Rumpus in Bumpass – Oly Race Report

Sign up for an early spring triathlon, they said. It will be fun, they said!

They were totally right.

I along with a few of my teammates and my coach completed the Rumpus in Bumpass Olympic tri on Saturday April 21 out at beautiful Lake Anna.

We had heard some rumblings about the swim being cancelled or shortened due to the very chilly water temps – the day before the race, it was 49 degrees. The race director said that if it didn’t get above 51, the swim would be cancelled. Turns out on race morning, the water was a balmy 52 degrees, so they shortened the .9 mile swim to 1100 meters. I learned many new things on race day – the first being that 1100 meters in 52 degree water feels like 100 miles anyway, so we might as well have done the full .9 🙂

An absolutely gorgeous lake swim – even if it could have kept your beer ice cold for you while you swam.

I was racing for the first time with new teammate Roslynn – the same Roslynn who was the person who found me crashed on the side of the road during the OBX Half. There are people in your life that you are supposed to meet and love, and Roslynn is definitely one of those. There are way too many weird things tying us together, not the least of which is meeting while one of us was unconscious, to find out later that we are not only both from Richmond but within 10 miles of each other out in the boonies, and that we have a very close friend in common, who realized that both of us were telling the same crash story to her but didn’t know each other.

Ros trained on her own last year for the Half, and now she’s signed on to IMCHOO and is officially with the TG/TQ crazies. This was our first team race together. It was pretty cool to start and finish a race with both of us conscious!

It also was my first race post-accident, and although I tried not to think about it, it was definitely in the back of my mind the entire time I was biking. Especially when I saw an ambulance on the side of the road with an injured cyclist inside. I hope he is okay, and to you, Mr. Injured Cyclist: I totally get what a shitty day you must have had on Saturday.

Anyway, I carpooled out to the race site with Ros since some a-hole slammed into my bike rack at Target last week and I was nervous about transporting Bessie all the way to Lake Anna on what is probably no longer structurally sound. We were both heading to packet pickup in the cold light of dawn when we heard the dreaded words: “The swim is ON.” After about 30 seconds of wanting to puke, we both got it together. I think Ros said something to the effect of, “Just think of the bragging rights!” Yeah, they would be big, but would I be alive to tell the tale on the other side, or would I be frozen in time in a big Lake Anna ice cube?

I also had the usual pre-race nausea that hits EVERY SINGLE TIME wherein I question not just my sanity, but my place in the universe, my reason for being alive, and find every excuse possible to get out of doing whatever race it is I’m about to do. It usually lasts about 5 minutes and never returns, but I always forget about it until it happens again. I am telling the future racer me that this is NORMAL (for me anyway) and to not take it seriously.

Cyndi, Allison and Teresa showed up shortly after we did. We laughed about the 5,000 pounds of stuff we had for transition. It literally took me longer to set up for this race than any other. I kept packing and unpacking things, going round and round about what clothes you actually need to keep warm on a bike in 44 degree weather after you’ve been swimming in 52 degree water . . . etc etc. When you’ve got winter gloves laid out on your aero bars, you know it’s gonna be interesting.

I was wearing new wetsuit sleeves with my sleeveless wetsuit. My old sleeves were lost (read: carelessly thrown to the wind by me driving with the top down and forgetting they were drying on the side of my car on Wednesday). Unfortunately, they did not fit the same way my original ones did, and I felt like the top of my arm was in some sort of muffin-top inducing rubber sleeve that was squeezing the life out of my bicep. My right arm was already cranky within 2 minutes of putting it on. There wasn’t much time to think about it as it was already time to get in the water for the warmup.

Cyndi is an absolute stickler about pre-race swim warmups and it’s one of the most valuable things I have learned. On Wednesday, Ros and I went to Lake Salisbury for our first OWS of the season. We threw on our wetsuits and jumped in and started swimming. I wasn’t anxious – in fact, I was excited to be back in open water – but suddenly I could not move air from my lungs or into them. I kept coming up to breathe just to find myself gasping. The lack of air movement did cause me to start to panic, and I ended up having to float on my back for a bit and try to get it together. I had forgotten to put ear plugs in, so the ice cold water felt like a needle in my brain. I was dizzy, I was cold, and I couldn’t get the air to move like it normally does. This, folks, is what a very cold OWS feels like when you don’t warm up properly. I was NOT about to make that mistake again, so we got in a few times before the race started. It was very difficult telling myself to move toward the water, let alone get in it – but we all just counted down, threw ourselves in, and got on with it.

After blowing some bubbles and letting the water in the neck of my wetsuit, we swam about 100 meters, came back to the beach, tried to stay warm in the sun, went back out, swam another 100, and you get the idea. I had stupidly forgotten my flip flops and my running shoes were back in transition, which was closed by this point, so my feet were already blocks of ice.

As Allison was getting into her wetsuit, something happened and the zipper broke. She stayed perfectly calm and at one point we laughed because she seemed almost gleeful to get out of the swim (the race organizers had given us all an option to just bike and run if we wanted to skip the swim). No one was able to fix it, but I saw her about 2 minutes before her wave went off suddenly diving back into her wetsuit. She was going to do it with the back of her wetsuit open – because that’s just how bad ass she is! As she ran down the ramp to get in the water, a bunch of women were screaming “YOUR WETSUIT ISN’T ZIPPED UP!” Ros and I told them she knew it already but was going ahead, and we all shook our heads with admiration.

Their wave went off and Ros and I waded into the “older lady” wave with Cyndi. We all started out together, but for some reason I couldn’t ever find my rhythm and was stuck in a wall of other women. I lost them very quickly at the start. Thankfully all the warm ups and the distraction of Allison and her special wetsuit took the nerves out of me, and I had a decent swim. My arm sleeves drove me nuts and by the end of my swim, I had two giant chafe marks under my right arm. My feet went completely numb within the first two minutes of swimming, and the swim seemed to take forever. Sighting was easy on the first part of the course but once I turned into the sun, it sucked and I never got my straight line going after that. By the time I saw the yellow wiggly man at the swim exit, I couldn’t wait to get out of the water. I spent a lot of that swim swearing at myself to just get it done, but I was sad to be so miserable in the water. The swim is usually my favorite part, and Lake Anna was gorgeous. It was just too effing cold to enjoy it.

Swim: 21:55 (disappointing, but not unexpected), 5th in age group

Two men helped pull me out of the water, and it was a good thing because I noticed that everyone around me was staggering around, trying to walk. Thankfully I had remembered ear plugs but everything was so cold, I couldn’t get my legs to move forward. My hands were curled up like claws. Getting into transition was quite amusing. I am pretty sure I looked like Lurch from Addams Family.

Speaking of transition, man, it was ugly. Combine numb fingers and ice block feet with wetsuits, zippers, layers of clothes, bike shoes, jackets and head wraps, and you have the following:

T1: 4:56

All I’m going to say is, I was really cold and everything took twice as long as I think it should have.

The distance between the transition area and the bike mount line was, like, 2 miles or something. Okay, maybe it wasn’t 2 miles but it was definitely the longest I’ve had to push a bike to get out of transition. I was still frozen and dripping water out of my tri shorts into my bike shoes, and everything was starting to burn. I couldn’t wait to get on my bike and get some blood flow back into my legs. I made sure my bike helmet was good to go and managed to get on my bike without tipping over.

For some reason, I swear the course descriptions said that the bike course was flat as well as the run course. It definitely wasn’t flat and there was even one hill that made me consider dropping into my small chain ring (but I didn’t, Cyndi – I swear it!). I loved the bike course – beautiful manageable rollers with spectacular views of the lake mixed with farms and fields and flowers. This race seemed to have a high cyclist douchbag percentage, however – lots of ULTRA SERIOUS ATHLETES blocking, drafting, or passing me when I was passing someone else (effectively putting themselves over the yellow line on a road that was open to traffic), not announcing “on your left” or hell, even grunting loudly. Some of these same dudes have very expensive bikes that make no sound, so I’m always getting the shit scared out of me when they whizz by me in their ULTRA SERIOUS TRI KITS on their VERY EXPENSIVE BIKES and their EXTREMELY FAST RACE WHEELS.

Aside from that, it was a two loop course. The first loop I rode what I would consider aggressively, while still trying to preserve my legs. The second loop I felt very tired, and couldn’t push as hard. I had been having issues with my left foot in my cycling shoe. Even though I had toe covers on, my left foot was completely numb in the shoe. I kept trying to flex it or wiggle my toes and it was so cold, I couldn’t tell if it was moving or not. It didn’t feel particularly good and I absently wondered about frostbite, and was only partly kidding. I don’t remember any part of my body ever being that cold, and I grew up in Northern Michigan. I felt some despair when I would look at my average speed, but I consoled myself by enjoying the views. I also had to put my speed into perspective: I was averaging 17.4 mph, which last year would have been my time trial speed. This year my time trial pace is 19 mph, so I have to acknowledge my improvements, even if they seem small to me. During the OBX Half, I was holding close to an 18 mph pace, and I was hoping to get that during this race.

My favorite thing to report is that NOTHING HAPPENED ON THE BIKE LEG. It was peaceful, pretty, challenging, and accident-free.

Bike: 1:22:03, 6th in age group

When I got back to transition, it was slightly demoralizing to see that I was riding past some guys who were FINISHING THE 10K as I was just starting. I wondered how much I’d have to pay one off to switch places with me.

My left foot was still completely numb, so I pulled off my bike shoe and took a couple of moments to rub it to try to get blood into it. It was an ugly shade of white, so I threw my running socks on and tried to move quickly (quicker???) through T2. It was still pretty ugly, especially since I took some time to drop my wet tri top and get into a dry running shirt. It was totally worth it, though. Putting on my running shoes took FOREVER and I am embarrassed to admit that I left the transition area without my race bib. A hawkeyed volunteer said, “Hey, uh, are you planning to run???” I looked at her like she was insane and said, “Yeah, that’s why I’m running!” She laughed and said, “Don’t you need your race bib???” Oh shit, yes, I definitely do. Ooops. That took another 30-45 seconds to run BACK to transition, get my belt out and on, then go back out again.

T2: 4:03. Sigh.

Within the first 1/2 mile, I was running with a girl named Ann. She had almost exactly the same pace as me. It was her first race of the season, but it was also her first brick of the season. The last time she’d done one was IM Maryland. back in October. So it was humbling to run with this 20-something girl who could just basically not train and still blast out an Olympic while her french braids barely looked mussed. Whatever, it was awesome to have her and she single-handedly refused to let me walk at all, including the water stops. We grabbed water and kept running. I hated the run course – it was also NOT FLAT and it was two loops with some miserable rollers and one legit hill. But because it was so looped, I got to see my teammates multiple times, and I already knew that Teresa was going to get on the podium and I was fairly certain Ros was too.

Sometime around mile 3, blood returned to my left foot along with the realization that I had a blister on it now, but I could also feel the pavement below me and I was, indeed, not frostbitten, I was running, and my pace was below 11:30/min. This was revolutionary. Not only was I still running – I was running at a pace that was comfortable-ish and my body wasn’t screaming at me to stop. My mind was, but that’s always the way.

Because of this wonderful, random stranger named Ann from Maryland, I ran my fastest 10k in I don’t know how long. It wasn’t fast by anyone else’s standards, but it was three minutes faster than Rev3’s Oly in July and it was fast enough to make me happy! Most importantly, it was pretty pain-free.

Coming through the finishers chute and seeing all my teammates there was great, especially since I got to hug everyone. I got my Monster medal and the great news that Teresa had come in 2nd in her age group and Ros had come in 3rd, ate my pizza (race pizza is the best) and soaked up the sun and the joy of being finished – I mean, the joy of knowing that my body did what I needed it to do and I was in one piece. I even survived that swim.

Run: 1:08:34, 11th in age group

Total time: 3:01:29, 7th in age group

It was a great race start to my season, and I look forward to completing Raleigh 70.3. I feel more confident about my ability to pull it off now, though I am about to be out of the country eating and drinking for 10 days 🙂

Cyndi, Teresa, me, Ros and Allison (not pictured: broken wetsuit)