Rev3 OLY Knoxville - Pre Race

After putting 100% more effort into my training in the past 4 months than I have in the past three years, and working through some injuries earlier in the year, I was anxious, excited and VERY READY to race and see where I stand at this point in the season. I had been going through all sorts of emotions in the past few weeks, ranging from excitement about my current fitness, to self-doubt after a few days lacking motivation, to completely clue-less-ness about where I stand. What I did know leading up to race weekend;

1. I was DEAD tired. The first rest week in about 6-8 weeks hit me hard- my body finally had a chance to absorb all the hard effort and it was not happy. Throw in some major work stress (both good and bad) and I did not have the best week prior to race weekend.

2. I have spent more time on the bike at this point of the season than the entire year in 2009. I am more comfortable on the bike, more excited to ride, and committed to improving. Add borrowed race-wheels, and I was pumped to see the progress.

3. My swim has felt GREAT the past few weeks.

4. I am running less miles than I would like, but trusting the coach with the efforts and workouts. Although less miles, my workouts have been solid, and I nailed some hard hill and tempo efforts in the past few weeks. I have also been doing WAY more running off the bike than ever before. I had a solid 'easy' run last weekend after a 3+hour ride where my 'easy' pace has previously been a tempo pace.

My coach wouldn't talk goal times with me. We didn't know the course, and the goal was to race hard, and see where things stood going into Eagleman. I agreed, but in my mind I had one goal, totally arbitrary, and also perhaps setting me up for disappointment: I wanted to run a 45min 10k. I don't know where this number, or the confidence to vocalize this goal, came from. My best 10k previous was 47:29, running off the bike in NYC last year. Coach told me he would be the happiest person in the world if I did this: read: he didn't think I could :)

Flight to Knoxville was easy, left NYC about 4pm after a much-need mental day off from work, arrived at the hotel about 10:30pm. Both my roommate and I, who was also in the OLY, were very ill-informed about any race details. We weren't sure where the expo was, where transition was, where we were meeting the team on Sat - so we just had a carbo-loading picnic on the bed, and went to bed and both enjoyed sleeping in well past our normal wake up calls.

All our questions where answered when we opened our blinds on Saturday morning; we had a full view of the race expo from our hotel window!

Our view from the hotel room!

I got a surprise at the expo: Coach had secured me a lovely, new wetsuit that actually FIT!! I have never had my own wetsuit (always used hand-me downs) and thought I hated swimming in a wetsuit. However, swimming in a wetsuit that FITS and is new and comfy is AMAZING. I had a chance to test it out during the practice swim on Saturday, did a quick spin on my bike, racked, and was ready to race!

My new lovely, sans the sleeves.

I was a little scared of the bike, as a few members of my team had pre-ridden the OLY course, and not only was it quite rolling with a few good climbs, it was TECHNICAL. My coach was taking about taking turns on the tangent, leaning into certain feet, pressing down with my outside hand, and it was freaking me out. I figured, come what may, there was nothing I could do now (except switch out the cassette to give me a few extra climbing gears!!)

All clean, race wheels on, ready for our first race!!