Esprit De She Eve

I had my first tri of the year a few weeks ago that I need to write up a review about (my first Olympic distance!), but tomorrow is my first sprint of the year. Actually then after this my only other race is the 70.3 in October. I'm pretty excited to get a few weeks off tri training and get back in the weight room for awhile.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this race tomorrow, the Esprit De She. This is its inaugural year which is pretty exciting. It's a women's only tri (or duathlon or 5k) which is kind of cool. The last race I did was pretty huge with three different distances, so it was kind of crazy to see such a small transition area today. I'd guess there are less than 1,000 women participating. My bib number is 123 which the husband and I think is pretty cool. I like interesting bib numbers, what can I say.

It's a little weird because this is the first race of any kind I've ever done where I don't know anyone else doing it. With the tris I've done I haven't ever done a leg of them with someone I knew doing the race, it was all solo, but it was still nice knowing that I knew other people out on the course. Most runs I've done with someone by my side (except the last Rock and Roll Half in January, but I knew the husband was ahead of me somewhere and a girlfriend of mine was probably within half a mile or a mile of me). It'll mostly be weird getting my transition area set up and then having no one to hang out with or talk to while waiting for the race to start. The husband is bringing the boys for the race, and they're planning on being there the whole time which is awesome. My mom is going to be at the finish line, too, which I'm super excited for because she's never been able to see me finish any kind of race, even though she's tried many times! I'm hoping my boys will cross the finish line with me because I love seeing that, and I want them to know how awesome it feels.

My previous sprint time wasn't that great, so I'm hoping to improve by a few minutes. Here's how it looked for the one I did in September:

Swim - 20:38
T1 - 2:10
Bike - 45:26
T2 - 2:19
Run - 38:36
Total - 1:49:09

That's a horrible swim time for a 750m swim. I'm hoping to come in around 17 minutes on the swim. I think it's totally attainable because I did a 1500m swim at the Olympic in 35 minutes. My transition times are probably going to be about the same. My average speed on the bike that race was 16.27 MPH. I'd like to be around 17 MPH, but that will partly depend on wind and other conditions. There are a lot of turns in the course which sucks, and it's two loops of a six mile course. Ugh. I hate looping. So if I can keep my speed around 17 MPH, I can shave a few minutes off of that. My run pace worked out to be 12:27. That's maybe a minute slower than I usually run, so I could potentially gain three more minutes there if I really bust ass and make myself run the whole time. I've fallen out of love with running recently, so the run portion is my biggest concern. I walked quite a bit in my last sprint because of some shoe issues, and I know that won't be the case this time, so I'm hoping for a better pace.

So all in all I could potentially cut up to eight minutes off my previous sprint time. I'm not going to hold my breath that it happens, but I really hope I can finish with a better time. I decided during the Olympic that I really didn't care what my time ended up being because it's pretty bad ass that I'm out there doing triathlons in the first place. Granted it was to partly appease myself because I was so over the whole thing and just wanted to be done and didn't care how long it took me. I decided I didn't even care if I was last because at least the person in last place still finishes, right?

My bag is packed, my tri suit is ready to be donned in the morning, my Garmin is charged. I've done hardly zero training since my race a few weeks ago, my nutrition today wasn't the best, and I've been fighting an obnoxious little cold all week. But hopefully none of that matters and I completely rock this race tomorrow!  Oh, and if nothing else, there's a mimosa bar after you cross the finish line, so at least I have that to motivate me along!