Long Beach...The Race

The professional men were scheduled to start at 6am but with delays and things, it finally got started at 6:15…which delayed the women’s race start 15 minutes as well. That gave me a bit of time to stretch, pee, and get into my wetsuit before diving into the cold water for a short swim warm up. I felt really excited on the starting line and was ready to race the top American women. The horn sounded and 25 women sprinted down the beach into the 67 degree water. I tried to use the same strategy as the Honolulu race…create a small group of women in front of the main pack and then let them draft off my feet so we could get a BIG lead out of the water…this time it was a VERY small group, only my roommate Sarah Haskins was able to stay on my feet.
After the first 750 meter lap, we exited the water and ran around some flags on the beach before diving back in and swimming the second lap. This gave me the opportunity to see who was close behind and who was NOT close. Sarah was right behind me and then there was a HUGE time gap till the rest of the competitors. I yelled some encouragement to Sarah as we ‘rounded the flags and then we started swimming another fast lap together.
When we exited the water for a second time, it was to start running a quarter mile up the beach to the transition area…that’s a LOT of soft sand to run through! So I waited until I was on the pavement to even think about taking my wetsuit off…I just thought about fast and flat feet as I was running up the beach. Sarah and I got to transition together and the coaches yelled that we had 50 seconds of lead time over the chase group…SWEET!
We hopped on our bikes and headed out on to the 4 lap bike course…right away we started working together to maintain (and increase) our lead. We traded off with short fast pulls on the flat and technical course…I made sure that we were taking the tangents to every corner (the shortest line) and Sarah made sure that we climbed the bridge really strong every time (8 times, to be exact!)
There were so many people on the course giving us time splits, I think we had one every MILE (which is 24 times:). John was on the top of the bridge (we saw him on the ‘out’ and the ‘back’ part of the course; Katie was at the aquarium and was always so encouraging; Barb was at the 180 degree turn; etc. Our lead continued to grow the entire time…at the end of the first lap we had a 60 second lead, at the end of the second lap we were hearing 1 min 10 second splits, third lap it was 1 min 15 seconds…I think we were a bit unhappy with that small of an increase so Sarah and I hammered the fourth and final lap…and we entered transition with people yelling that we had a 1 min 45 sec lead on the chase pack!!!
Now it was time for the RUN…usually my nemesis and where I get passed by lots of people…but I wasn’t thinking about that, I was thinking about how to pace myself and focus on having the best run that I possibly could. It was a 2 lap run on the bike path on the beach…so we went ‘out-and-back’ and then ‘out-and-back’ again…giving us 4 different times to see who is in front and who is behind, and how close/far away they are! I had my hat pulled low over my eyes so I would not see everyone else as much (and stress out)…and it also keeps my head and eyes in the correct position to run fast!
From experience, I know that I tend to start the 10K too fast and then die near the end…so I started off nice and smooth and relaxed for the first lap and promised myself I could let loose on the second loop. Again, I was getting tons of time splits on the run course…on the first lap the chasers were really catching up…my 1 min 45 sec lead dropped to 60 seconds with in the first 2 miles! But I keep focusing on my race, my pace, and later in the race I was still hearing 60 seconds…I was holding everyone else off!
(By-the-way…Sarah Haskins is such a strong runner that she had the race won as soon as we started running…but she continued to encourage me on every turn-around)!
With one mile to go, I was pretty confident that I was going to finish in second place…but I had to remind myself not to “count my chickens” just yet and re-focus on running fast:)! At the finish, I was coherent, upright, and HAPPY…I gave some people high fives and did the Gator Chomp across the finish line (like always)…then I gave Sarah a big hug and a ‘thank you’ for all her hard work on the bike!
By finishing second overall behind Sarah, I earned the U23 National Title and a slot to compete in the Elite World Championships. I’ll take the title, but I passed up the slot because I want to compete my last year as a U23 and try to get on the podium at World Champs. The awards were fun…they had Champaign for the top three men and women and we drenched each other (being soaked in Champaign is actually pretty smelly:).