A Race and a Run: The WSMR Yucca Triathlon

Today I ran way too far on too little sleep, food, and drink, and on not much in the way of legs.
My quad muscles didn't start hurting until mile 11.
Then they gave me a lactic acid burn as if I'd been lifting in the gym.
Before that, they had felt tired and slow, but pretty unremarkable.
I ate my gels (miles 5 and 10), drank my water (miles 4, 5, 7, and 10).
Re-filled my water, but couldn't re-fill my gels.
Then, I REALLY got hungry, like there was NO food left in me.
I walked the last 3 miles and the last mile was a real doozy.

Of course, I thought, "Maybe my legs will lose weight."
This was after a not very happy moment two nights before between a hotel room mirror and myself.
I think they make those mirrors intentionally to bring out the worst in you. Kind of like the Fun-House mirrors at the used-to-be Playland at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Although those actually let you play around with your size.

Then, I got home and ate a giant pot of macaroni and cheese--with extra cheese.

Mr .T said, "I told you so."
ok-ok-ok-ok-ok.
So, sometimes, I just don't listen.
Like maybe a lot of the time.
He said, "You can't do runs like that when you're getting ready to do a race."
ok-ok-ok-ok-ok.
Mr. T was right.

My legs were tired because yesterday I had done the Yucca Triathlon at White Sands Missile Range. I had driven down after work, stayed at the Super 8, on the Bataan Highway (where I encountered the mirror), not gotten enough sleep, and hauled myself over to the race start in time to arrive at the gate at 6:30 am. Contrary to the usual scene at the always popular Polar Bear Triathlon in December, this morning I was the only car around. It was so quiet I thought maybe I had driven to the wrong location for the race. Or that the race had been cancelled.

However, I was in the right place and 53 people had signed up, so the race was a go.
10K run, 48 K (30 mile) bike, 400 yard swim.
Unfortunately for me, I had seen the "400 swim" on the brochure, and had just assumed I was doing a short sprint race with an extra long bike. Not a good "whoops" for me, since I don't run very well.

There was a very fast contingent from El Paso.
9 women were present, each distributed one per age group--except for the 34-39 and 45-49 age groups.
Of course, my AG was the only competitive one. Age-Group-Nemesis was there. Checking out what colors I was wearing so she could track me, and subtly dropping a number of tri-excuses to tell me she "wasn't really going to race." We finished 2 minutes apart. She's a runner. Three marathons under her belt so far this year, and training for a 4th. She got me by 7 minutes in the run. I took back 6 minutes on the bike. It would have been closer, but when I realized I wasn't going to catch my competition, I thought, "why push it for second place?" and took it easy for the last leg in the pool.

The run was a mile of gentle downhill and flat, then a good, steady 2 mile uphill on pavement, with the remainder on moderately soft dirt roads. As Age-Group-Nemesis says about herself, "I'm the queen of dirt." And she certainly was.

The bike just seemed hard. A head wind all the way, even though we first headed out south, then west, then north. I felt like I couldn't get any speed on the downhills. About half way into it, I got a headache. The rhythmic bump-bump-bump of the rough roads turned my head into agony. I ate a Gu Roctane, which may have been the reason my headache went away. Yeay for sodium, potassium, calcium, amino acids, and caffeine. When my head was hurting, I thought, "I am never doing another race on these roads again." The wind just never let up. I was exhausted by the last leg of the ride, and barely hung in for the final up hill. I kept wishing for the pool--which truly isn't something I usually do.

The swim was short and sweet. There were so few participants that no one was around me and the water was smooth with no splashing or passing.

Age-Group-Nemesis made sure I didn't hit my head on the water slide.
We had lunch together.
We talked about "bad" mirrors and unhappy mirror moments (she thought the WSMR pool mirrors were bad).
She invited me to stay at her house next time.
She really is the better athlete than me.
Darn.

I made 4th out of the 9 women total, 2nd in my AG, and earned another 9 points towards the SW Challenge annual AG competition. Trying to win it, but I suspect Age-Group-Nemesis may have her eye on the prize, too.

So.
Yesterday really was a pretty good, sustained effort.
And.
Running extra long today probably really wasn't the best thing to do.