I am an AMAZING experience at this year's
Age Group National Championship in Burlington, Vermont last week. My journey started on Thursday with an early flight out of SFO to DC and then connecting up to Burlington. It was smooth sailing on the way out. I transported my bike on the plane in a travel case I borrowed from Coach Gina.
When I arrived at the Burlington airport, I was greeted by my parents who came up from New York for the weekend to spectate the event. We stayed at
La Quinta in Burlington which was a good place. On Friday, our entire day was spent running around doing the pre-race chores as needed. Packet packup was the easiest and faster to get completed. I took my bike to be reassemblied at the
Ski Rack, which was the sponsor bike store for the event. The folks at the place were great!I got in a brief 2 mile run and 30 minute swim at a local room. Then we picked up the bike and I took in for a brief ride on a portion of the bike course. The disc wheel needed some adjustment and I took it back one more time and the folks fixed it up right away. After I was confident in the bike, it was down to the waterfront for the mandatory bike check-in at the transition area. The last official activity of the day was driving the entire bike course, which was a one loop course leaving the town and looping through the scenic countryside of Burlington. It was very beneficial to drive the course and explain the roads, turn and everything around.
On race morning, we got up around 4:45AM and were at transition before it officially opened at 5:30AM. My wave was scheduled to start at 8:20AM. It seemed like there would be a lot of time but it actually flew by. I got setup, went for a brief warm-up and then we all headed down to the swim start, which was near a pier with a boat restaurant. The swim start was in water and even though our wave was very large (100+), the swim didn't feel crowded at all. The water was very pleasant, around 72 degrees. Upon the start, I felt good and settled into a good pace. I was looking for bodies to draft off but there wasn't enough to get a good feet draft, just some opportunities to swim on the hip. More than half-way through, there was a first turn around bouy. After coming across it, I looked around and couldn't find the next buoys. I kept sighting and looking. Meanwhile, there is a fairly large group in front of me. So even though I KNOW that you should never just follow the crowd, I figured this was Nationals and the group should know the correct direction. However, I was wrong and we realized we were probably 200m off course before correcting. It wasn't that big of a miss but it did get my heart racing a bit more than normal.
T1 transition was really fast and then I was off on the bike. I had forgetten to screw the cap onto my speedfil bottle so the cap fell off soon after leaving transition. Luckily, I only had around 16oz of Cytomax in the bottle so it didn't spill all of the bike without the cap. Once on the bike, it took a little bit of time to get settled since we have to get out of the downtown to get to the faster roads. I realized my heart rate was really high, like 167, which is not normal for me on the bike. Once we got to the rolling hills, I was golden. I got great speed and it was awesome to be riding with all racers that know how to race for the most part. Very refreshing compared to some other races where you are screaming 'on your left' the whole time. It was a good opportunity on the return into town to drop my heartrate drop even more before getting into T2.
From T2, I flew out to the run. There was a .25mi hill right out of the transition up to the road. It was steep but short. The first half of the run course was on the road which was closed to traffic on one side. Then we turned down towards the water and looped back via a bike trail. It was nice because there was shade. I felt really good on the run. My heartrate was high but it wasn't annoyingly high. I had to smile on the run since I knew that I was going to finish... I had been super paranoided about a bike malfunction that would prevent me from finishing. The rest of the run was flat and fast back to the finish area ,which was totally decked out with carpeting and large signs.
I was greeted by my cheering squad of Mom, Dad and long time childhood friend Tara. Having people to celebrate with definitely brought extra joy and excitment to the day. In terms of production value of the event, USAT definitely goes all out and caters to the best of the nation. I would definitely recommend this race for anyone who can qualify and make the journey out.
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