CapTexTri Race Report

Shelly and I did the CapTex Tri yesterday. The event features three distances: Olympic, Sprint, and "First Tri," which is the one we participated in. It was our second triathlon, but our first in open water.

Our event started at 10 a.m., but the transition area opened at 7:30. After a good breakfast (bacon, egg, and cheese bagel!), we headed over to the transition area, got body marked, and set up our gear. Then we waited. We watched waves of swimmers from the other races starting their events. The waiting around made both of us nauseatingly nervous! When it came time for us to start the race, we gathered on the shore of Town Lake in our color-coded swim caps as the announcer explained the course. Then we unwillingly jumped into the heart-stoppingly-cold river (~66 degrees) where we had to tread water for 3 minutes before we started the swim.

Shelly and I might be two of the little yellow caps in this picture.

I was proud of my first few strokes. I put my face in and swam freestyle like a champ. Then my goggles started leaking, I got kicked in the head, and someone touched my foot from behind. I freaked out and finished the rest of the swim doing breaststroke because I could not put my face back in the water. Ridiculous.

Happiest moment of the morning.

The trek from the lake to the transition area was a long one. I shuffled to my bike and got ready to ride as quickly as I could. It still took me just over 5 minutes to get in and out of the first transition.

No, wait, this was the happiest moment of the morning.

The bike ride was fantastic. I felt strong and wanted to see how fast I could push myself. I ended up riding at an average of 16 mph, which I was really pleased with. I passed a lot of folks and a lot of people passed me. The bike portion was so much fun because of all the activity around me and the speed at which it was happening. It was also a fabulous course around downtown Austin.

Then I started the run. By that time I guess it was about 10:45, and it was getting hot outside. The sky was clear and the sun was beating down. I thought the run would be my strongest part of the race, and the speedwork I had done made me think I'd run 8:45 minute/miles, but my average turned out to be 10:13. It was just so hot. I picked up the pace in the last mile but it was too late to make up for time lost. I wonder if pushing it so much on the bike significantly weakened my run. I can't wait to go shopping for a road bike.

Hooray! Crossing the finish line (I'm the orange figure under the banner).

Overall, I'm really happy with how I did. I finished the race (400 meter swim, 6.2 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) in 1:15:15. I came in 34th out of 119 women who competed, and 115th out of 284 total participants. Shelly did great too, and both of us are really excited because we have so much room to improve. We could really do well at this!

CapTex was a great experience and I'm definitely going to do it again next year — maybe the Sprint, or the Olympic if I'm feeling brave.

This sign made me smile during the race!