This last weekend I headed down to Miami for the 3rd annual MIT. It is an olympic distance triathlon raced in beautiful Miami. The Iowa State Triathlon club sent 2 vans down with 14 people and a trailer. I was disappointed that I was not able to go with them but school work trumps racing fun so I had to settle for a very early flight on Saturday morning.
My Miami Saturday was like any other pre race day. Jimmy Johns, Packet pickup, put together bike, swim, bike, see some pros (Chris Lieto, Andrew Yoder), food at Carrabbas, sleep.
Race morning. It was game time. When I woke up I knew it was time for business and followed my plan to a T. The hotel was supposed to have shuttles going to transition every 20 minutes. I like to get there nice and early so Kelsey (little sister) and I were on the 5:00 shuttle. We get to the busses... school busses... and wait, and wait, and wait. At this point there are only about 10 people on the bus and the little butterflies are going crazy and I really want to get going. The guy in front of me was also in the first wave and had some hilarious parents. They start getting on the driver to take us to the site but it turns out that they do not want to leave until the busses are full! I dont think there were even enough people staying in the hotel to fill those two busses. We would have been waiting there all day. The parents started freaking out and asked for them to call the boss. The dad gets on the phone with them and starts yelling at the guy telling him that the but needed to leave NOW! Finally they decide to let one bus go but there was a problem. The driver didnt speak english and didnt know how to get to the site. HA!!!!! I just laughed. It was pretty hilarious. The next 15 minutes followed with the dad standing next to the driver and pointing where to go and saying "Ci!"
Race time: Men pro's go, women pro's go, I go. This is the first time I have gone out and stayed pretty close to the lead pack so there was a little less pounding going on in the first few minutes. This should happen more. The bike went well. Half of it was into the wind and the other half was nice and easy. Life would be rough if I had to look at the ocean during most of my rides. Beautiful blue water has nothing on cornfields! The run went alright. The warm weather started to get to me a little and if I would have had to sprint it out there would have been a convulsing body on the ground crawling to the finish line. Lets just say Im glad there was enough of a lead to not need that.
It was my first triathlon win! I had a huge smile as I crossed the line. Nothing hurt, I was not out of breath and I just smiled. It finally made all of the training and time spend sweating it out over the bike worth while.
The picture is James Burns, Brian Duffy Jr and me on the podium. These guys also had a great race and I get to see them at Collegiate nationals in a few weeks.
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