Here we are before swimming:
Ok, well, David is a little tall. Let's try that again:
Doh! Now I've cut off his chin. Here's my solution:
A little photo editing, and voila! 100% of everybody's faces are in the picture…more or less… (Sorry David)
We started with the swimming. A problem we encountered (like the last time we were there) was the "beach curtain". It's a floating curtain that separates the swimming area from the rest of the lake. You can't swim under it either because it goes to the lakebed. We weren't going to let it stop us though, and after some less than graceful flops (David and Ariel chose the see-saw method and I did the horse mount method—I don't remember what Katie did*) we made it into the lake.
*It's not that I didn't pay attention to Katie, it's just that her focus was not on the flops as much as it was on the weeds.
Speaking of weeds…Cleary Lake is full of them! Katie wasn't happy with this. At one point, I hit a patch of weeds so thick that it just stopped me in my tracks. It just wasn't possible to swim through that patch of weeds, so we had to go around. We ended up swimming most of the course (the buoys weren't out, so we guessed on how far to swim).
We then did a bit of transition practice, and there I realized that I'm not so efficient with the transitions. I dropped my swim cap and goggles, my wetsuit got stuck a bit, and I didn't double-tie my shoes. This is something I needed to practice more (ominous foreshadowing…).
Then we hopped on our bikes to ride the course. I borrowed Katie's slicks and put them on my bike, an WOW, what a difference! I can really notice a big difference in the amount of rolling resistance.
The ride itself was mostly uneventful (Ariel warned us of some roadkill, but it turned out to be a banana). David even had a chance to take a photo (I'm stealing your photo for this blog, David).
David taking the photo—just in case you couldn't tell. Ariel is very visible.
Truthfully, I had no idea David was taking photos. I didn't know he did that until I was tagged in this on Facebook. I think I was concerned with the rumble strips more than anything else.
Well, that was all fine and dandy. We had fun, and I even had the adventure of trying to go to the bathroom in my tri suit. Since it's a one piece suit, it's pretty much impossible to go to the bathroom while wearing it. But, I still love the tri suit, and it's worked great so far.
Remember the ominous foreshadowing? It's true—I needed to practice transitions, and I did just that. Well, kinda. I did a brick workout on Wednesday with a 25 minute bike ride followed by a run. I could practice T2 pretty easily, and I was quick at it. If the actual transition in the race includes opening and closing a garage door, I'm all set.
T1 is where I had my problems. Wednesday night I decided I would look ridiculous in front of my neighbors practice T1 a few times out in the parking lot. I suited up in my tri suit and wetsuit and went out to my garage. There I set up a little transition spot:
Yes, that's a folding chair. No, I don't plan on bringing it to the race—it was so I could put my wetsuit on.
I don't have a lake at my apartment complex. So, I'll admit that someone wearing a wetsuit, swim cap, and goggles may look a bit out of place in the parking lot:
Here was my thinking: it's tough to take a wetsuit off when it's dry, but tough to put it on while wet. If I could successfully take it off while dry, then I should have no trouble in the race when I'm wet. And, since I was dry, I could practice this a few times. It didn't work out that way, though. I made a bit of a video to show you why:
Yup, it started raining. So, I got wet enough where I couldn't get the suit back on, but it wasn't wet enough to help me in getting it off. So, I fumbled through one T1 practice, and called it a night. I'm hoping I'll have better luck on Saturday.
I'll post tomorrow with my thoughts on race strategy.
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