Macon Aquabike

With 1/4 mile to go Sue was working hard to catch Keith!!


How smart was I to pick the day that was 93 degrees to do an Aquabike? It consisted of a 1.2 mile swim and 56 mile bike. This was the first race that I did last year coming off my broken leg so it was sentimental for me. It was also my first repeat race!

The Swim: Am I EVER going to learn how to swim? I mean seriously?!? I have SO much endurance and for that I am thankful, but still have zero speed! When I got into the water I just swam, pretty much the same way that I would swim a warm-up in the pool. Way too aerobic for a race. I got off course a bit, oops, and had my first ever big kick in the face. The kick really made me very unhappy. I made it out of the water and almost croaked when I saw that my time was 3 minutes slower than it was last year! Okay so I didn't taper at all for the "training race". Plus I wasn't wearing a wetsuit(left it at home, 77.5 who knew?). But 3 minutes?!? Obviously 9000 yards a week isn't cutting it! Time to kick it into high gear!


The Bike: No HR monitor, no computer checking, no goals other than to do better than what I did last year. The first 20 miles were totally brutal. There was lots of wind. Way more wind than there should have been in Macon. I felt like I wasn't going anywhere. My legs were moving but the bike seemed to go really slow. I passed Tat and Karen and realized that the duathletes were already on course. This motivated me to ride a little bit harder. My bad attitude continued on the bike too. A guy rode up next to me and started talking. I said bad words because he scared me so badly. Then I felt really bad about it, but he had dropped back. Sorry guy. Around mile 30ish Sue caught me. Right before she caught me a dog started charging after me. It scared the daylights out of me. She told me after the fact that it was one of the closest calls that she had ever seen. I wasn't prepared for it, I actually think that I was sitting up and rubbing my very numb back. Sue scared me too when she caught me and started talking to me. She's like really,really, really strong. I can only imagine the terror that she imposed on all the guys in the race. The bike was hillier than I remembered from last year. Or maybe it was the wind that made it harder than I remembered. Or maybe I was just riding harder? I did get a 4-minute penaltly because I almost ran over a snake and was screaming (again, I was scared and didn't realize it was alive, see a pattern forming?) because it was huge and slithering all over the road.A guy that works with Tat rode up next to me and started talking. I didn't realize that meant I was supposed to drop back. It's called overtaken. He got penalized too for not passing me completely. He ended up dropping back because he said he was pushing too hard and needed to save some for the run.


At mile 48 I was in tears over the numbness and pain in my back. I was so very uncomfortable and unhappy. I told myself not to quit because Tucker Bob was still behind me and we had been in a texting war all week about how he was going to "see me" out there. At mile 50 I told myself that I was doing good because Bob didn't catch me. Not even 5 minutes later he caught me. The next six miles we spent playing cat and mouse and we found Keith along the way in. At one point Bob passed me and noticed that a guy was on my wheel. He started yelling "drafter, Dani you have a drafter!!" Really loud. I dropped it a couple of rings and the guy dissapeared.

After entering T2 I was thankful that my race was over. It was about 90 degrees and scorching out there. I spent a few minutes cheering for peeps and helping random people apply sunscreen to their back, neck, and head area. One chick asked me if I was "just not doing the run" and I said "Nope! I did the Aquabike! You suckers can run!" She was jealous. It was not a pretty day for a 1/2 marathon. My official bike time was 2:48 something but my actual ride time was 2:47 something......basically about 20.2 MPH Avg.

Since I trained straight through this "training race" I am okay with my results. I placed 4th overall behind two superstar triathletes (Deanna Frank and Heidi Phillips) Results list me as 1st, but it's a mistake. I took 20 minutes off my bike split from last year, so I can't complain about that! My swim is another story.....one that I am still a little sore about and don't want to talk about until I can figure out what's gone wrong.

The real props need to go to the peeps who did the half IM (Bob) and long course duathlon: Keith, Sue, Tat, and Karen. Tat had the fastest 1/2 marathon split of all the women and Sue was the bike queen! They all took home hardware. My training partners rock!

Big thanks also needs to go to Hunter, Steven, and Dave for all their hard work out there on the race course! Thanks guys!

The rest of the pics are on my Flickr!