Why I don't work on my own bike.....

The lovely image above shows my bike after racing Chattanooga yesterday. Notice the seat pointing totally upwards? That was the result of me trying to adjust my own saddle Thursday to point downwards per my doctors suggestion. I am officially never, ever, ever, ever, ever, going to touch my bike again unless it's to clean it, change the tire, or put the chain on. Everything else will require professional help! Here's what I thought of the race:

Swim: It started raining right before my swim start. Getting into the river and being told when to start is WAY better than a mass swim start. I took off and was feeling pretty decent. Since it was a point to point swim I wasn't sighting like normal until I see a kayak. This meant that I was swimming towards my right instead of straight forward. Doh! So I started sighting and stuck to the left (closer to the bank of the river). They told us that the bright green buoy was our indicator that the stairs were coming up and I got really excited when I looked up and saw a huge bright green thing. Then a couple of minutes later I swam up to a huge group of guys, at least 40 in green swim caps. How did I catch up with them? I kept swimming and swimming, taking 9 strokes and I sighted, still the same spot I was in before. I knew I wasn't moving and started neither was anyone else. I powered myself through by swimming as hard as I could, then the little whirlpool was gone. Apparently there are little spots in the river where this happens. Didn't know that! Swim was 28:04, about a minute slower than I would have liked.

Bike: This bike course was WAY harder than the one from two years ago! But it was really scenic. There were TONS of potholes and I saw plenty of peeps with flats and water bottles all over the place. Around mile 12 or 13 it started pouring rain. It felt like little pellets hitting my skin. I couldn't see anything and was in my aero bars going down a hill. I looked down and was going 39 mph! The rain finally stopped. Around mile 18 my back was just totally gone. I stood up for some relief and when I sat back down my saddle went the opposite way. Oops. At mile 20 I went over a bump and my saddle dropped back even further. At that point I was just trying to not fall off my bike. It was raining again and since we only had six more miles, I thought it would be okay to not try to adjust it. Right. My hamstrings and calves were lighting up like a Christmas tree during those last six miles. It was totally inefficient and wasting a lot of energy. I was still pleased that I managed to avg. 20 MPH. I got a 2-minute penalty for "positioning" because I passed someone and didn't return to the left. It was because the road was crappy there.

Run: The run was a huge disappointment to me. My legs just weren't feeling like they should have, mostly because of the bike I think. I was so proud of myself for putting my shoes in a plastic bag because they were totally dry. Then not even a mile into the run there was a huge puddle of standing water and I got my feet wet. Ugh. I don't like wet feet. The run was better two years ago in my opinion, I thought that this one was harder. Very steep stairs to climb (I couldn't run up or down them). My run pace was 9:04, AWFUL for six miles. I like the out and back on the run because it gave me a chance to see everyone else running, Tat, Keith, Steve, Steph, Matt, Henry, etc ,etc....seeing peeps always keeps you going!

Total time was 2:45:50, not including my penalty. With the rain and my bike issues, I will take it.

Congrats to Tat and Henry on their first Olympic distance race! This was my first Olympic too in 2006! Thanks to Steven and Dave for their support out there! Congrats to everyone else for racing strong in not so great conditions!

Second lesson of the day: Don't make fun of peeps with flats. Someone we know was laughing at Keith because he flatted on the bike. Not even one mile later she flatted and had to DNF because she didn't have a tube. Bad race Karma!