Hawk Island Triathlon
The Hawk Island Triathlon was my very first race, the race that started it all! It is so much fun to come back to my first race, especially with so many athletes racing for the first time, just like I did so many years ago. It is also great fun to race in my own backyard with one of my biggest supporters, Jon from BikeWorks, present. With my husband sidelined for another week due to his knee injury and my dad saving his energy for the Olympic next weekend, I had quite the group of fans today!
One of the best parts of race day is getting to see so many of my friends! Kate Vann seems to be following me around this year (just kidding!) and it was great to race alongside her again. I also got to catch up with a former Lansing Triathlon Team teammate, Angie Spayde. Playmakers was also well represented today by Alec Womboldt and Jake Crowe. The Lansing Triathlon Team was also well represented and it was great to meet their new members. I also had the opportunity to catch up with a friend from medical school, Katie Donahue.
I wanted to start this race off fast and keep it fast to see if I could lower my course record from last year, which was 56:00. I received my Xterra Vendetta sleeveless on Friday and I was so excited to race in it! This is one super fast, super buoyant sleeveless wetsuit! Thanks to my new wetsuit, I had the second fastest swim of the day out of both men and women! Not too shabby for a girl who learned how to swim the winter before my first race!
Due to the windy conditions, I opted to borrow my dad’s ProLite 404 front wheel as opposed to the Zipp 808. I still rode a Zipp disc in the back, mostly because I love how cool a disc looks and sounds! The wind was at my back for the first half of the bike and I made sure to take advantage of the strong wind while I had it! Of course, far too soon it was time to turn into the headwind and fight back to transition. Thanks to Jon, my aero position on my Felt DA is super low and super fast even into strong winds. I focused on keeping my cadence high and getting back to transition.
After having such a great 5K time at my last triathlon, I really wanted to replicate that effort. I pushed harder on the bike today, so I was hoping my legs weren’t too toasted! Lucky for me, they definitely weren’t! Or maybe my training is paying off! I went out fast, trying to keep up with the men or catch as many of them as I could. I felt strong and held my pace through the run to finish with a 5K time of 19:02! I lowered my course record to 53:32 and finished 1st Overall woman and 6th Overall of men and women.
Kate Vann had a great 5k time to finish 2nd Overall and my former teammate and friend Angie Spayde had a strong race to round out the podium at 3rd Overall. Alec Womboldt coupled a strong bike with a super fast run to finish 1st Overall. Nathan Kark, a Lansing Triathlon Team member, put together a solid race to finish 2nd Overall and Eric Abbott, a member of the CMU Triathlon Team, had a great bike and finished 3rd Overall.
I learned some things that need a little work, like my transition which continue to be a little too slow. But it was a beautiful morning, a great race and the perfect sharpener for the Olympic in Grand Rapids next weekend!
