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February 24, 2008

UC Irvine backwards sprint (1st WCCTC race of season)



This was a rough one. For some explained and some unexplained reasons.
Half of my team was staying with the family of my teammate Lauren about 15 minutes away, and the rest of us were dispersed throughout the apartments of the generous UCI team's grad students. They were hosting the race and were up until the early hours of the morning and out at the race site again before I woke up.
My plan was to get to the race site with plenty of time to do a full warm up, including riding and running. This was going to be a good opportunity since I wasn't going to have to worry about driving or getting other people there.

I woke up low and clammy at 2:00am; I was 42. I ate about 45gs worth of juicy juice and cliff bar, and went back to sleep. I woke up to my alarm at 5:20 in the 200's. (Too much correction.)

I ate the rest of my Cliff Bar for breakfast and drank some water. I covered it with only 25%. I literally walked out the door and rode to transition in 3 minutes. When I got back from riding a loop of the bike course I was 280ish, and I fought this unit by unit until the start. (I didn't record BG's soon enough post race, so I don't have the exact readings.)

I had a really good warm up as planned; I rode one loop of the bike course and ran about 30 minutes and did strides.

My run was horrible.
In T1 I was 250, so I took 0.5 units before getting on the bike.

I was already not feeling great and wouldn't have been happy about my ride regardless, but I had some mechanical issues on the bike. There were about 12 180 degree turns on the bike course and the sharpest was at the base of a pretty steep hill. I was having fun with these turns, calling out 'on your left' as I rode hard in and out of them. But my first time through the one at the base of the hill I shifted up and my chain did its thing where it sits between the two chain rings and spins with no resistance. I had to stop to get it down. I quickly discovered my rear derailer cable had snapped in the process of my frantic shifting to set the chain right. So I stood up all the hills for the next 2/3 of the race. I've been feeling that over the last few days!

For the first time I took my feet out of my shoes on the bike, it was really nice to run to transition without my shoes.
The swim was only 250, a snake pattern through their 25 meter pool. I passed a few guys, but unfortunately there were no girls close enough to catch.

I was 10th.
I need to learn how to run again.

Special thanks to Mum,Dad, Alison,Katie,Jon,Tania,Magali and Tammy for coming to watch and cheer. Some of you got a good show at the base of the hill :P

Photos by Dean Ryan

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