Snake River Triathlon- Part Swim

Where to begin? The day at work could not get over fast enough. All I could think about was getting down to Lewiston for the race. This was the first real race of 2008. I have put a lot of time and effort into my winter training and I wanted to see if it has all paid off.

The Snake River Triathlon is a very unique race. Since it is held so early in the year the swim is inside at the pool and the bike and run our outside. To even mix it up even more the swim in on Friday night and the bike and run are on Saturday morning. It was nice to have them spilt up so you can push yourself on the swim and have a nice break before the other two disciplines.

So after sitting at my desk thinking about the race, 2:30 finally came around. I was heading over to the Gallagher’s so we could carpool down. Thanks Nat and Greg for allowing me to ride with you. After we loaded up the truck with gear and bikes we were heading south. This wouldn’t have been an official Tri-Fusion road trip without the mandatory stop at Starbuck’s. I wonder how they stayed in business before Tri-Fusion.
Since this is such an early race the weather can still be a huge factor. At the Workout with the Clock I had to stick socks over my shoes to help keep my toes warm during the ride. After talking with Greg and Natalie we made a stop at REI to grab some shoe covers. You wouldn’t think it but those are one of the greatest inventions of all time. We all three grabbed our covers and heading off to Lewiston. Not long after we hit the road the snow started to come down. This is every triathletes dream to go and race in the snow. We were so pumped we could barely hold in the four letter words of excitement.
Once we finally made it down to Lewiston we headed to the aquatic center to get ready for the 500m swim. I had previously done a few time trials and was around 8:45. I wasn’t really ecstatic about this time but you have to start somewhere. It was great watching all the Tri-Fusionites swimming. In a normal triathlon you all swim together and if you tried to cheer each other on you would probably end up swallowing half the lake. It was awesome to see how each person pushed themselves like never before.
My swim was pretty good. I didn’t want to take off to fast because during my trials I would get pretty tired near the end. I was just focusing on good long strokes and keeping good form. I have a huge problem of forgetting what number I was one and I would like to thank Jessi for yelling out 100m left. This allowed me to push myself even harder and I finished with a time of 7:52. As I look back I think I could have gone a few seconds faster but I was definitely happy for breaking 8 minutes. It would have probably been a whole lot easier if I was doing flip turns. I am not sure why it looks like I am getting out of the pool during my swim.
After the swim portion we all headed out to Tomato Bros. for some good food and great company. We had a great time talking about our racing experiences and how excited everyone was for the first race of the season. I would like to tell Emma that next time she won't be so lucky in Tic-Tac-Toe, she beat me 4 times in a row. After dinner we headed up to our rooms for what was suppose to be a good night of rest.