Wildflower 2007 come and gone

Megan and I pre-race...even though we're track buddies, she kicked my butt on the run. You go, girl!

So I don't really have time for a full report right now. Just couldn't wait to put up a picture from the weekend. Race went well overall, and I love my triathlete friends. They are just some of the coolest people!

Summary of the pluses/minuses of the weekend:

Pluses:

• Improved swim by a minute (prob could've been faster if it wouldn't have been for the full-contact sport that the swim turned out to be, due to the fact that the Team In Training wave started right before mine...that's another blog entry though)
• Improved run by 5 minutes (I also wasn't cramping and dying the way I did last year...)
• Didn't dehydrate too badly in spite of the fact that it was 90+ degrees and my run began at 12:15 p.m.
• (Mostly) had fun.
• Megan and I were together up through T2...then she flew past me on the run, which did not surprise me. :)
• Fueled well
• Felt good for all of the race...or as good as one can feel climbing up crazy hills in really hot weather after swimming and biking.
• In spite of a few difficulties, still placed 18/270 and beat time from last year by 3 minutes.
  
• Best of all, I crossed the finish line with a smile on my face and not a grimace, and could stand easily as they took my timing chip off my ankle. That felt nice.
  

Minuses:

• Learned that the cleats I bought for my Look pedals are actually slightly smaller than the previous cleats I had on (as apparently they know have a newer Look pedal that takes slightly smaller cleats...of which I was unaware up until yesterday), so I spent 24.5 miles concentrating not as much on climbing over hills with quick cadences and hammering on the downhills, but instead on keeping my feet steady so that they wouldn't fly out of the pedals (which they still did numerous times). I initially thought it would be miserable but it could've been worse.

• Learned later from my friends that there is apparently a 'trick' to getting your chain back onto your gears when it drops without having to actually dismount your bike and put it back on. Too bad I didn't know that DURING the bike.

• Overall probably lost about 1 - 1.5 minutes on the bike due to trying to fix pedals/chain, as well as another minute (at least) of simply being slowed down due to not being able to pedal as swiftly as I'm used to - lost momentum quite a number of times due to feet flying out of pedals. That got old after awhile. These minutes lost meant that I probably could've placed higher.

• Unfortunately had to be behind Team In Training wave - that was a DEFINITE minus.

As my friend John Murphy put it, "that's why you keep coming back." He's right...though I'm not sure about going back to Wildflower for a few years. That race is CRAZY! More later...