Celmson 5/11/2013 Race Re-Cap

Let's start with Thursday...
Got home 8am and went to sleep, up by 2pm. Felt great. Went to bed at 1030pm and woke up wide awake at 1am. Grrrr. I am usually a great sleeper, I love to sleep. Flipping schedules strikes! Was able to take a nap from 1030-1230. Left for Clemson (4 hour drive) just after 1pm. Ate dinner with a couple of cool Chucktown Triathletes and went to sleep around 1030. And....woke up at 2am!! Ugh. Alarm was set for 530. Read for a couple of hours and fell back to sleep for an hour more sleep. Now on to the race....

Arrived around 645am and set up my transition area. Pretty cool. They set us up with name tags alphabetically so there were super fit people on either side of me with their cool tri bikes. Scoped out the competition, there were only 9 of us Athena's there.

Started the swim in the 4th wave. Started out pretty good frontstroke. Lasted only about 150-200m before I had to switch to my backstroke. Still having trouble getting a handle on the hyperventilation thing. While I was in the water waiting for my wave to start another lady started talking about how she has the same problem. Good to know I am not the only one. The 5th wave started 4 minutes after us and those of us at the back of the 'purple' pack were quickly overrun. Every once in a while I would turn over and try the frontstroke but no luck.  The last 100m I dug in and tried doing frontstroke and ended up going sideways. Whatever. I anticipated swimming 750m in 22 minutes and did it in 23:31, so happy with the swim.
On the way out of the swim we had to run up this hill (here I am at the top looking down)...

Here is me at the end of the swim...so flattering...yes I am walking because I am still hyperventilating:

Probably a 400m run from edge of lake to transition. And on to the bike...
From the website: The bike is a one loop 11 mile course in quiet rural roads. There is one short but steep grade at mile 2 1/2. From there the course rolls until a long downhill at mile 9.
Uh NOOOOOOO....Drove the course beforehand using this map:

These were HARD hills. The first hill I did 4mph...I quickly learned how to use my gears (finally). In the lowcountry we don't really have hills so I have raced in one gear. I had anticipated 40 minutes for the bike at 16.5mph. Ended up averaging 11 or so mph and finishing in 59:44. By far the worse bike ever. Gave up early in the beginning of achieving a PR and just wanted to finish. Needless to say more hill training is in my future so I am not surprised by this type of course again.

As I was dismounting I though I had unclipped all the way but my left clip caught and I had my first tri fall, scraped up my elbow and both calves pretty good.

Running, oh running. Nice rolling hills. Not too bad. Still trying to recover from the bike. At the half way point I kept counting how many people were behind me...9. Yay, I wasn't last. Had hoped to run a 38 minute 5K but ended up 46:21. Not too shabby. Total overall time of 2:12:18.

And with all of that whining and grumbling I ended up moving up in the overall SCTS ranks to 2nd...WHAT!!! OMG!!! My coach says I need to focus on my A race but it's hard not to want to get add more SCTS races...pretty good for only my 3rd tri ever.