On to Delaware

The team has finished pouting about our lost race and have regrouped to race Escape from Ft. Delaware in two weeks! Go team!!!

I am just terrified of the swim across the Delaware River ...

Race Day Synopsis

I am now back in DC and have been reflecting on the past days' events. Race day was just amazing but not in a good way. :-) I'm amazed at what Mother Nature can do when she decides to turn on you. The entire weekend was perfect Central Texas race weather (overcast, relatively low humidity, nice and cool) and then for the 8 hours before the race, it just rained non stop. I mean really rained.

We were really lucky to be staying at a hotel that was so close to transition and managed to stay dry most of the time. But after the word was out that the race was canceled, we had to go to transition to get our bikes (which had been sitting out all night in that rain!). Some of the braver folks who went out first came back looking like drowned rats. Transition was under two feet of water with water falls cascading down the grade wall. The river was raging, there was no way we could swim in that, damn or no damn. I waited for a little while before going out to rescue my bike and luckily, it stopped raining. But transition was still so flooded, that I had to carry my bike out of there.

I searched for some news about the race, but I guess Austin-ites are still not that big into triathlon (Lance or not) since the only things I managed to find is this (very) short press release from the race director, and a small slide show that doesn't even do the weather justice. I guess the photographer didn't want to get wet. :-)

All is not lost however, since the National Cap Area chapter managed to raise over $89,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And overall, all the TNT chapters who participated in this race raised over $900,000 for LLS. So race or no race, that money will still go to helping find a cure and towards patient advocacy. That's the one silver lining for the weekend. Special thanks to all who donated to the cause!

Coming back to DC, it is sunny and 90 degrees out. Oh, the irony ...

I will post pictures from the trip shortly.

Race Cancelled due to Weather ...

We got up today at 4:30 am to meet the rest of the team to head over to the race. When we got downstairs, the hotel lobby was packed with people waiting in the hotel instead of heading out to the race. It turns that it has been (and still is) raining heavily and the race director has informed everyone by text message to stay dry and hold for further status on the race. The most likely scenario right now is that they will turn this to a duathlon and have us run a 5K, bike 40K, and then run another 5K. This is not good news to most people and we anxiously wait for the rain to subside.

At 7:10, Geoff (Coach Laura's husband) gets the official text message that the race has officially been canceled. The first thought that comes to my mind are the first time triathletes who have been training so hard for this event. I really feel bad for their disappointment. We were all joking about how much we were going to dread the swim, the very technical bike course, and the run after the bike. But now, that the race is canceled, we are overcome with frustration. But we also understand that the race directors have our safety and best interests in mind when making their decision. I'm not really sure how I feel right now. But this doesn't seem like good karma for my race season ...

Barton Springs Rocks!

It's one day to race day and the big event on the agenda today is a morning swim at Barton Springs, a huge spring fed pool right in the city! I had heard about the spring before and was glad that we would get to see it in person. A lot of other TNT'ers from different chapters were already getting their swim workout in, so the National Capital Area Chapter (that's us) decided to go for our run first and then swim afterwards. This turned out to be a bad idea for me since I got so sticky after our run I could hardly get my wetsuit on. And then of course, I got my usual open water swim anxiety due to sighting issues, etc. Eventhough this wasn't a real open water swim, there were no lane lines at the bottom the pool either! I was starting to get nervous about the race and having my usual bouts of inadequacies. But one thing we all agreed on was how great Barton Springs was. Everyone wished there could be a place like that in DC for us to train in.

In the evening we all went to the TNT Pasta Dinner. The dinner was great and was very inspirational. It's no wonder the cause drove me to accomplish my first triathlon. All chapters of TNT participating in this race raised over $900K for the cause. What a great accomplishment!

The inspirational news was disrupted when we headed back to the hotel room after the Pasta Dinner. The race director informed us that the weather predictions were questionable and that they may have to alter the swim course if the rain causes current issues in Town Lake. They will make the call on an hour by hour basis. Well, we shall see what tomorrow will bring ...

We're in Austin!

It has been a long day that started at 4:00 am. I finished packing and headed off to the airport to catch a 6:56 am flight to Austin. All the news reports about how packed the airports were going to be this weekend made me extra paranoid, so I got to the airport extra early but the lines were not too bad. The flight was uneventful and we arrived in Austin around lunchtime. We could feel the humidity as soon as we got off the plane. At least it was overcast so the it wasn't hot at all, just a nice early summer day. After checking into the hotel (we have a great view of the city from our room!), we went to Ironworks to grab some authentic Texas BBQ. It was yummy but a lot of food! We then went back to the hotel to put our bikes together and Christine and I went for a quick ride around downtown Austin to test out our bikes. We rode down past the transition area and across the river and back down to the hotel. It was just a quick ride but I can tell that the bike course will be a fun course (if you can survive the crowd). I'm really looking forward to the race on Monday!

Here comes race weekend!

It's the Thursday before our race weekend for the CapTexTri and I'm getting slightly anxious but really I'm more excited than anything else. I am flying out on Saturday morning (early!) and will be in Austin, TX around lunch time. Yee haw! Then it is a packed agenda of getting our bikes and putting them back together and picking up our race packets. Sunday will be another packed day of checking out the swim course, visiting the expo, and the obligatory pre-race pasta dinner. I hope we can find some time in there to check out Austin, do some shopping and maybe hit the town on Saturday night. :-) Hey, I'm in no danger of winning this race, so there's no reason to not have some fun outside of triathlon on this trip! Monday is of course RACE DAY! Followed by a rocking post race party I'm sure. And then we are headed home. The weekend will go by in a flash! I will have to remember to go fast during the race, but take the time to enjoy the moment and most of all, HAVE FUN!

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A Week Til Race Day

Well, it's a little over a week until my first big race of the season at the Capital of Texas Triathlon. I am flying out Saturday morning with the TNT team and will spend Memorial Day racing in downtown Austin. But before that, I have to get through this weekend, which will be very busy indeed. I am running a 5K with Girls on the Run, I hope my buddy runner doesn't leave me in the dust. :-) But the highlight of the weekend is my Tuscany Cooking class fundraiser on Sunday. It will be a fun time for a good cause! Then I will be packing up my bike and shipping it to Austin. :-( I hope he survives the trip unscathed!

Birth of a Blog

Ok. So I'm giving up on emailing a huge distro list my race reports and have finally set up a blog. It's about time I've adopted some new technology. :-) Hopefully, this will be a more efficient way to keep everyone up to date on what I've been up to. This is the blog's first post so to update you on my 2007 race season, this year my plan is to do three major races:

Capital of Texas Triathlon (Olympic Distance) with Team in Training - May 28
IM 70.3 Newfoundland, Canada (Half Ironman) - July 29
Baltimore Marathon - October 13

My first race is only a month away. Yikes! Well, training has been slow in starting. Even though I'm training with TNT again (make a donation), I have not been able to work out as much as I would like. I'm suffering from other things getting in the way of establishing a good work out routine (mainly laziness). :-) Oh, well. I'll brute force it through Austin and then really buckle down then ...