Totally exhausted

This weekend I drove up to Penticton with my dad to race the BC Duathlon Championships. It was a good opportunity to gain some fitness for my first triathlon coming up on June 3 in Dallas, Texas. I also figured it would be kind of fun to do something other than a triathlon for a change, and it was good father daughter bonding time :).
We left Friday morning, and arrived in Penticton at about 4 pm that night. It was fun to travel somewhere, even if it was not as far as other ventures I've been on in past years. I'm not sure why, but I really like Penticton. There is something about the Okanagan Lake, and the small town feel that I love.
I raced at 2 pm on Saturday, so had quite a bit of time to kill that morning. At about 9:00 am, I went out on my bike for a little spin and wasn't able to shift out of my big chain ring.... obviously something kind of undesirable on race day. I took my bike in to the local bike shop, the Bike Barn, to get this looked at. The mechanics were really nice (one guy even offered us gingerbread cookies), and in about 20 minutes my bike was good to go, and I was feeling relieved that I wouldn't have to ride 32 km in my big chain ring.
The race consisted of a 5 km run, 32 km bike (nondrafting), and 5 km run. I felt good in the first run, which made it difficult to not go out too hard. I think I paced it pretty well, but it was still a solid effort. The first half of the bike was brutal as we were riding into a pretty powerful headwind. The race wheels I was riding also made it challenging to control my bike as I kept getting blown from side to side. On the plus side, we had an awesome tailwind on the way back to transition and I was really able to motor along. Starting the second run, my legs felt awful... I don't think I have ever felt that drained in a race. Thoughts of not finishing definitely crossed my mind, but then I thought of all the time I had just spent in a car driving up here, the fact that I was the first woman, and that first place won $150 (and a bottle of wine... although for me that wasn't very motivating), and knew that I couldn't just stop when I had less than 20 minutes left in the race. So I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, staying relaxed, and just finishing the race no matter how horrible it felt. I was the first woman to finish in a time of 1:41.
This race was a good learning experience for me, and I'm hoping that the more I race the better I'll be able to handle the longer distance. Next step... add in a 1500 m swim and another 8 km of biking :)
So now I am back home after 7 hours of driving and 2 hours of ferrying, and I am really exhausted. I think I will just continue to lie on the couch....

TC 10 k

I ran the TC 10 k on Sunday, the first time I've run this race and the first 10 k I've done in 2-3 years.... so I was pretty confident I would get a best time. My goal was to have a really good run, pace it well, and finish strong, the result would take care of itself. The course was challenging, with false flats both up and down, but I really liked it and I achieved my goals for this run. I went out strong but conservative in the first 5 km, I had lots of people to run with and really focused on my own pace, trying to ignore what the other 14,999 people were doing! Once I hit the 5 km mark, I picked things up, I wasn't going to play it safe and just worked hard for the second half of the run. Thinking about keeping my form together allowed me to forget about how tired I was or what I was feeling, and just run. I was very happy that I was able to hold everything together right to the end and finished with a time of 38:31. I was really relieved to have a good solid run, as I feel like things have been a bit up and down over the last few months of training, and this was a bit of a confidence boost.