Late Race Report - Memphis in May

So a couple weeks ago, I went down to the Memphis in May tri. It was a good race overall. I was disappointed in how the organizers handled some stuff - like their time management wasn't great, so their schedules didn't actually pan out, and their decision to do nothing about the safety of the racers with the major thunderstorms that rolled through. I suppose though that the only portion that I was truly concerned with was the swim, since, you know, lightning + open bodies of water = usually not a good place to be. But didn't sound like anyone got hurt. So they got lucky there. I didn't like the time trial start, either. The water was open enough they could have done a series of mass starts, but instead they started everyone 3 seconds apart, which meant that regardless of when you started, you were swimming over people for the whole 1500 meters. Which for me, ended up making my swim significantly slower than it could have been because I got kicked in the face so many times by people going all different directions. I hate swimming with triathletes!

I'm happy with how I did - 13th overall, 2nd in AG. Swim was overwhelmingly OK. Nothing spectacular. Not horrible, either. The bike leg, however, was definitely a PR for me. 1:09 for 40k is a great start to the year. Still could shave time, but still, considering it's the 2nd race, with not much speed to speak of yet, it's a great start. All that commuting/riding is starting to pay off. The run leg started out REALLY strong. I was cooking right along. I have been fighting that ITBS for awhile now, so my running has been slim to none, with basically pathetic amounts of speedwork in there, so when I ended up tightening up - mostly in the hips, then with the knee tweaking out on me - I wasn't surprised. I basically decided it was a bad idea to stop because I'd be out of the running for any decent placing, and I wasn't sure that I could get started again if I did. So I ran through it, and only ended up with a 49 minute 10k. Which is substantially more awful than I thought it was when I finished. Still, overall time wasn't bad - 2:24.

The good news is that I've found a massage therapist who is amazing, and who helped me find the real culprit in my ITBS. It is in my hip, not my vastus lateralus (that which is commonly blamed for the issues). I've been foam rolling the vastus lateralus for months now with no improvement, but as soon as she found the right spot in my hip, the whole side of my leg loosened up. Go figure. My knee hasn't hurt once - talked, yes, hurt, no - in the time since. I have to keep working on it for sure, but I'm finally feeling positive about my running and the likelihood that I'll be able to pull off a decent off-the-bike 10k this year.

I'm going back to see the magic massage therapist today to get me all loosened up for Kansas 70.3 that is this Sunday. Surprisingly, I'm looking forward to this race. I have no idea how I'm going to do, but I could do the swim and the bike in my sleep, and the run is getting itself sorted out. Yes I do have the endurance to finish a half marathon, even if I've had some bad luck in my running this year so far. I'm even very comfortable at higher speeds now (as shown by my lightning-induced tempo run on Sunday, I was FLYING!!). Probably because if the hips are tight, it takes so much work to move fast because you're basically fighting yourself to move. So my lesson in all this? Get massages regularly. Darn, that's going to be hard :)