I'm Breezy!

So I went down to the Breezy Point Triathlon last weekend and . . . (drumroll please) . . . I finished all three events! I rode to victory on my brand new fancy front tire. (And by victory, I mean I finishing 39/63 in my age group and 440/593 overall with a time of 1:43:07:30.) My favorite part of this tri (besides NOT panicking in the swim and NOT getting a flat tire on the bike) was wearing my new DC Tri Club uniform. People who don't even know me would yell things like "Go DC Tri!" It's so much more fun when you have people to cheer you on.
My swim time was 20:49:80, which actually is a vast improvment from my 19:38 time at Luray. The swim course there was only a 1/2 mile (750m), while this one was a full 1K. According to this swim pace calculator, my time for a half mile would have been about 16:00 minutes. Additionally, I paced myself and sited properly this time so I didn't panic and actually felt good when emerging from the water.

In my age group, I finished 30th on the swim, and was ranked 40th on the bike and 47th on the run. Since my final rank was 39, only 9 fellow female 25-29 year olds passed me once I got out of the water. I guess that's not too shabby.

I remember chatting with a woman I worked with briefly in Corpus Christi right before I did my first race in Austin last year. She was a hard core triathlete -- she started doing ironmans on a whim and didn't take long before she qualified for Hawai'i. Anyway, she coached swimming before going to law school, so the swim was obviously her best event. She totally cracked me up when she was telling me that during her first ironman, as she was starting the bike ride everyone who passed her would yell "Nice swim!" She said that she must have been really slow on the bike ride (well, comparatively) because at Mile 75 people were still yelling out "Nice swim!" I always think of that when the usual hordes of people pass me as soon as I get on my bike. So whenever someone whizzes by me at mile 8, I think to myself, "Wow, I must have really kicked your ass on the swim if you're just now passing me!"

Small world report -- this hardcore ironwoman triathlete, Heather, worked for one of the magistrate judges in CC and left around the same time as I did because her husband was in the service and was transferred to somewhere on the East coast. Anyway, when I checked the results for Breezy Point, I noticed that she was there and won the open women's division!
Next race: Sunset in New Jersey on July 22, 2006.