Racing in Hawaii...More Often Please!

If you’ve read the photo captions already…there is no suspense for the results of my race…I finished 3rd! It was a great race and I am still excited about how the events unfolded. The day started at 3:50am on Sunday morning in Honolulu, Hawaii. Jasmine and I woke up and ate our lucky breakfast: bagel with peanut butter, honey, and a banana with Gatorade to drink. We rushed through our last minute details, like putting sunscreen on, putting ice in our water bottles, and struggling into our skin-tight race suits…then we met our teammates (Jenna and Lesley) and our coach (Barb) at 4:15am to bike to the race course.
I dropped my bag off at transition and then finished my bike warm up with some under-gearing, over-gearing and jumps (translation: spinning my legs really fast, pushing the pedals really hard, and some fast accelerations out of the saddle). After I felt nice and awake on my bike, I went into transition and set up all my gear, got body marked and started my run warm up. I did about 5-10 minutes of jogging and then went through all my activation drills to recruit my muscles and wake them up. After a few accelerations and 10k pace sprints, I felt really good and very excited to get the race started.
I checked over my transition gear one last time, dropped off my running shoes, grabbed my swim cap and goggles and headed to the beach for a quick swim warm up. We ended up sitting on the beach for an extra 15 minutes because they delayed the race start to make sure the roads were completely clear of cars (big thanks to the race director, Bill Burke, for getting such great safety on the roads). I was glad I had a towel with me at the beach to keep warm for those few minutes, the sun was still behind the mountains and it was a bit chilly if you were wet.
The men started a 6:00am and we followed them into the water 5 minutes later. The swim course was like a big, calm pool, 750 meters out, turn around a big buoy, and 750 meters back to the beach for transition 1. I swam a bit slower in this race than I normally do, letting Jasmine draft off my feet, because she and I wanted to work together on the bike. We ended up getting out of the water as a pack of 3 women (Jasmine, Sarah Groff, and I) about 1 minute ahead of the next women. We got onto our bikes and started riding hard as soon as we were out of T1. The three of us worked great together, drafting, rotating and encouraging. There was no sign of anyone catching us from behind…so the first time we saw our chasers was after the turn-around…oh yeah, I managed to crash on the 180-degree turn-around, I didn’t take out my fellow leaders, I just slid along the ground on my side and then get back onto my bike as fast as possible.
We saw that our lead was maintaining it’s size (or getting bigger) so we continued to work hard on the second half. Our coaches were waiting on both sides of transition with walkie-talkies to communicate how much of a lead we had starting the run. I was pleasantly shocked when Barb yelled that we had 2 minutes and 30 seconds…all I had to do was stay on my feet and complete the 10k and I would finish on the podium! Before we got off the bike, I whispered to Jasmine to kick Sarah G’s butt…and she did it…they ran the whole run together but Jasmine put in a great surge with a half mile to the finish line and Sarah Groff could not respond. Thanks to a slightly short bike ride, Jasmine finished in 1:56:51, Sarah was second in 1:57:18, and I crossed the line in 1:58:08 for third!!
After the race, we crammed in some serious celebrating before our 9pm flight back to the mainland. First, we had to pee in a cup for USADA because the first 3 finishers were chosen for drug testing…then we rushed back to the hotel, dropped off our gear, got dressed in our awards ceremony attire and stopped at Denny’s for a yummy post-race Grand Slam for breakfast (it was only 10am at this point!). Jasmine and I rushed back to the Ala Moana Park for the awards ceremony, got our medals and flowers, took a shower of champagne, and picked up our prize money checks!!
We met the rest of our team back at the hotel, packed our bikes and bags, walked to get coffee/mochas/hot chocolates at a café, walked to the beach, played in the water, lay in the sun, sipped Mai Tais, and shopped for souvenirs on the strip. Back in the hotel, we rushed 6 people through the shower in about 30 minutes, lugged our bikes and bags down to the van, loaded them, and drove to the airport.
Our flight home was pretty smooth, I slept for 99% of the time in each airplane, and now we are back in Colorado Springs. Training has already begun…I had a 2 hour bike ride this morning and swim practice is 2 hours from now!