Happy and Hurting

The race is OVER…COMPLETE…FINISHED!! And I’m sooo sore, tired, exhausted! Everything today went GREAT…I had so much fun and I’m so happy with the results!
I’ll start at the beginning when my alarm went off at 7:30am…
It was at the same time as the age-group race started…Jarret (my homestay) was off and racing in the pond while I was watching TV and eating breakfast:)! I flipped through some channels while I was stretching on the living room floor. I ran back and forth between the front yard and my room …cheering for Jarret on the run course and packing my race bag with gear. My running warm up was timed perfectly to get to the finish line and watch him finish.
Did I mention that I woke up to RAIN and OVERCAST skies! It was just what I asked for in the weather department…I knew that the roads would be slippery on the paint (especially in the downhill turns) but it would keep the air temperature cool and refreshing! So I had to ride down to the race site with quite a few layers of clothes on…and keep them on while I was warming up…until it was time to pull on my wetsuit (and then I’m warm no matter what temperature it is!).
We started at 12:00noon…and the skies were still holding a thick layer of dark clouds. The water was a wetsuit legal temperature…so I had another opportunity to race in my Orca…and the small pond forced us to complete 3 laps of 500 meters each. It was like a big circle…I felt like I was constantly turning toward the next buoy. After about 300 meters I pulled to the front of the group and Sarah Haskins got onto my feet to draft…we started pulling away from the rest of the competition right away. After 3 laps we exited the water with a :50 second lead…and started climbing the DEVIL of a hill to the transition area (it’s so steep that sometimes I wanted to use my hands to help me climb:).
After falling on my butt when I tried to take my wetsuit off, I exited T1 with Sarah and we immediately started working hard and working together on the bike to keep our lead…and we managed to keep it for all 6 laps of the HILLY bike! Our lead time over the chase back of 15+ women fluctuated from 40 seconds to over 1 minute at the end…I was sooo happy with our ride because I managed to stay with Sarah on all the uphill sections and she hung on my wheel for all the downhill sections (and the whole course was either UP-hill DOWN-hill…nothing in-between!).
Unfortunately, the hard part wasn’t over yet…this run course is the hardest of ANY World Cup triathlon because it has NO flat parts either! So I headed out on the 4 lap run and knew that the chase pack women would be running by soon…of course, “soon” does not properly describe how fast Vanessa Fernandez ran by me at the 2K mark…but I was the only person in the race that had her name in chalk on the run course!
My homestay family (remember, they live ON the run course) wrote “Go Sara” and “Smile Sara” all over the road!! I was actually looking forward to that part of the run because the Hann’s were in their front yard cheering and they had all the neighbors cheering for me too! I made it to the finish line in 17th place…and Sarah strongly finished in 6th…so it was a success for the breakaway of Sara(h)s!
After cooling down (didn’t take to long with the weather) and then warming up in lots of clothes, I headed back to the Hann’s house for a big refueling meal…and then sat in the front yard, in the lawn chair, in a raincoat, with a bowl of ice cream, and cheered on the USA men as they ran by on their 4 loops. I’m already sad about leaving this beautiful place…but I’m both glad and sad that 2006 was the last World Cup triathlon in Corner Brook!