Back in STL

The Chicago race was pretty cool.

Left St. Louis on Fri afternoon - a lot later than expected - and arrived in Chicago after midnight. Went to our friend's place and straight to bed.. exhausted!

Sat am headed to the Expo at the Hilton in downtown Chicago. Awesome Expo, loved it, lots of cool stuff.

Gave my race number, got my bib, got the chip, confirmed it, got my goodie bag and swimming cap. Got body marked. They wrote my wave number on my calf: 46, and the lady told me to go check my wave time on a chart... my start time was 9:21AM! D'oh! Bummer... because they opened TA from 4:15AM until 5:45AM, meaning every single athlete needed to be there in between that time and then out of there.

Sun morning was nice, in the low 70s and no humidity, and it stayed like that pretty much the whole day.

I got there just a bit before 5AM, got all my stuff ready in the biggest transition area I have ever seen.... sadly I don't have any pics of it, I didn't have my cam with me... I know, what was I thinking?!?... sorry! Anyway, done with TA setup and I was like: uh... ok.. now what?!?!? Walked around, saw the sprinters start... walked some more... laid down on the grass, took a 15 min nap.... I tell ya.. it sucked! I was there just walking around for about 5 hrs!

The family got there about 30 min before my start, thank God because I had a bag on me - and even thought they had a check-in bag area, I felt better leaving all my stuff with them. Got ready got on line with my group.

We started right on time, and for the first time I drafted in the swim.... the whole swim! It was awesome! Got behind this girl who pretty much lead me until the end.

- 1,500 meters (.9 miles) Swim time: 26min 15sec

Got our of Lake Michigan and jogged a quarter of a mile to TA!!

Took wetsuit off, grabbed my stuff and took off.

- T1 time: 3min 30sec!!!

I made a very bad/dumb/stupid/rookie mistake on the bike. I left my shoes (on the pedals) but... with the velcro on! So after a few min I was pedaling I reached to get my feet in the shoes and I realized the velcro was on.... I of tried to opened them up but couldn't.. HAD TO STOP!! I was so mad... quite frustrating. Stopped, got off the bike, took the shoes off the pedals with my hands, got the shoes on, clipped them and took off again. Surprisingly enough I had a great ride, in fact my best race ride ever. I ended up with an average of 20.1 MPH, really fast for me considering the bike is my weakest leg. The bike course was pretty flat though, and bumpy too.

- 40Km (24.8 miles) Bike time: 1hr 13min 44sec

Got back to TA, got my running shoes, bib and visor and I was gone.

- T2 time: 2min 35sec

Needless to say my legs were tired for the run and I could tell... I obviously went too hard on the bike... still I felt ok and just ran!

- 10Km (6.2 miles) Run time: 48min 46sec (7:51min/mile)

AG: 64/499

OA: 470/4089

It was a fun race, great experience racing with that many athletes and all but don't know if I would go back. To me it was one of those 'had to do' kinda race.

This weekend I got Lake St. Louis Oly tri. Last year my time was 2hrs 44min. And even though this is not an A race for me I am still curious to see what time would I have.

PC