Iron Eagle Sprint Tri

Sunday I competed in the Iron Eagle sprint triathlon in Cheney, WA.  This race was my very first triathlon back in 1998, when I took the "triathlon training" course at EWU and then raced at the Iron Eagle for the final exam.  I have fond memories of the race and the race director is an old friend of ours.  Since 1998, I have raced there at least 4 times and always enjoy it. Afterward anyway :).  I was fortunate this year to race with my husband, some teammates, Rene, Merissa and Dave and watch my brother-in-law finish his first triathlon eva.  Yay, Gary!

 Thank you to Trish & John for taking the great pictures at the race & counting my laps!

The swim is 500 meters and is in a pool.  Not my favorite choice to race in, but I thought it would at least allow me to measure my swim progress by comparing it with the 500 yards I timed myself doing a month ago.  Because of course, I didn't remember that EWU's is a meter pool, instead of Whitworth's yard pool.  Whitworth is where I swim Monday through Friday, and also where I timed my 500 at the end of April.  Needless to say, I shouldn't have asked my friends Trish and John during the run, what my swim time was.  Carry on though, right?  Later I would find out my swim was an 1:10 improvement over the 500 pool swim I raced last year and a mere two seconds faster than a month ago. 

 After making it safely into the field house, I put on my new (to me) aero helmet (Thanks Greggy!!!), race belt and shoes.  I managed to screw around in T1 trying to put gloves on wet fingers, to eventually give up the cause.  Unlucky for me, this was captured on film and can be viewed on Dave's blog.

I know I need a more aggressive fit.

Iron Eagle's bike portion is an out and back, relatively flat course that takes you headlong into the wind and provides a pretty solid tailwind back.  I pushed myself hard on this bike ride, never worried about the effect pedaling my legs off might have on the forthcoming run.  I ended up completing the 10 miles ride in 32 minutes.

T2 went much more smoothly, as I just had to take off my helmet, change my shoes and grab my visor to put on while running upwards.

The run starts out going straight up a dirt hill and out the main road from the college.  This year, the wind was at my back going out and eventually downhill, and forcefully and unfortunately inmyface running back uphill and the down to the finish.  Whatever the elements were, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me for 3.1 miles and finished the run in about 23 minutes.

The scenery wasn't too shabby, especially if you like farmland.

After doing the sprint entirely on feel, because my Polar is dead ...we didn't get any results when the race ended!  The Iron Eagle is raced in waves and I was in wave #3.  The director and his crew don't take splits and provide a somewhat shaky approximate finish time.  There is one gal sitting on a rock at the finish line, who asked me for my race number a short time after I crossed the finish line.  Yes, this race is VERY low key!  I know that no one in my wave passed me and that all the women were behind me during the race.  However, I don't know my "official" overall time or placement.  The only reason I know my splits is because I have fantastic friends that timed my swim and run, and I caught my bike time on my computer. 

Finally though, despite not having a lot of precise data I am fine with my performance.  And I know that I have many other "tests" of fitness in store for me throughout the season.