Yesterday I competed in my third NYC Triathlon and it was an awesome race! I had a rough race last year due to choppy waters so I was pretty nervous going into it this year. Luckily, it was a perfect day for racing and I finished with my best time, 2:54:58, beating my personal record by 5 full minutes!
Here’s a lil recap of how it all went down:
Saturday at bike-drop off along the Hudson
MM left me beautiful flowers that I found when I woke up on race morning. Makes the 3:30am wake-up call little bit nicer.
Here’s me in the lobby of my building, heading out to the race at 4:15am. Like my tattoos?
Before the race you need to set up your transition zone at your bike (needs to be completed by 5:15am). Here is mine, really represented well by my previous employers (towel by Bravo, bag by Lucky). There are a lot of things to remember and set up in a good order at the transition zone (spin shoes, run shoes, goo for energy, water bottles, helmet, sunglasses, bike gloves, socks, race number).
The race starts super early and when you are competing, you need to be there even earlier. The upside is you get a great morning view of the Hudson River. These pictures don’t due it justice, it was really beautiful.
Everyone lining up, preparing to start.
MM came super early to cheer me on in the swim portion of the race. I got in the water at 6:20 am and he was there!
SWIM:The 1-mile swim in the Hudson was tolerable. The water was super gross and I don’t remember so much debris in previous years. Like swimming into logs and sticks along the way, and probably lots of trash. I’ll try not to think about that though. The water was very calm and had a nice current pulling us towards the finish, so aside from the dirty water, no complaints. Swimming is not my thing but I am proud of myself for sticking with freestyle most of the way (a little breast stroke thrown in there). The swim took me 21 minutes.
BIKE:After the swim is a long run to our bikes, like super long, barefoot in a wetsuit and not fun at all. Anyways, I jumped on my bike and headed north for many miles, then looped back around to West 57th Street, then back to West 72nd where the transition zone was. The ride is 26 miles and I’m not such a speed demon on the bike, so I wasn’t really flying through the course, but I made it through with no problems. My bike ride took 1:35:53
RUN:The run is my best part of the race. After dropping your bike off at transition zone you run from West 72nd and the River over to Central Park (via 72nd street) and run the northern loop of Central Park, totaling 6.2 miles. By the time we were running it was HOT out but it’s very motivating to know that after 2 hours of hard work, you are nearing the finish line. I like the run because it’s all about you. In the swim, the water can be choppy, you can get kicked by other swimmers, etc (there are just things you cannot control), and on the bike ride you could get flat tire, have bike issues, crash (all things that didn’t happen to me, but could have! And that makes me nervous) but by the time you are running, pending you don’t get a cramp or something, all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other and finish. I felt like I was moving in slow motion through the run but tried to push myself through the exhaustion. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that I ran my fastest race ever, with a pace of 7:59. I’ve been trying to break the 8 min pace for a while and really have no idea how I managed to do it during a triathlon. My final run time was 49:30.
Overall I ranked 1,649 overall (out of 3,500+) and ranked 284th from the women racing (out of 1,130). My run was my best placement, coming in 668 out of all the racers.
All-in-all, a great race! More pictures coming soon.
