May 5-7, 2006
I can't believe that it is this time again; Wildflower Triathlon Festival is here. Jay, Sprocket and I got down there early on thursday morning to give ourselves a day extra to relax and get comfortable down there.
Friday was spent dying my hair pink before giving a transition clinic on the main stage. It was sponsored by Tri-Zone and it went really well. I even had a woman come up to me the day after and said that my tip about baby powder really worked and she thanked me for an informative clinic!
I felt confident going into this race despite the fact that I believe I was somewhat undertrained.
I was on my new Felt F1C for only a week prior to this race, so wasn't sure how I was going to feel on my new set-up. I got down the the transition area about 7:10am and put it together only to realize I forgot my wetsuit back at camp...so, I made my run warm up back to camp got my suit and ran down. Then I guess the majority of the women racked in the wrong spot...so, we had to move our gear down the rack a bit; no big deal. 
I was a bit nervous and just wanted to start. I got a small swim warm up in, but nothing much as they called us out of the water pretty quickly. We started 5 minutes after the men and I felt pretty good. I was able to get with a pack of women and hang with them. 
I felt a bit choppy and tried to relax. I noticed that our pack caught up with a few women just ahead of us just prior to the exit. I had a pretty good swim and exited at 27:07. It took me a few seconds to find my wetsuit cord and 
get the top half of it off, but managed pretty well once at T1. I ran out towards the mount line and was off on the bike. I was on a mission to catch a few women who I "normally" can ride faster than, but it wasn't going to be my day on the bike. The longer I rode, the harder if got, both physically and mentally. I didn't have enough time on the new bike to be comfortable with it and as I said before I was undertrained on the bike. I did the best I could despite the fact that I wanted to not race triathlon again (thoughts come and go on a ride like this and that was one of them). I was slower on the bike this year by 9 minutes! My legs felt heavy and sore and my low back felt on fire! I honestly couldn't wait to get off the bike. I was excited when I did after a time of 2:56!
I felt so much better on the run and I had a goal to catch 6 women. I had no idea what place I was in and I just wanted to try to be in the top 10 ( I didn't think I was there when I started the run). I felt strong on the run and my attitude changed to the positive and I was glad I was racing now!
I was able to catch 3 women and tried my hardest to catch 2 more with 4 miles to go; unfortunately I wasn't able to, but I did run myself into 10th place with a run time of 1:31 and a total time of 4:57...At least it was under 5 hours!! For complete results go to www.tricalifornia.com. 
The weather was great. It started out foggy and cold and eventually warmed up about half way through the bike. It never got too hot out there and I was thankful for that considering we haven't had hot weather to train in.
At 3:45pm on Saturday, I was once again on the main stage as part of the Power Bar Nutritional Panel. Scott Tinley was the announcer and Cam Widoff, Chris Lieto, Kim Loeffler, Tim (sorry, can't remember his last name) and Julie Upton (Nutritionist) and I were on the panel. Please visit www.powerbar.com for information on nutritional goodies!
Jay had a good swim and bike but pulled out before the run due to getting sick the week before the race and a small piriformis injury. Dad placed 8th in the long course on Saturday and 3rd in the olympic distance on Sunday and mom placed 5th on Saturday's long course.
I leave for Honolulu on friday May 12 and will be racing on Sunday the 14th. It's a PanAmerican Cup ITU and you can look at results at www.honolulutriathlon.com.
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