The Oktoberfest course is the same courses as the Tri Babes race I did last year (except they didn't short the run by 1/2 a mile this time) and the Summer Open I did in May. Going in, I had four goals.
1. To beat my Summer Open time.
2. To go under 1:20.
3. To beat fellow TriBabe Rachel. (Does that seem less snarky if I told Rachel that was my goal beforehand?)
4. To go under 28 minutes on the run
The swim went well. You never know with these things. Sometimes the course is long (*cough cough* Boulder Peak). Sometimes you have a panic attack (uh, Wildlflower?) and sometimes you just have a crappy swim. My swim felt fine and I was relived when I glanced at my watch and saw 13:xx. My official time was 14:04, a minute off the Summer Open.
TI went fine. Unlike the Summer Open, I didn't loose my bike, which is always nice and got me a few seconds closer to beating my Summer Open time.
The bike was fine. I took a minute off my Summer Open time but I don't know if it's because I'm in better biking shape, or because I was racing in my nifty aerohelmet. I mostly wear it for the intimidation factor, but who knows, maybe it does make me go faster:
My only biking snafu was somehow my magnet got misaligned and my bike computer wasn't working. Maybe that was better, I just put my head down and hammered.
T2 was also uneventful. I glanced at my watch on the way out and it was about 50 minutes, so I knew if I ran ok, I would go under 1:20. Woot! for goals 1 & 2.
And the run was ok. I tried to hold it in the first mile, and it was somewhere around 9:30. A bit too much holding in, but then there was the only uphill of the course. I got up the hill and then did all I could. Somewhere after the turn around I saw Rachel going the other way and cursed at her (literally. I think I screamed "damn you!"). I was sure she was going to catch me. I felt her on my heels the whole way in but she never passed me. My 5k time was 28:14. Dang, there went goal 4. Ah well, something to work for next year.
My total time was 1:18:56 and Rachel came in 8 seconds after me. I was a bit faster on the swim and bike than her, but I really beat her in transition, or as Jeremy calls it, Competative Clothes Changing. I had over a minute on her in T1 & T2 and that is way longer than 8 seconds.
Now, being that this event was called Oktoberfest, wouldn't you think there would be beer served afterwards? I mean, there was beer after all the 5430 races. But no, there was some issue with permits and non profits and blah blah blah and NO BEER. Luckily, I swam a masters class coached the race promoter and knew this beforehand and brought my own beer. See, it's St. Pauli's Girl - German and girly! And no, there's NOTHING wrong with drinking deer before 10 in the morning. NOTHING!
And the big surprise of the day, I won my age group! Now, much like Danskin, the 30-34 group was underperforming (I would have been in 5th place in both the 24-29 and 35-39 groups) but there WERE 30 women in my division so it's worth something, right? I was 18/172 women and 73/288 total.
And even more fun, TriBabe Michelle won the 35-39 group (she's hardcore, she was 8 *minutes* faster than me) and Rachel got second in 30-34. Well, Michelle won until we got home and looked at the results and she was bumped to second. But we both still got the first place prize of Zeal sunglasses.
And here's a really crappy picture of the three of us - somehow Rachel's husband kept taking video instead of stills with my cell phone and this is as good as it gets.
The award was a beer stein with an Oktoberfest engraving. Decorative AND useful.
So, that's it for this year. But stay tuned for next year and Ironman Wisconsin!
Updated - A decent picture. That's Rachel, Me, Michelle and Namino on top:
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