WOW, What an experience! This past weekend I competed in the ITU U23 World Championship held in Bejing, China. This was my first race out of North America and I think I was more nervous/ stressed about the long flights than the race itself. During the long international flight I walked around and stretched about every 90 minutes and tried to sleep during a lot of it. We arrived at the hotel in China earlier evening, grabbed some food and headed straight to bed. Having never traveled so far before I didn’t know what to expect regarding jet leg. (I had researched it before leaving but it’s completely different when you experience it). I never got a solid night of sleep when I was there, it was always very broken.
The morning after I arrived we headed to the pool then down to the course on our bikes then a short run back to the hotel. I could not believe how stale I felt! The long travel really does dramatically affect your body, especially making it hard to elevate your heart rate. Luckily I have a coach very experienced with athletes racing internationally and she gave me the perfect workouts to do leading up to race day that would help me feel sharp! Thanks Jennifer!
By race morning I felt back to normal and went through my usual warm up routine. The U23 Women were lucky enough to have it rainy and far from hot on race day. This really didn’t bother me since everyone would be racing in the same conditions and stress does not change the weather. I was able to keep my warm ups on until being called out to start on the pontoon which helped keep my body temperature from dropping too much right before the start.
Here is a quick course preview: The swim would be one big 1500m lap with a few left hand turns, the bike was a 6 lap course with a 2-3minute climb followed by the downhill and a few technical turns and the run was a 4 lap mostly flat course.
The race started and since the first turn buoy was 500-600m away it was a cleaner start than usual. After the first turn buoy I noticed the packs beginning to separate and was able to make the decision to stay with the front swim pack. About 15-20 women came into the first transition together but by the end of the first lap a pack off about 30 women formed. It remained this way through the rest of the rainy bike portion of the race. Coming into the second transition with 30 women was a bit chaotic to say the least. By the first 400m of the run the front packed turned into about 15 women. Through the next 3 laps the pace would fluctuate depending on who was leading but we kept a good pace. As we ran through transition and onto the final lap, there was a surge that separated the top 5 women from everyone else. I was able to hang onto that pack and ran in 4th position for most of that final lap. Right after ascending the short, steep hill that led to the finish line I was passed by the 5th place women. I surged to stay on her heels and we passed the 3rd place women. As we neared the last 180 turn (about 300m from the finish) I could not hang onto her shoulder, and she beat me by 4 seconds. I ended up finishing the race in 4th place, just 11 seconds off the winner.
Coach Jennifer and I achieved the goal we set for this race which thrills me.. missing the podium by 4 seconds proves that we still have plenty aspects of the race to improve upon. This race motivates me to continue to train smart and hard!
Thanks so all my sponsors, USAT, Coach Jennifer, my fiancé Ed and my family for all of their support to make this trip a success!
Next stop: Elite Nationals in Buffalo New York!
