A weekend in the Sonoma vineyards...

Well, Vineman did not go at all to plan. Admittedly, I had been feeling a bit *blah* all week but I was hoping that it was the taper and that I’d get a little bit of Race Day Magic to give me that extra spark to go sub-5hrs there.

Swim –33:54 was exactly the same time as two years ago so I wasn’t psyched to see that time as I do think my swimming has improved in the last 18 months… BUT everyone else seemed to have a slower swim (from the pros on down), so I’ll take the swim as a positive! Blanco used to outswim me by 6mins and our gap on Sunday was only 4.5mins, so perhaps another indicator of a decent swim? The one bummer of my swim was that I was completely solo… the front group(s) seemed to get away and that left me swimming solo with just yellow caps from the mens’ wave ahead to swim through.

Bike – 2:37:39 was my fastest ever for the Vineman course and 3^rd fastest of the AG, though I was amazed when Cherell Jordin blew by me. There was no way I could have stuck with her. She ended up riding the best split of the age group with a 2:31. Speedy! I was definitely working on the bike but all my typical checks were that I was spot on… watts, heart rate, able to get food down, plenty of Nuun drunk etc.

Run: 1:48:27 - I ran the first couple of miles in 7:4X but then had absolutely nothing… It’s as if the lights went out. My legs felt heavy and dead and I struggled to turn them over and push any sort of pace. By the last few miles of the run, 8:30 pace felt hard! This was my WORST run ever on the Vineman course. It was much slower/worse than an easy 10+ miler I ran last Sunday at just over 8:00 min/mi pace. Fuelling was consistent with other recent races and I did not have any nutritional issues… so I don’t have many answers to what happened?

Total time: 5:07:55… my slowest time there in a LONG time… maybe ever…

Here are my ideas for why it was such a bad race…

Option 1: Just an off-day

Option 2: I biked too hard

Option 3: I’m not fit

Option 4: Life stress

I’ll catch up with coach tomorrow as the next race up is Ironman Hawaii… not being fit for Kona is NOT an option!

Post-race, it was fun to catch up with friends and hear about so many successful races… the highlight was of course, Meredith’s defense of her Vineman title.

Some words on Mere… the girl does WORK! Meredith puts the time and effort into her training and it is so rewarding to see her commitment bear fruit, even more so after the recent adversity… she is ALWAYS the first in the pool in the mornings, swimming 1500-2000yds warm-up before Matt Dixon starts the workout. She completes every repeat that Matt instructs us to do on the runs, even when it seems 2-3 more than we feel capable… and she rides each bike interval down to the last second countdown, even if it means she has the towel between her teeth to avoid biting through her bottom lip. It’s inspiring to be able to train alongside (or a ways behind!) Meredith and it’s motivating to know that she cares how the folks around her are doing, whether it’s a pre-race good luck text from her or a post-race congrats and her wanting to know how MY race went.

My other hero of the day was Blanco. The guy has the most positive attitude about everything in life of anyone I know (well, he could be tied with Mere for that title!)… it’s awesome to have him as my number one supporter in racing and of course in life J He had a solid race and scored 3^rd in his AG and brought home a nice bottle of La Crema wine.

 

We have a busy few months ahead of us as we complete the renovation on the house we bought last year and move in… and build up the training for Ironman Hawaii in October.