FAFB 4th Annual Clear Lake Triathlon

As last week came to a close I began to get pretty excited for this race. I turned down a day of water skiing, tubing, sun, and great food at my office’s staff party at Priest Lake to do this race, so that shows you how much I like this one. Usually this race starts at 10 a.m. but this year they decided to start it at 8 instead. I am used to getting up really early for work so an early day on Saturday wasn’t going to be a big deal at all. We had family from Alaska to entertain on Friday night so that put a pinch on the night before being quiet and restful. Michael and I putted around the lake Friday night at about 9 p.m. then got all cleaned up and ready for bed.

Jen is on the left, then me, Michael in the middle with Cherese on the Right.

The morning came and I was up like a flash. I have no idea where it came from but somehow ever since college as soon as I hear the 5:10 a.m. KISS 98.1 broadcast on my alarm clock, I spring out of bed and go along my groggy way. I ate my Franz whole grain white toast with Western Family peanut butter and Dole banana slices, brushed my teeth with my Sonicare toothbrush (because no toothbrush electric or manual can compare to its cleaning ability) and began my ritual of packing and preparing. Michael was going to drop our guests off at his parents’ house so I took the bikes and my gear bag and he got there a bit after me.

Shortly after the start. Michael's at the top of the pic, and I'm doing my best to keep it close.

Cherese and I schmoozed a bit while getting our stuff out of the cars and when Michael got to the race start the transition set-up started. We were packed in the transition area pretty tightly. I was between two Gregs and Michael got a ton of space because the two people to his left didn’t show… sure, let the guy who is not only a shoe-in to win but will tear everyone’s legs out from under them have the most space in transition… sounds fair to me ;-) Cherese brought extra swim caps with an American Flag and FAFB on the side so Michael and I could fly our colors on the swim too. The three of us wore matching tri suits all from this year’s Nationals team. It was fun to hear all the whispers among the athletes. “Did you know he is actually on the Air force Triathlon Team?” “yeah, I think he is actually a professional” “That guy always wins this race, I think he went to the Olympics once” (that last one was from a previous year when Michael wore on the of suits from the Worlds competition).

Third out of the water, with Cherese right in front of me. You can still see her wake.

After finalizing everything I headed to the water to get a little wet and wait for the pre-race meeting to end. I knew that I was going to have a pretty good swim compared to previous years since that has been improving well but I was worried about my bike and run so I was just anxious to get started and see how things would play out. When the gun went off I started out like a fiend and almost instantly felt like I was going to either cramp up or throw up. I decided that I was going to try to sustain this effort. Mostly this thought came about because Dr. Ken Collins told me I need to push harder in open water swimming because my times were not reflecting my abilities. So, I adopted the “I’ll show you push hard” line of thinking and pushed my guts out. This continued to the turn around, a medium sized pontoon boat, at which time I changed my mind and thought that I would rather not be on the verge of vomit as this can sometimes hurt swim efficiency. My swim went well enough that I was able to see Michael the whole time and Cherese was only about 15-30 seconds ahead of me. I tell you, this woman is AMAZING! She swam maybe a handful of times, rode her bike a few times less, and run sparingly since Ironman Coeur d’Alene… LAST YEAR! And she rocked every part of this race!

I'm about to enter "the gravel zone." It didn't bother Michael, but nobody else liked it.

If you read my Tiger Tri post you will understand this next part better. You know those pins at chuck-e-cheese’s with all the small balls that kids like so much… imagine those balls are little bits of gravel. That is what our transition area was in!! I got through T1 like I was walking through broken glass, it was terrible! My wetsuit came off well though. Michael told me after Tiger that I had to pretend I was going to tear my wetsuit off like I hated it. Ever see SpiderMan 3 with the black Spider man? Like that! So I did, and it worked, good advice I think. I otherwise needed improvement with getting my gear on squeezing between two mountain bikes and associated gear.

After tearing that Orca Apex off, I'm ready to hit the road and see what I can do.

As I exited transition I could see Cherese about 100M ahead of me. I powered up the small hill and began my two mile long pounce on the only female ahead of me. When I finally caught up to her we exchanged greetings and smiles, that’s something Cherese is wonderful at, cheering with honest encouragement, not just to be courteous. The rest of the ride went well also. I passed the one team that was ahead of me but got passed by one male about 5 miles in and another male just before the finish. I biked pretty hard and was wondering if my running legs could catch up in time.

Pictures normally don't do a good job of showing how steep a hill is. It's steeper than it looks and it looks steep! If it bogs a hill runner like Michael, then imagine how tough it is for the rest of us. I think I'm smiling because I'm almost at the top!

T2 was much better. I had barriers on my feet this time so I was a lot faster and the mountain bikes that were in the way before were still out on the course so I had plenty of room to rack my bike. It turned out that my biking legs didn’t beat my running legs to transition after all and they were there and ready for when I needed to put them on. I felt really good running, which was a relief after several weeks of trying to recover and then trying to race the run at Tiger and failing miserably. I passed one of the males who beat me to T2 and got passed by a team runner in the process. I was actually running time out of the second place male as he was much closer after the turn around then when he started running. By the time I got to the turn around Michael was already finished… I like to think about where he is when I’m on the course, it provides a good distraction. Later we hijacked his training journal and discovered that he not only smashed the course record, but it was his sixth of the year and tenth win!

Oh, we've got sequential numbers. The mathlete sure likes that sort of thing. He's not aware (yet) that I gave him bunny ears. It's a good shot of our matching uniforms.

I am a complete ditz when it comes to trying to get my splits accurately so that’s why there are no times here for viewing pleasure. All I can say is that I finished with a time that was almost 3 minutes faster than last year and I am encouraged because I improve more each year. Yes, I did take the first place female slot with Cherese McCoy just 4 minutes behind me. Again, I am amazed and a little worried about her talents. I truly believe that if this woman were to dedicate any time to training she would be one of the fastest females in the area! What a natural! There were a lot of friends at this race as well. Most of the Master’s team that we have been swimming with was there. Jen showed off her Tri-Fusion uniform for the second time… she is a great source of energy and will be missed terribly while on her deployment!

Jen is always full of energy (as far as we know) and good for a smile.

Michael’s mom came to the race and she was armed with her digital camera so there will be pictures soon. Michael and I do not own a camera, we use disposable, so that is why I never have pictures on my blog… and I’m not a picture pirate either. Rest assured though, one day there will be photo documentation of my exploits.

Airman Bergquist's First Triathlon

That’s right; I’m an Airman First Class in the Air National Guard. The first weekend of August will be my first Drill but I won’t be leaving for Basic Training in San Antonio until January… so I’ve got to get all the racing in for the rest of the season that I can before I start my 5 month process of getting out of shape.

Michael hinted that he was interested in the Tiger Triathlon a few weeks ago and I decided that I should be okay by now to race again after Ironman. My training has been meager and easy since and I know it’s time to get back up to speed for the rest of the season so this race would be a good start.

Because of Michael’s work schedule we couldn’t camp the night before so I got up at 3:30 (to my surprise, Michael got off early and was home already), I strapped on the red, white, and blue suit that Michael brought back for me from Estonia, we packed up and I pretty much gunned it to Colville. Getting through Spokane turns out to be a lot faster at 4 in the morning when all the lights are flashing and there’s no one on the roads so we made pretty darn good time and got to the race start a little after 6 am! Michael has had a BAD habit this year (love ‘ya though, hubby!) of showing up to races just in the nick of time and I’m just not wired that way! To me, if we are on time that means that we are at least half an hour late and I absolutely hate being late… Michael has to deal with my nervousness, tapping, and grumpiness when we are late to races (or anything for that matter) so I know that when he’s with me he truly tries to rush.

Once everything was in place for the race start and I was getting warmed up for the swim I started feeling the excitement of racing. At Ironman is was a lot more nerves than excitement so it felt good to get revved up like that. My arms were feeling good, this was a very good sign for me since most of my swims have been more of a struggle to get it started and done than to have a good workout. Cherese has been working really hard for us at the Master’s team and she was there watching so I wanted to show her that I was capable of a decent open water swim.

I started out faster than I normally do with more kicking, and I was soon in the front group. By the first buoy it was a woman (turned out to be a 13 year old from the SAS swim team), a lean and burly looking team guy wearing a full length Speedo Fastskin, and I out in the lead. I don’t know the distance to the next athlete since looking back in the swim doesn’t really give an advantage. The order stayed the same through the swim and I came out of the water in 14 minutes and change. I am very “princess and the pea” and getting out of the rocks was pretty aggravating to my poor little feet so I took my time to navigate the big ones and get out. I have been having issues with getting my wetsuit off and today was no different. My transition of over 2 minutes shows that I either need a lot more practice with wetsuit stripping or one that fits better.

Once out of transition and onto my bike I began to settle into a pace but was still a bit wobbly and twitchy. It seems that each time I go from swim to bike it takes a while to get my bearings and feel the balance on the bike. The “precarious machine” that Phil Liget and Paul Sherwin always call TT bikes was what I was thinking about for the first 4 miles of the ride. I was trying to relax myself but I still had the same feeling you get right after you have had to sprint away from a loose dog that just saw you and wants to play. It didn’t take Vicki long to ride by and say “nice swim”… with a bike and run like she has my goal at this point was to try to hold off more girls from passing.

The ride was a fun one and I felt fast with my race wheels on. I passed several guys and didn’t remember if the 13 year old who beat me out of the water also beat me out of transition so after about half of the ride I decided she must be behind somewhere… I may be in second. Other than small local sprints and the FAFB triathlon, I’m not used to being in this place. It’s pretty enjoyable I would have to say. It’s easy for me to put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well and I was working a lot of this ride to try to maintain or even extend my lead. The ride finally ended, for being almost all downhill it actually seemed like a long time… that’s a testament to how little I have been training. Overall it took me about an hour and 16 minutes.

The second transition was strange for me. I haven’t done this race before and I was a bit lost getting into the transition area with all the flags and the arrows pointing the opposite direction (for the run). I tried to stop where the dismount sign was, but they apparently wanted me to go further to the mat… sure, I can do that. I took a while to get everything changed and ready, but I finally got to running. I don’t have a lot of years under my belt and really don’t practice transitions besides ones in my basement or at races so, unlike my husband, I really don’t have every movement down to a science. As a result I end up taking more time than I really should. “Oh, well” I though to myself, “I will just be more rested for the run.”

Starting the run was fine because you’re in the parking lot, but then you get the grassy field. Let me just say I HATE RUNNING ON UNEVEN SURFACES! This goes back to the “Princess and the Pea” story. I have knock knees to begin with and when I run where there are divots, cracks, large rocks, even gravel my legs think it’s time for feet fight! Between my knees bumping into each other and my ankles rolling almost constantly I didn’t have a lot of drive to work the “smooth” sections. That’s not to mention that the “smooth” sections have steep hills up or down and I absolutely suck right now with run power and efficiency. My run training before Ironman was long runs on roads with some threshold workouts on a treadmill and after Ironman it consisted of short runs on roads or the Medical Lake trail with absolutely no speed or quality work. Yes, it is my fault for not being prepared for this run and I paid for it with a 58 minute 6.55 mile! I ended up pouring more water on me than I drank, but I’m not sure that had a significant impact on the run… no, I’m pretty sure it is my sucky training that I have to thank for my time.

I did enjoy the race as a whole, though. Being my first time doing this one, I set a PR! Finishing the race maintaining my placing felt pretty good, I wish I could have offered Vicki better competition, but that’s just not in the cards right now. It seemed like everyone had a good time at the race, I didn’t hear about any disappointments. I got to hear all about Michael’s race. It had been many years since he’s done this race and he wanted to make a good showing. I would say that he achieved his goal, battling with a few fellas along the way to end up first overall with a new course record to boot. Check out his blog post on this race for the details on the events of his day. I’m also glad that Michael and I got to socialize a bit more today. He usually ends up needing to expedite A.S.A.P for work so it’s a treat to get to talk with people and even stay for awards. Great job to everyone who raced and thank you so much to those of you who volunteered, I really appreciated the water, Michelle!