Stonewall Jackson Triathlon

CER's Mandy Anderson is one of those brave souls that competes in not only one sport, but three...all in a row...on the same day.  Here is her story:

Last weekend I competed in the Stonewall Jackson Triathlon located in Roanoke, WV, this was my third year of racing this event.  Each year I have improved, but this was an exceptional year for me.  I managed to improve my overall time by nine minutes.

Pre-race encouragement

The Swim

The race gun not only signals the start of the race, but it also signals the chaos that has just begun.  In order to survive that open water swim, it is important  to swim hard enough so that you aren’t overtaken by the swimmers behind you, slow enough that you don’t wind yourself and/or get kicked in the face by a swimmer in front of you.  There was a little bit of contact during the swim, and I did have a few moments in which I missed a few breaths and swallowed some water, but that is expected.  The water temperature was 79 degrees making wetsuit usage illegal.  Huge bummer.  I love my wetsuit.  Five minutes into the race I could still see pink caps around me but we were pretty spread out.  I finished the swim and ran to Transition #1 and that is when I was informed that I was the third female swimmer out of the water!  I was ecstatic.  I didn’t expect to finish the swim so well. 

The Bike

The bike course consist of one loop and many challenging hills.  My goal was to just hammer it.  The first mile was relatively flat, then came two challenging hills.  The act of passing people made me happy and gave me a boost to my confidence.  A female competitor caught up to me at mile 15 and we passed each other several times.  At mile 23 I was able to pull away from her. At mile 24 I started calculating my projected bike finishing time and I was shocked.  I quickly started to wonder if my big effort on the bike would affect my run. I set a new PR by six minutes! I dismounted my bike and jogged over to Transition #2.

The Run

Oh, the run.  My legs felt horrible and  I quickly discovered that my stomach felt horrible equally as bad.  Two minutes into the run I stopped and stretched and then decided to move forward. I knew that my legs would eventually loosen up.  I was horribly disgusted with my pace at mile one.  I did not have a great feel for my pace, but it felt so slow. At mile three I passed a female competitor and my spirits lifted.  I decided I was going to finish strong.  I finished the run in 30:33, a 7:38 pace.  I was extremely pleased.

My total time was 2 hours 24 minutes and 36 seconds, securing 2nd in my age group and 4 overall female. 

Here are the results:  http://www.setupevents.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=event_results&id=3077