside to watch many of our friends and teammates race the Oceanside 70.3 Half Ironman. After the race we left from Chris' house in Oceanside and drove to Ventura where 8 of us stayed at my family's house. Richard and I left Chris to rest is weary legs and went on a short run around the orchards before dinner. We had a BBQ when the second car coming from San Diego arrived. The next morning it was our turn to race.

I feel okay about this race, but partly because the race I'm comparing it to is Cal Poly last weekend.

I had a good swim coming out of the water 6th or so. My bike was mediocre. I was running in my new Zoot shoes, that I bought for a little run inspiration. (I'm not proud of spending that much money on a shoe.) I felt very good about the run split for a short time, until we figured out that the course was very short, and I saw how fast other people had run.

I have very few BG details for this race. But I got into T1 and wasn't able to test, getting "Err 2" AGAIN! Then, to be honest I forgot to put my pump on in T1, making the decision not to go back and get it since it was a sprint distance race. I wouldn't have bolused anyway, but not having the basal rate going on the bike led to my BG of 230 heading into the run. I bolused 1 unit when I put my pump on in T2, however boluses take time to have an effect and the run was only 3 miles. If I had the pump on from T1 on, there may have been more insulin on board for the end of the bike, and run. But I did leave the race encouraged that maybe I was learning to run off the bike again since it didn't feel like I was running at 230, I felt better than I would have expected.

I was 6th overall, and we won the collegiate women's race (Amanda and Darlene going 1,2) and were 2nd as a team with men and women combined.
Photos by Chris Burnham

Let's learn from our history...

I've had a couple rough weeks of training, especially running.
I had an epiphany and am embarrassed it took me so long to figure this out. I had stopped eating before practice like I used to, because I didn't feel like I needed to hunger-wise, and I could do without the calories. But the thing is if I don't eat something then I don't take any bolus insulin and the only insulin in my system in the morning is the little bit of basal rate that goes through the night. I think I was starting to feel drained because of the accumulation of days running without enough insulin 'on board.' Now I have had two good practices and the road race, after eating something and taking a bolus.
(Tuesday/Sat/Sunday were good, and Thursday was particularly bad because I woke up with a fasting of 250, and although it was down by the time we were doing intervals there were still lasting effects of being high over night.)

Pendleton Bulldog Road Race

Fasting: 111
Breakfast:75g CHO, 4 units (large piece of sourdough toast, half peanut butter, half honey, coffee with milk and 2 tbs sugar)
then sipped Cytomax on the way up to the race; another 20g CHO (no coverage)

After my race at UCI, Daniel recommended that I drink coffee before races. Tammy does before her cycling races now, so I gave it a try here.

Pre warm up:198
Starting line:194
Finish: 159

I didn't take any correction before warm up, because I thought the 4 units on board might cause a big drop. I prepared for this and had a Juicy Juice box and fruit snacks in my jersey for warm up. But I ditched these along the fence at the start when I was 194 post-warm up.

I was feeling really good. I definitely think the coffee helped.
My goal for the race was to stay with the main pack over the hill that marked about half way. I knew I could tuck in on the downhills, and ride with people on the flats IF I could stay close enough over the climb. I was ready to ride as hard as possible going up, hoping that my quads would cooperate.


The race started a little faster than we thought it would. It wasn't hard to stay with the pack in terms of heart rate, but we had to pay attention and not let people get too far ahead. There was a lot of accelerating out of turns etc. I was having a blast drafting and cruising along and not working hard. Darlene, Lauren, Allison and I could talk if necessary, very different from time trialing.

Then at about mile 8 a woman crashed in front of me.
I had two people on my right, and three on my left (I think Darlene and Lauren were two of them) and I had nowhere to go but over. I attempted to jump her, but her bike had swung around and so I had about 10 ft of obstacle instead of just her body. I went down, pretty hard on my right side.

I got up and picked up my water bottle that had rolled part way across the street. I looked up and the pack was already pretty far away and I had only been down maybe 10 seconds. I was probably 30-40 seconds back when I started riding. *Insert choice exploitive here* Those seconds proved to be an eternity. I didn't know what chance I had to catch the pack with their drafting advantage. I rode the rest of the race like a Time Trial-not at all what I had gone there to do...

A few minutes before I fell we had seen Chris coming back the other way, and had cheered for him. Frank was in the next group and we yelled for him too. Then I fell...and a minute or two after I got back on I saw Richard coming back. There I was, riding by myself, only 8 miles into the race. I had a total ego-moment...after he cheered for me I said "I crashed!" Not wanting him to think I was riding as badly as it looked, I prayed he'd heard.
We all laughed about that afterward.

A big thank you to Chris for being there at the finish.

Darlene was 3rd overall, Allison won her age group, Lauren was 2nd in our age group, I was 3rd, and Amanda Smith was 4th. Chris was 2nd in his age group, missing the top 3 overall by just 2 seconds, Frank 5th AG, Richard 6th AG.

I'm pretty sore today. I rode in drops at practice instead of aero because my forearm is pretty raw (even through armwarmers!) My neck muscles are pretty sore and my intercostal muscles too. But other than that I am alright and my bike seems to be too.

Photos by Jan Burnham