Tupper Lake 1/2 Race Review

I had a great race! I have to state that before I start analyzing everything on what I could have done better. So for me the most important thing I learned from the race is that I am on target in my training and will have a great IM Race. But now on to the details......the swim was typical. I finally got to start in the 1st wave. It consisted of men and women ages 25-29. There seemed to be a lot of aggressive guys at the beginning. I got a good kick in the face and a guys swimming over me trying to get to a group of guys. If you are one of these people that feel like you need to hang on someone to get a good swim....stop. You are way better off sighting yourself and going in the correct direction. I ended up being the 1st female out of the h20 in my wave. I took it nice and easy and avoided getting my heart rate eye. Definitely felt like I good easily have swam the loop twice. Got on my bike and just started pedaling easy. Find a nice comfortable rhythm. Made sure to spin up the hills and not go too hard on the downhills. My goal was to go under 3 hours and I got back in 2hours and 55minutes. Thank you Luke for getting me a new crank. I was so concerned about not being able to spin up the hills with my old gearing system so Luke put his cylcocross crank on my TT bike and it worked like a charm. On to the run. This was my main focus of the race. I wanted to be able to run my 1/2 time that I ran in the spring (2.08) but I also just wanted to feel strong. The transition from the bike to the run went surprisingly well. My back was a little tight but nothing like I felt in training. I had a nice steady pace going. I somehow did not see the mile markers so I wasn't able to get my splits. I started to walk through the rest stops. I felt like I had enough food but I was tired and felt like I let my heart rate was getting to high and then I would walk to get it down. I wish I would have pushed through and not walked. I ended up running around 2 hours and 16 minutes..not too bad, but not what I wanted. The good part was that everyone was saying it was a slower run and had slower times than usual. My overall time was 5 hours and 44 minutes. Best time! I am ready to get back to training and am going to really put in the effort to focus on the bricks and run workouts. Especially running at a hard intensity. http://www.sportstats.ca/display-results.php?lang=eng&racecode=44405&first=&last=gerhart&bibnum=&page=&sortby=place&city=&sizeofpage=200&limit=2000