Miami turned out to be as great of a racing venue as I’d imagined it would be- perfect weather (high of 80 and sunny every day), scenic, etc. As an added bonus, Chris was also racing and my friend and former college XC/Track teammate at Dartmouth, Nicole Kelleher, was also racing (and finished 4th pro!) While I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and the race, the race itself mostly served the purpose of a valuable learning experience!
Heading down to the race we made the mistake of booking a 6am flight. With work and workouts the prior day, this meant staying up late to pack gear and bike, and left about 2 hours for sleep, something I would NOT want to do again! Friday we found an awesome outdoor pool to swim in, surrounded by palm trees!
Race morning prep went pretty smoothly, and I got in somewhat of a warm-up on the bike, but since it was still dark out and I was warming up on the roads, it was difficult to make it as quality as it should have been for an Olympic distance race. I’m still tweaking my Olympic distance warmup as in my last two oly races, it’s taken me halfway through the bike to feel like my legs are awake. The swim start was fast as expected, and I pretty soon found myself swimming alone! This made it necessary that I sight on my own as I didn’t have feet to follow, and this was CHALLENGING since it was just barely getting light out and the buoys were not very visible. I had to stop several times just to be able to see the turn buoys, which definitely slowed me down.
Out onto the bike course, within the first mile I hit a pothole and my handlebars slipped downward. As a result, I was more cautious on the bike than I would have liked, as I was nervous about the potential of losing balance and crashing if the bars slipped again. I tried to stay aero I could hold the bars in place, which worked for the most part, but this coupled with the spread-out nature of the women’s pro field and few competitors within sight made it challenging to race at an appropriately fast pace. The run felt pretty hard- I’d not done any real speedwork at this point in the season so it was definitely a wakeup call for my body.
Even though it was not my best race ever, I did learn some important lessons on racing in the pro field and racing in general!
1) The importance of having a fast swim start, even if it feels VERY hard- not only will this help by allowing you to draft but it will take the work out of sighting.
2) Staying focused on the bike and maintaining an appropriate effort even when there aren’t any other competitors within sight- this is something that is difficult for me- I love competing!
3) Double-checking equipment prior to race day, even if someone else has supposedly taken care of fixing something, and
4) Warming up thoroughly (especially on bike and swim), especially important for Olympic distance races.
In all, I crossed the line in 12th for female pros in 2:09 which is actually a PR at the Olympic distance for me (which more indicates my lack of racing experience at the Olympic distance than a stellar performance!) Overall, it felt GREAT to be racing, to be injury-free, and to have the opportunity to test myself!
While in Miami, we stayed in South Beach for the 2 nights after the race which was an awesome location!!
Beach was 1 block from our hotel!We also found a ton of organic/raw/vegan restaurants and cafes, and even though I myself am not vegan I just love these types of restaurants and meals. We even found an all-raw cafe that we ate at the night before the race (OK, maybe not the BEST timing, but it was good!!) I think I took more pictures of our meals on the trip than the scenery or race!!
Saturday lunch at Juice and Java
Friday Lunch at Green Wave Cafe