xterra richmond - way to go , grace!

Whenever I ride and do stupid things (which is quite often) I call myself grace, you know, way to go grace.

Yesterday I did xterra richmond and I lost count of thenumber of times I said this to myself. Let's start at the beginning. The swim is in the James river, light current, shallow water - 1-6 feet deep. Check out the link above to see photos of the boulders that are strewn throughout the river (and hence the swim course), and even the 'Mayan' ruin like thing we had to climb on the run. Anyways, the swim was wave starts, which was awful for me! Pros first, 2 minutes later were men 15-35, 2 minutes later were men above 35, 2 minutes later were women and relays. So, not only did I have the pleasure of trying to navigate lots of slower men who had a head start, since I couldn't take decent lines, I was swimming into boulders all the time. Most of them would just brush right under me, one I swam right up onto. The orange cone sitting on it was not supposed to be a magnet attracting me to it, but rather a warning to stay away from it. But my mind was not thinking except to get around the men, and I beached myself on it. The kayakers must have had a good laugh at that! WAY TO GO GRACE! I finished the swim with lots of abrasions on my arms chest. Not pretty. Then the run to T1 was .25-.5 miles long. No big deal except for the rocks you have to run over. ANd I mean a good solid 50 feet of those big chunky 2inch gravel pieces laid down for pavement. Many people stashed shoes at the swim to wear, but not me. Oh no, I had to do it barefoot - WAY TO GO GRACE! Then onto my sweet little mountain bike for a pretty technical 18+ mile course. The biggest problem was since the men had a head start on the swim I had even less of a lead on them so the first hour of the bike was jam packed with people. I stopped counting the number of crashes I had. One time I wiped out, got up and thought my handlebars seemed weird, and the front wheel and bars were completely turned around and I was sitting on my bike with them backwards! WAY TO GO GRACE! So, like I said, many crashes, none of them bad. Lots of dabbing, and several places I had to get off the bike and walk - a couple of steep switchbacks I didn't make it down, 3 short steep uphills that were littered with people - many times it was people in front of you that prevented you from riding something, and unfortunately I probably kept a few people from riding things - but that's mountain biking - crazy, fun, stressful, tiring - just so different from riding on the road. I should also mention that there werethese small bridges that cross the river so people can ride and walk across. And they all had these ridiculous stairs to climb. So around mile 3 we climbed the first, carrying our bikes, up 10 flights of 10 stairs each. Then ride singletrack, techincal sections, fun sections, crowded sections. This trail had everything you can imagine - and its right in the middle of a city. I wish our trails around here offered more variety. The more I get to ride other trails, I see more things I'd like to see on our local trails. Oh well, we did get to carry our bikes down the stairs next. Then more riding, and back up one more time - yep! That was F.U.N. FInally into t2, and I saw a gal who I met form Purdue, she cheered me along. I fumbled with my race belt for some reason, and my socks were full of sand and I tried to decide if I should empty them or just run. I opted for just run, and have a few blisters to show for that. But the run was pretty flat, except for more climbing up stairs to cross a foot bridge. A climb up the mayan ruin like structure, which was a hand and foot climb up a 75 foot steep hill with railroad ties every three feet to grab onto. One very cool section of the huge boulders that you scamper across, then climb up a ladder bolted into a wall. Then some trails, one long climb on the trails, back up to the footbridge and the finish. I was 3rd in my AG. I won't do this race next year. The swim is too short, and its too far to drive, and it was way to difficult to do two A races two weekends in a row (Pelham then Richmond). Difficult to recover from Pelham, and then figure how to train for Richmond. Too bad, because the Richmond bike course has tons of room for improvement for me!

My running is pretty slow now. I'll be adding some speedwork next because I was just plodding along. My overall pace was 9min miles, which probably meant I was running 8:30 pace when I could actually run, and that just won't cut it.

And my swimming sucks too. So, I have to bump the swimming up starting NOW.

I'm happy to be home.