Alligator Creek

It's been a busy racing season and I finally found a spot to schedule in a triathlon.  The Alligator Creek Triathlon is in O'Fallon, MO barely 15 minutes from my front door.  So I registered and was assigned a 53:30 time offset for my swim start.  On race morning, I arrived a few minutes before 7:00, about an hour early.  I grabbed all my gear and headed to the bike racks.  I always use a 5 gallon bucket to carry my gear in, then it doubles as a stool when I change shoes.  When I walked up through the transition area, I think I got the last available space on the bike racks.  Anyone that got there later than I did had to lean their bike on the fence or on the ground.

Once my spot was all set up I went to get body marked, then waited for my swim start.   It was set up as a sepentine 300 yd swim.  A new swimmer went into the water every thirty seconds.  My time was called and off I went. 

I was one of the worst swimmers for years, but right before the Branson 1/2 IM last year something clicked for me, and I finally started swimming instead of fighting drowning.  I ended up doing this swim in 6:05.  Still slow, but my fastest ever.  Also the first time I ever passed anyone in the water.

The bike course was great, one lap, 18 miles and pretty hilly.  Police and volunteers at every intersection, I never even had to tap the brakes for car traffic.

The run started out the same road as the bike, then went out through a subdivision for a one lap hilly 5K.  Just like the bike leg, the course was well marked and there were volunteers at every intersection and two water stops.  Never a question over which way to go.

The finish line was on a bike path in the park.

At the race pavillion finishers were well fed with Pantera's pizza and O'Fallon Gold beer.  The beer was so good.  It is one of my favorites.

While i was chowing down on pizza, a woman with a beagle on a leash went by.  This dog had to be about 100 yrs old.  He stopped the woman and started barking at me, in that way only old beagles do  (Baaaarrraaaaaarrrrr).  Too funny. 

Why does every race seem to have at least one person with their helmet on backwards?  Haha I got this picture as she finished the bike course. 

This was a great event and if I get a hole in the schedule next summer I will definitely fill it again with this race.

Next week is the St Louis Urban Assault!  Watch for the report on it soon.

Tri-Shark Triathlon 2011

Training for long races, like an Ironman or 50K trail run, takes its toll on the body. The long endurance training wears your body down and it also makes you slower. If you haven’t done a lot of long endurance training you probably don’t believe this. When training for long races you slow your pace down because you need to be able to finish the workout, not go fast. So you never train your body to go fast, just to go long.

Well, this is the root of my current problem. I have spent the last year and a half training for long races, now when I want to do a few short triathlons, I find out that my body doesn't want to go fast. It doesn’t care that it’s a short race, it is used to going slow for a long time, not going fast for a short time. And let me tell you this, when my body decides it doesn’t want to do something there is nothing my mind can say to make it do it.

Here I am, ready to compete in handful of short triathlons this summer and I can’t talk my body into moving fast enough. So this is the story of a slow body and a fast race.

I have completed in the Tri-Shark Triathlon 11 times now. The race is a very popular, it’s held in a small town near Bloomington, IL. The race always fills in just hours and draws many big Tri Clubs from, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Iowa. Let me say this, those big city clubs have really fast racers. I have never placed better than 4th at this race, but they go 5 deep in the bigger age groups, so I have won schwag in the past. I was once again hoping for a top 5 finish, but with the speed problem, I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. I just went to the race and hoped for the best.



The day started off hot, it was 80 degrees at 6:30 am when I was being body marked and racking my bike for the race.


I found a good spot on the end of the rack and I was close to the run out and to the swim in. The announcer let everyone know that the water temp was 71, so wet suits would be allowed. After setting up my gear at the bike rack, I went back to my car to rest for a few minutes in the shade, I had gotten a really good parking spot under a tree, unfortunately is was also right next to a couple port-a-johns, so it was cool, but didn’t smell so good.


It didn’t take long for the smell to get to me, so I walked down to the water and got a picture of the swim course, it sure looked like a long way around the buoys, but the race director swears it was only 600 meters. I climbed into my wetsuit, which took forever to pull on since I was sweating so much it was sticking to me, but I finally got it on and went for a short warm-up swim. Things seemed to be working well and the cold water felt good. We were called out of the water for the pre-race meeting and then the life guards took their kayaks out to man thier post along the swim route.


I had to stand in the sun with my wetsuit on for about 25 minute before wave 6 started. When I found out I was in wave six I thought that was going to be a good thing, but soon found out that I was wrong. Six was the second to the last wave and it seemed to have hundreds of people in it. Really there may have been about 60, still it felt crowded. Standing in the cool water waiting for the start felt good, because for the last 25 minutes I had been melting in the sun in that wetsuit. The horn sounded and we were off, this was my first open water swim of the year and I was not having fun. I think 10 people swam over me in the first 200 meters and I was hanging to the outside, I would have hated to have been in the middle. I was kicked and hit too many times to count, I think I was on the verge of hyperventilating. I had to start breathing every stroke to try and get my head back in it. After about 400 meters I started to feel better and finished strong, the problem was I had lost so much time in the first 400 meters that my swim time was really going to drag me down.

I came out of the water and ran up the hill where a volunteer stripped my wetsuit off me in about 5 seconds, it was fantastic, I have to thank that guy! I ran to transition quickly put on my shoes, helmet and glasses and headed to the bike out. The bike out was way at the other end of transition, it seemed like I ran in my bike shoes forever to get to the bike mount line. Finally I was on my bike, the rest of the race would be gravy now. HAHA, I really wanted to believe that, but somewhere in my mind, I knew it wasn’t true.


The wind was really strong and I had a cross wind or head wind for most of the race, but I was keeping a good pace. A beetle flew in my mouth at about 3 miles and I hacked up about half of it then washed the rest down with Gatorade. I was passing people, tons of people, trying to get back what I lost in the swim. The rule is once you are within 3 bike lengths of the person in front of you, you have 15 seconds to pass, otherwise if you get caught you will get a penalty for drafting. Sometimes I would have to put the hammer down and pass 3 or 4 people in a row, but I felt pretty good and just kept passing people. A motorcycle with a referee was zipping around the course writing down numbers for drafting penalties. I didn’t get any though. I finished the bike strong, changed to running shoes, grabbed a Honey Stinger waffle and ran out.


I got about half of the waffle down and couldn’t eat anymore it was just too hot to eat. I grabbed two cups of water at each water stop. I poured one over my head and drank the other. The run was an out and back all in the hot sun on rolling hills. I wish I would have grabbed my visor to put on, I don’t know what I was thinking when I forgot that. I started passing people right away and kept passing them for the entire run. I really thought my run was going to be fast, but when I finished, I found out just how slow it really was. I was not very happy about it. I looked at the preliminary results and saw that I was 7th. I figured since everyone in my age group started in the same swim wave, my place wouldn’t change. Not top 5, that is what I was really shooting for, but hey, the sun was shinning and I was outside, way better than being on the couch watching TV.


I hoofed it over to the massage table and the poor guy had to put his hands all over my sweaty, smelling body, I really did feel sorry for him, but not enough to forgo the massage. I bet he worked on other people who smelled way worse than me, so maybe it didn’t bother him much. I bet he took a long shower when he got home from the race.

After the massage I headed for the food, grabbed an Avanti’s sandwich, if you don’t know what that is, it’s only the best place in all of Bloomington to eat. They have this great bread and the sandwiches are love at first bite. I also got a couple cookies, an orange and a diet coke. I was so hungry, it felt like a feast. I grabbed all my stuff and headed to the car to pack up and head into Bloomington.

It just so happens that the Edwardsville High School baseball team was playing in the IHSA sectional game there, and my girls were at the game, so I headed over to watch. I took some great pictures at the game and they won, which means they are now headed to the super sectionals and if they win they will go on to compete for the state title. Good Luck Tigers!

My niece just happened to be in a basketball tournament across the street from the baseball field, so I was able to run over and see one of her games also, I took more great pictures there.

Oh, and on a good note, when I got home, I checked out all the race results and found that I had the 6th fasted bike time and 4th fastest run time for my age group. Even with a horrible run time, I still did ok, which means that everyone was struggling with the heat, not just me.

Summer IM Break

The team took a break at the end of August/beginning of Sept to get in some individual events.  Robin went to Louisville to compete in IM Louisville.  You can read her report about racing 140 miles with a broken foot in 107 degree heat on the mountain girl blog.  And I went to Branson, MO for the inaugural Branson 70.3 IM.  I'm not writing a big ol report on this one, just didn't end up with any big stories to tell.  Don't get me wrong though, it was a great race, the city of Branson and the IM organization went all out, a four-lane highway was closed for the bike, and the beach, lake and transition areas couldn't have been better.  It just didn't have that tough, gritty, risky, feeling of an Adventure Race.

Set up my two transition areas the afternoon before the race, the bike area was HUGE

The night before the race Branson hosted a welcome concert on the landing.  We watched while anchored on the lake until the fog got to thick to see anything.

I was not ready for the total chaos that the bike transition turned into on the morning of the race.  Luckily I had everything set up the day before, so all I had to do was make sure nothing got moved overnight.

Then it was time to start, I had been fearing this swim for months and it was for nothing.  I went into the water and found this perfect rythum.  I was at the far turn-around before I knew it.

It had gotten kind of foggy and hard to see to the next bouy from the water.

I was out of the water and running up the beach still amazed at how quick and easy the swim had gone

It started getting warmer out on the bike.  The hills in Branson were not especially steep, but they sure were long.  This pic was on the four-lane highway that the city had completely closed to traffic for the race.  The aid stations were all stocked with power-somethings.  Good thing I had Honey Stingers in my jersey.

By the time I got to the run it was hot.  It was in downtown Branson and the buildings blocked any breeze there might have been.  Luckily the aid stations were well stocked with ice, so I filled my pocket at every chance.

IM70.3 finisher!  Next year I'll do it faster.