XTERRA South East Championships Race Report

June 8th, 2008

Pelham, Alabama

1st Amateur Female

Extreme heat + insane humidity + great hospitality + killer race course = Fun times in Bama!

After a good night's sleep and a delicious breakfast, an excited clan headed to race site. After about a minute of being outside the car, I was already covered in sweat. No joke. It was so humid and hot at 8am that I knew it was going to be a rough day. I ingested several salt tablets and kept drinking as much fluid as I could to stay hydrated. Since I'm so used to starting races between 6am and 7am this 9:30am start just felt weird. At any rate, I was ready to have fun and kick some butt!

The swim - holy bath water hot. 'm talking 82* hot...yuck! Nothing too exciting happened other than I was able to stay on someone's feet the entire race and swim a straight course which never happens. I definitely swam way easier than I should have, but because I was overheating swimming easy, I'm pretty sure I would have drowned had I pushed it.

The bike - twisty, turny and rooty forest singletrack. This is terrain that I am very unfamiliar with so I definitely stayed on the slower side in hopes of keeping my bike under control for the duration of the race. Although most of the course was covered with trees, it still felt like riding through a rain forest and sweat and sunscreen kept getting in my eyes and burning like none other.

The run - as I was heading out of T2, the announcer mentioned that I was the 2nd amateur female and only 3o seconds back from 1st...COOL! I grabbed my hat and race belt and started turning my legs over like a little road runner. I saw the girl I needed to catch and went right after her. I caught her within the first half mile and just stayed right on her heels for a good 10min until she completely started to fade and I made my move. I knew the last few miles of the course had about 6 super steep hills that were almost impossible to run so wanted to get as much of a gap as possible. As I got to the top of the first hill, I could see all the way to the bottom and knew my competition was nowhere in sight. As I trudged up the second hill, I started getting goosebumps from being so overheated. This was my first sign that I needed to slow down and just cruise home. I proceeded to walk each of the gigantic hills as well as use trees and other surroundings to pull myself up and trot the downhills while attempting not to slide out on the loose terrain.

The end - I finally made it to the finish where I was immediately asked if I wanted to join the rest of the field in the med tent and get an IV (they went through over 80 bags of fluid this race). Since I took it super easy during the last segment of the run, I felt great and just wanted to have really cold water dumped all over me :) Great experience racing in extreme weather conditions and couldn't have been any happier!