Posts Tagged ‘Race Recap’

Dirty Spokes Trail Run Recap

Written on July 19th, 2010 by Megan
Categories: Run

Saturday morning was the 5K trail run that I have been a little worried about.  Not only have I never run on a trail, but I knew it was also really hilly in Northern Georgia.   But, depsite all the worries, the race was so much fun!  

We got to the race site early for packet pick up and took time to get geared up for the race.

The park had a beautiful nature center, so we took some time to walk around the property and stretch while waiting for the race to start.

There were about 200 participants.  The race director said the first 2.1 miles were uphill (!!), and then the rest was downhill for a total of 3.5 miles.

The race started with a loop in the parking lot to thin the crowds before hitting the trails.  

I was already tired from the hill in the parking lot before we even got to the trails!   I didn’t do an exact run/walk interval, but I took walking breaks while going up hill as needed.  I tried to run any time the trail was flat or downhill, and it seemed to work pretty well.

 Here were a few pictures from running on the trails.  It was so much fun to be out in nature, but it was such a different feeling than a road race.   It was strange staring at my feet the whole time because I had to watch for rocks in the path.

My finishing time was 44 minutes, with a course distance of 3.34 miles.

  • Mile 1: 14:13 minutes
  • Mile 2: 16:19 minutes
  • Mile 3: 14:06 minutes
  • Mile 3.0 – 3.3: 4:05 minutes (11:57 pace)

Happy to have completed our first trail race!

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What Defines a Good Race

Written on July 5th, 2010 by Megan
Categories: Run

I completed the Crystal River Sprint Triathlon on Saturday, with a final time of 1:43:52.   Some of you may be wondering if that is a good time or a bad time for a sprint triathlon.   I tend to look at a series of statistics after a race:

  • Did I beat my personal record for this distance?
  • Did I place in my age group?
  • Did I beat my husband?

Yesterday, the answer to all of these was “no”.  But luckily I don’t let these statistics define me, because I can’t control how other people perform on race day.   I can only control how I perform.

Some things that I am proud of from yesterday’s race:

*I can show up with virually no training and complete a sprint triathlon!  That makes me feel good to know that I am in good enough shape to complete the race, regardless of how fast I do it. 

*Yesterday was the strongest I have felt in the swim in a long time.  I always feel like I am not strong enough to do freestyle the whole way, and yesterday I managed to do freestyle almost the whole quarter mile of the swim.  I actually think my swim workout from this week helped, because mentally I knew I had praticed doing freestyle this week, instead of mixing in laps of breaststroke like I used to do.

*The run portion of the triathlon was 3 miles and my time was 35:37.   I can look past the fact that my run time was the 221st slowest out of 233 participants, becuase I am happy with my pace of 11:52 per mile.

Here are a few pictures from the race…

     

     

How do you define a good race?

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A Mini Triathlon is Still a Triathlon

Written on May 23rd, 2010 by Megan
Categories: Run

Yesterday was an exciting day because it was the first triathlon of the summer where my husband and I were both participating.   As I have said before, I love that we both enjoy triathlons, and it’s something that we can do together.

The race yesterday morning was a “mini” triathlon.   The triathlon is really meant for kids, but they also let a group of adults go through the same race course that is set up for the kids.   The course distances are:

  • 200 yard swim
  • 5.5 mile bike
  • 1.2 mile run on the beach

In 2008, I did this mini triathlon as my first ever triathlon, so I always enjoy going back to this race.

2008:

2009: My husband joined me, and this was his first triathlon.

And 2010, our friend John joined us for his first triathlon:

Here I am, happy to be out of the water and on my way to transition:

Riding my bike:

Luckily most of the run we did along the water so the sand was packed down, but they put the finish line right in the middle of the beach.   It is really hard to run on the sand!

It’s been about a month since I did St. Anthony’s Triathlon (recap here), which is a much longer race.  I went into this mini triathlon on Saturday thinking about how easy it was going to be, but I quickly figured out, that this is still an intense race. The shorter distances meant that I could push myself the whole race, and that made it challenging.

My husband and I are always very close in our finishing times, and today was the first time that he beat me. We keep it friendly, but it’s always fun to see who wins a race.   So if you are reading this, congratulations Christian and I now have motivation to step up my training for our next traithlon, most likely the Morton Plant Mease Sprint Triathlon on June 27th.



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