This race report is a little bit late, but hey, better late than never! I have been doing this race for four years now. Each year I have managed to get a little bit faster. This was the first year though that I didn’t move up in the standings though. My times have gone from 55:45 to 52:28 to 51:18 to 49:06. I finally broke 50 minutes this year.
The Swim
The swim is a short quarter mile swim. The water was around 72 and I wore a wetsuit. I learned from last year that the time to take off a wetsuit is less than the time it takes to swim without a wetsuit. I felt pretty good about my swim and was 6th out of the water and first in my wave.
The Bike
The bike is a 10 mile loop through Boxford, for the most part it is pretty flat. There are a couple of rolling hills in the beginning and the end, but nothing major. My bike time was a little bit faster than last year and if I hadn’t run 16 miles the day before I probably would have been able to push harder. It’s not that my legs were tired so much, but they just felt a little heavy. At 20.96 mph I was little off what I have been doing for my last two races where I was at 21.59 and 21.40.
The Run
I felt good on the run and was about 20 seconds faster than last year. That doesn’t seem like much, but when the course is only 1.5 miles it become a little more significant. We had heavy rain the night before the race and the gravel road was a little more “gravelly” than usual and I had to be a bit more careful in some sections.
While I moved down to number 8 from number 7 last year. I’m happy that I improved my times. I’m looking forward to doing the race again next year. Congrats to Jan D. for being the first overall woman!