Race morning was a very early 3am wake up call, kind of miserable if you ask me. And leaving the house in rain doesn't help matters. I was in a pretty yucky mood all morning, through transition set up, the one mile walk up the Hudson and then the hour + wait in the pouring rain all added to the stank face. The race start got delayed because a car flipped over on our bike course and caused an oil slick and left a lot of debris, so we just hung out waiting for the go ahead. Once the race started, it moved pretty quickly. I gave Doug a hand hug as he headed off and then my wave was about 15 minutes after that.
Oh man, a 3am wake up call does not look good on me.
The swim was nutty. It's known as one of the fastest Olympic distance swims because you are going with the current of the Hudson River. This year, we still had a pretty good current, but we also had a head wind that caused major waves coming right in your face. I'm talking 2-3 foot waves hitting you in the face with nasty Hudson sludge water...not fun. I doggy paddled a fair amount to get around panicked swimmers who were getting plucked and saved from the water left and right. By the end of the swim I was feeling nauseous from being bounced around so much. *(edited to add - 2 people ended up dying in the swim and over 30 people had to be taken out of the water and put on rescue boats) After getting out of the water it was a 1/2 mile barefoot run to the transition area to pick up my bike.
I looked at this at every transition and it kept my spirits high
Unfortunately, I forgot what rack my bike was in (probably because I racked it at 4:30am and it was still dark out), so I ended up having to run around looking for it. Not a great use of time. Once I actually found my bike and got moving, I felt pretty good. The rain had left some pretty good size puddles on the highway that didn't give me any problems, but I know a bunch of people crashed out of the race by hitting a pothole in the middle of the puddle. On the way back we had a pretty good head wind, but the rain had stopped and the sun started creeping out, so it wasn't too bad.
Oh there you are!
The run was awesome. I started out feeling good and other than being out of breath and quite pooped near the end, I held my pace and did a 10K PR of 45:48! I ended up seeing Doug with 1/4 mile to go to the finish, so I crept up behind, scared him and then kicked it into my last gear to finish strongly. He was hurting pretty badly, so didn't want to go with me. Luckily, we still finished really closely to each other, so we recovered for a few and hit the road!
Somehow the genius camera person got a picture of the two of us together on the final stretch of the run.
I ended up finishing 8th in my age group and 16th overall for women, which I was happy with. NYC is always a tough race with stiff competition, so to be in the top 10 was great for me. It also qualified me to race in the championships of some sort in Des Moines, Iowa...umm, yeah, I'm going to take time off work, spend a lot of money to travel and I'm going to go to Iowa? I don't think so. (Spell check doesn't register Des Moines as a real place either).
Doug finished in the top 1/3 of his age group and overall men without training at all for this race. Turns out he's a really good big wave swimmer!
This is the most prep Doug had done in a few weeks for this race!
All in all, it was a good weekend for the Jamison's.
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