Wildflower Olympic Distance Triathlon 2010 Race Report

Wildflower Olympic-By far my favorite race! 1.5K swim, 40K bike, and 10k run

A challenging, hilly, amazingly beautiful course. 

At Lake San Antonio we arrived!  Beauty everywhere!  Fresh clean air!  The whole weekend filled with camping, training, athletes, hanging out, and racing.  What also makes Wildflower weekend one of a kind  is that there’s no  cell  or internet reception, forcing us to seek human interaction - a pleasant and much needed break from our technology entertained lives.

My race was on a Sunday, and the early morning winds gave the lake less than favorable conditions for swimming by adding some texture on the water.  I felt slow in the water, and was fighting to stay focused. 

Out of the swim, back in focus,  hopped on the bike and was instantly greeted with Lynch Hill - a steep 1 mile uphill climb.  Rolling hills, inclines, and declines from there on out.  Wildflower’s a tough race and it stood strong to its reputation as we hit some winds out there on the ride.  I forgot about the bugs -lots of bugs.  More than a few bugs slapped my face, sunglasses, and even heard them ping off my helmet.

Once in Transition 2, while racking my bike and bending down to slip on my Newton running shoes, my quad suddenly froze up!  A cramp!  I stood there grasping my left quad for a bit and remember brief thoughts running through my head, “Is the race over for me?”  I’ve never dealt with cramping before - except  while surfing once I got one in my calf pretty bad.  I quickly decided to push through the pain and went running out of Transition 2 and onto the hilly run.  Within minutes the cramping eased and I ran my way through the rolling hills and heavy climbs.  Used up a can of my oxygen during the first mile and a half of the run - it helped substantially.   Didn’t need to stop and walk a couple steps on any of the climbs this year!  All the hard work has paid off!   I flew through the Wildflower finish line feeling great, taking extra special note not to get surpassed by any females (especially in my age group) during those final 100 yards, unlike last year, LOL!

Final time 2:26:36. First overall female “age grouper” (and 1^st in my own age group) and fourth overall female (behind 3 college girls).  Appears I’m much closer to earning my pro card than I thought.  38 seconds faster and one overall place would have done the trick.

Goal for next race: improve transition times.  Transitions are the fourth sport in triathlon.  I look at my transition times and see how much time I lost in those alone. 

I like Thomas Jefferson’s quote:  “I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”