Superfrog 70.3

(Watch the Video link to see some of the course!)

It is hard to find the words to describe this race. The people who competed in it were some of the most mentally tough people I have ever raced against. Going into it, I knew that I would have to give it my all to even come close to earning a Military Slot to the IM World Championships in 2016. 

Prior to the race start, I was absolutely overwhelmed by all of the wonderful people that reached out to me wishing me luck, be it long time or new friends, or simply people I conversed with in passing. I am very blessed to have so much support and so many people wanting to see me succeed. All of the familiar faces out on course definitely made for a really fun day!

The race started on Silver Strand Beach with a rather intimidating swim course that involved 2 loops of open ocean swim with a rather long (~200m) sand sprint between them. We had to dive through the waves at the start before we got to smoother water. I have been working very hard on improving my swim stroke, but the speed won't be coming anytime soon! Despite the challenge of sighting in waves, I felt very comfortable in the water. 

Leading into the race, I decided to race without a watch, meaning that I would have no ability to check my speed or data throughout the day. It is very liberating and allows me to simply focus on how I feel. I sprinted through transition with my bike, as I had the longest to run with it since it was set up in a single long column parallel to the beach and I was by the run out. Once on my bike, I immediately started hammering the pedals to try to catch up with my competition. I caught the person I was using as my reference around the 2nd loop of the 4-loop course and then worked hard to put as much of a gap between us as possible. It was flat, and the winds could have been much worse, so I managed to post a pretty decent bike split despite losing my aerobar pad on the 4th loop and resting my elbow on carbon fiber. 

Coming into T2, I immediately took a pit stop since I had chugged water to avoid becoming too dehydrated on the run. We immediately turned onto the beach for the first 2 mile+ segment of beach running which we would repeat 2 more times (6+ miles of beach running in total). I was so inspired by all of the other competitors, my cheering friends, and the knowledge that no matter how hard it is to run in the sand, everyone had to do it. The run really gave me appreciation for the fact that the Navy SEALS designed this course! After we left the sand via a section of super soft, uphill sand leading back to pavement, I was very grateful for the hard ground. That was short lived, because in less than a mile we were running on loose gravel, which made the sand seem painless! I kept recalling doing the Wilderman with 26.2 miles of far more brutal terrain, and that made it all seem a bit easier. I also was happily reminding myself that this was not another 24hr race, so the suffering would end soon! I managed to keep a pretty solid pace throughout the run, despite the slow course and finished the race 3rd overall female and first in my age group. 

This race was very special to me, I had a lot of angels watching over me and knew that I had done everything I could to prepare, so the rest was in God's hands. I prayed for strength and He provided. Thank you to everyone who was there with me in person or in spirit. I am so excited to have earned a Kona Slot for 2016 and it was absolutely an honor getting to represent the Coast Guard in my awesome kit that Susan Cho Oyler designed! I also loved being able to represent US Military Endurance Sports and Team Red, White & Blue. As always, I fueled with Vespa, Optimized Fat metabolism (OFM) and Generation UCAN and used my gear from Trivillage Multi-sports. I don't really detail my nutrition in race reports, but I roughly took in 100 calories during 5 hours and 10 minutes of racing. 

Huge congrats to everyone who earned slots to the 70.3 World Championships in Australia and Kona for 2016. This whole weekend was such a blast catching up with so many friends and making new ones!!! Now to let this sunburn heal! tongue emoticon