We headed down to Des Moines Iowa to spend the week with Derek's family on Sunday afternoon after I raced the YWCA Women's Triathlon. This was a great race and so well organized. I wasn't sure I was going to race this until about a week before. I have only done two sprints before the YWCA race and I go about the same speed for an Olympic as I do a Sprint!!! Sprint races are not for me but it was tons of fun though and I had a blast just racing with women. I hope I am able to do this race next year and it fits into my schedule because I would love to support it.
It was great being in Des Moines because the kids love their grandparents and we get time to see friends from college and I got to go shopping by myself. Wow, the damage you can do when you shop without kids is amazing! I went to Adventureland with Owen one day too and remembered what it felt like to have your stomach do somersaults! The only bad thing about being there was that Keaton had to go to Urgent Care on Friday. We were at the park and he touched a metal slide. It wasn't even that hot that day but his poor little hands got burnt very badly. He has second degree burns on both of the palms of his hands. He is a trooper though and adjusting really well to having his hands all bandaged up. I felt so horrible for him and didn't want to leave him when we left for Cedar Rapids for the race on Saturday.
It was really nice not having the kids to worry about while I was racing on Sunday. I decided to race age group because there were not any girls signed up for the elite wave when I looked on Friday night. Then Sunday morning I noticed two girls racking their bikes in the elite area.... darn it! My wave started about 16 minutes after the elite wave so I was trying to figure out what position I was out on the course. I had a great swim for me and I actually liked doing the time trial start. I didn't get pushed and shoved around as much as I do starting with the men! The bike went great too - I pushed it hard the whole time but had some issues with my gels and water that I need to get figured out before the next 70.3. My run is still not where I want it to be. I was hoping to go just under 7 min miles but took the first 5k out too hard. I was checking my splits at every mile and kept telling myself to slow down and I did slow down - almost to a 8:30 min mile from mile 10-11....the killer hill! I will come back to this race next year to defeat that thing! I thought about walking at one moment but told myself NO - you are racing against the clock!
After finishing I chatted with Ruth Brennan Morrey - she passed me on the run around mile 7, and she was flying. She ran like a 6:30 per minute mile - wow! I thought she had finished before me but since I started behind her I had actually beat her a little under a minute. She is a rookie this year but you wouldn't know it - she is good! I finished second female overall and happy with my time of 4:36:54 but wish I would have kept a better eye on where the elites were on the run because I was beaten by 37 seconds. In a race this long there are things you can do to make up 37 seconds. I feel like I am still learning this distance as I hadn't raced a half for two years and this is my third one. I think I am going to sign up for Austin 70.3 in October so if any of you have done Austin let me know what you think.
The picture below is of the Gear West Triathlon Team - we won the team award and poor Suzie got bombarded from David right after finishing the race to take this picture. No idea why him and Thad still had on their race belts because they seriously had been done for about an hour when we took this picture!
