Skinnyman Triathlon

Skinnyman Triathlon is absolutely my favorite race ever and this year did not disappoint. Combined with visiting my parents and the long holiday weekend it makes for a great few days. My husband, who was also racing, and I headed up to my parents house Friday after work. Thanks to a late work day and all the holiday traffic we got in super late. Race morning came a lot quicker than I would have like. I ate breakfast half asleep and headed up to the race. I couldn’t believe how dark and cold it was on our drive up, a sure sign summer is coming to an end. I put on as many layers as possible and headed over to transition to pick up my packet and get my area set up. This is a small local race so the transition area is first come first serve and luckily I managed to get a decent spot close to bike out. My husband and I did a quick warm-up together, got our wetsuits on and we were off. The water actually felt good since the air was still pretty chilly. The swim was 800m, a longer swim for a sprint, but the lake is gorgeous and clear and always makes for a nice swim. Other than swimming into a boat about 200m into the race the swim went well.I’m not really sure what was going on with the boat but at the time I thought I had been swimming off course a little and that the boat was a little too close to the buoy line. I found out after the race that the boat actually ended up crossing right through all the swimmers. I’m glad I had gotten out in front because many of the swimmers were stuck and had to wait for the boat to go through to continue swimming. Anyway, I came out of the water in 3rd place and headed off onto the bike. This bike course is really challenging with lots of short steep climbs. The long distance athlete in me decided to kick in and it took me until mile 10 to actually start feeling good on the bike. It was also a really windy day so climbing all the hills into a headwind made for a tough ride. Still, I was able to catch the 2 women in front of me by mile 8 and since you never know what is going on behind you I continued to push hard. I entered T2 in first place and headed off on the run. I wasn't sure what to expect with the run course this year since it was new because of construction on the old one. This race always draws great crowds and it was great to have so many people out on the course the cheering, especially since the first part of the run was all uphill. My legs felt really good though and I was really having fun. I hit the turnaround and was finally able to see what was going on behind me. My lead turned out to be about 45sec on the 2nd place woman. With 2 miles to go a figured I’d be safe but you never know. After a few more hills I finally saw the finish line. I pushed hard right to the end and with last 1/2 mile of the run being downhill it was great to come flying through the finish. My 4th year at Skinnyman and my 4th win!