A NINETEEN minute 1.2 mile swim? Apparently all it takes is a swift current and my TYR wetsuit and I can swim just as fast as Katie Ledecky! And yes, that felt very, very good!

Augusta is a quick 2 hour drive from where I live in Atlanta, but this was my first time racing the half Ironman distance race there. I’d previously cheered for friends on the course, so I was really looking forward to checking it out for myself.

Swim

They let us dive! I don’t usually like diving into water when I can’t see the bottom, but it was kind of fun!

I knew the strong current meant I couldn’t expect much of a time gap coming out of the water, so I made the most of it, swam hard, and was super excited to set a new women’s course record of 19:32.

First out of the water! Vuvuzela photo bomb!

Bike 

The 56 mile lollipop-style course loops from Georgia to South Carolina with some false flats, rolling hills, and bit of wind sprinkled in for variety. My Illicito was riding like a rocket and I held the lead through mile 25 when Lauren Barnett flew past with a few words of encouragement. I worked hard to keep Lauren in sight as long as possible and managed to roll back into town 2.5 hours later in second place.

Run

The RUN! The CHEERS! I loved this course! Zig-zagging through the streets of downtown Augusta made for amazing spectator support and the Dynamo Multisport cheer crew was out in full force!! Betty, Ernie, Micki, Shelly, Lauren and Kevin were EVERYWHERE!! Tri Coach Georgia, Peak Racing Team, and Swim Bike Mom all had tents set up on the course and they cheered HARD when I passed! Thank you!! The hometown support was incredible!

Near mile six, speedy Sue stormed past me. With all those cheers, letting her go was not an option, so I did everything I could to stay with her. Things got pretty ugly near the end, and I never did catch her, but I kept fighting and got the gap down to 18 seconds, crossing the line in 3rd with a 1:25 half marathon and 4:19 total time.

Ouch!

Best Cheer Crew EVER!! Ernie, Kevin, Micki, Lauren, Shelly, Betty, Me

But Wait, There’s More!

Race day didn’t end in Augusta! Betty, Ernie, Micki and I hopped in the car and drove to Chattanooga! We arrived just in time to cheer for Dynamo friends finishing up their Ironman marathons, including my athlete Stephanie who finished in a massive PR!

Stephanie cruising toward the finish!!

Dynamo cheering in Chattanooga – Ron, Matthew, Betty, Sean, Me, Micki, Linda, Casey

LOVED seeing all the Smash HC Kits in Augusta & Chattanooga!! Looking GREAT ladies!!

Thank You!

MAJOR thanks to everyone who cheered for me in Augusta, to Betty for hatching the Augusta-Chattanooga double deal, and her husband Ernie for driving us between the two!

Thanks to all of my sponsors: TYR, Smashfest Queen, Quintana Roo, SRAM, Reynolds Wheels, Kask Helmets, all3sports, Mizuno, Osmo Nutrition, and Dynamo Multisport.

Thanks to my family and friends for the support from afar, and my coach Matthew Rose, for his guidance throughout the season. More to come!

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Surprise! Guess who showed up at the Dynamo pool today?

That’s my Georgia Swimming Teammate, Claire Maust McDaniel!! Claire’s in town visiting family before she and her husband take off on a major life adventure and I’m SO excited she stopped by the pool so we could catch up and share a lane, just like old times!

To make things even better, as a dietician, Claire is a HUGE fan of Osmo Nutrition products! I love it when my worlds collide in such a happy way.

Chatting with Claire in the 10 second rest periods between intervals reminded me how thankful I am that I grew up swimming. I know swim parenting is VERY hard work. As a kid, most days my entire household was awake and on the road before 5am and nearly all of our family “vacations” happened at a pool. The sport is not easy for anyone involved, but the payoff has been HUGE. Yes, there’s the obvious benefit of a college education and swimming definitely paved the way for my triathlon success. But the best part is definitely the people. Swimmers are a REALLY special group.

Triathlon has taken me to a lot of cool places over the past couple years, and it seems like everywhere I end up, I run into former teammates. And even though I haven’t necessarily done the best job keeping in touch, every single person has welcomed me as a good friend. I think there’s something about the mix of early mornings, brutal workouts, and multi-day meets that brings some of the greatest people together.

So thank you Mom and Dad for getting me to the pool all those years. And thank you to Claire and all my former and current swimming buddies for reminding me just how lucky I am!! I may swim fewer laps and a whole lot less butterfly, but I’ll always be grateful to be a swimmer.

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Hey look, it’s me! Running out of the Ohio River! The pic is from my first time racing in Derby City way back in 2010, and nope, there will be no racing for me this weekend! However I WILL be in Louisville, this time cheering for my athlete Lauren and lots of Dynamo Multisport and Middle Georgia Tri Club buds. I’m pumped to see the race from another angle and look forward to yelling like crazy at all the athletes!! I’ll be the girl wearing green and yellow and I can’t wait to see everyone out there!!!

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THIRD out of the water and fastest RUN?!?! Crazy things happen in Ohio!!!

New Albany, Ohio might just be the perfect location for a triathlon. The Columbus suburb is FULL of gorgeous country roads, running paths, and active people! Challenge Family did a good job taking advantage of the location and putting on a great inaugural triathlon-filled weekend!

The fun kicked off with the Challenge Kids’ Tri on Saturday morning. I was super lucky to be staying with the amazing Kist family, and got to cheer on Kam and Kaden as they DOMINATED the 10 and under tri!

I was so inspired by the Kist boys’ focus and super proud of them for taking home 1st and 6th overall!! I also loved how Challenge set up the kids race smack dab in the middle of all the action. The kids got to use the same transition and run through the same finish line as us pros! Pretty cool!

Sunday it was my turn! The 75 degree water at Alum Creek was ruled non-wetsuit for pros (love separate wetsuit temp rules, thank you Challenge!) so I finally had a chance to break out my TYR swimskin! I lined up between Meredith and Jen, and it turns out, that would be the closest I’d get to those superstar ladies all day!

Meredith and Jen are both very strong swimmers (and bikers, and runners) and I spent most of the swim just off the back of their speedy feet. Not exactly a position I’m used to, or plan to make a habit of, but I do LOVE the fact that the first three women out of the water were in the top four across the finish line!! The swim matters!

My 24:27 swim split may not have been the fastest on the day, but I did manage to be a bit quicker than the swimmer on this relay:

Check out those names! Eric Wunderlich! Dave Wharton! Those guys are legends! Both US Olympic swimmers and Eric Wunderlich is even a Dynamo Swim Club alum! There was some serious swim power at this race!

The 56 mile point-to-point bike course rolled back toward New Albany through some gorgeous countryside. I struggled a bit to get going and found myself slipping back to eighth place by the time I hit T2. Yikes! I had my work cut out for me!

The spectators just outside transition motivated me to start the run fast, especially when I passed Kam, Kaden, and their grandmothers all cheering for me!! The two-loop 13.1 mile run shared the course with the one-loop 6.2 mile Olympic distance race going on at the same time and I LOVED all the cheers I got from the Olympic distance competitors! So many complimented my bright green & yellow Smashfestqueen kit and one guy even said he follows me on twitter!! I thought it was really incredible that these folks took the time to pass on some good energy to me, even while they were racing!!

My fast run pace paid off as I steadily managed to catch up to speedy bikers Natasha, Missy, Jenny and Carly, with several of them offering words of encouragement as I passed. Triathlon is so hard, and yet it attracts such a great group of women who really support one another. The pros in this sport are all worth cheering for!

I crossed the line fourth, proud of myself for never giving up, and for finding some way to post the fastest women’s run split on a surprisingly warm and humid day! It’s not very often I get to “come from behind” and I learned a lot in the process.

BIG THANK YOU to the Kist family, Kasey, Becca, Kam, & Kaden, for being an AMAZING homestay and not laughing too hard when I rode a cruiser bike with an aero helmet to the race expo! In addition to being amazing athletes, the Kists taught me all about the Columbus tradition of Pelotonia, a huge multi-day bike ride fundraiser happening THIS WEEKEND with 100% of money raised going toward cancer research at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center ($70 million+ so far!). Becca even captains the Express Pelotonia team which has raised nearly $200,000!! How awesome is that?!?

Showing support for Pelotonia and doing my best “hair down, bike helmet” Pippa Middleton impression!

Thanks also to HFP Racing and Challenge Family for putting on a great event, and to New Albany for being an amazing host city. Thanks to all of my sponsors: TYR, Smasfestqueen, Quintana Roo, Osmo Nutrition, Dynamo Multisport, Reynolds Cycling, SRAM, Quarq, Kask, Mizuno, Mavic Footwear, all3sports.com, and my buddy Paul who hooked me up with the sweet GREEN Smith Optics sunglasses that really completed my race day look!

Hillary and Michele from SMASH really went above and beyond getting me my race ready “HC” tri kit, even overnighting it to my homestay in New Albany! Based on the positive reactions I got on the course, I think it was worth it!!

Thanks to Meredith Kessler for giving me a great pre AND post-race pep talk, and of course, congrats on sandwiching an outstanding hometown race performance in between!

Last, but not least, thanks to my Coach, Matthew Rose, for never thinking of me as “just a swimmer” and to my parents and friends and family for all the unconditional support! Challenge New Albany definitely played out a bit different than I expected, but that gets me pretty excited for things to come!

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