Lake Stevens 70.3 Report

Lake Stevens was really a great race. There was 1 transition area and there were about 1,000 less people than Boise. Erik and I drove over on Friday and spent Saturday preparing for the race and touring Boeing field. It was pretty cool, we saw the 787, a carbon composite plane being built. I did a bike and run in the morning and felt great. Totally excited for the race and plenty nervous. We took the bike over to the transition area on Sat. and drove the course. It was shady with lots of uphill and some super steed downhill. Perfect for me and Georgie!! I didn't check out the run which might of come in helpful but more on that later. We had some dinner and I settled into our King hotel room bed to rest for the evening with the alarm set at 4:15 I had an early start.
Race morning, I had a hard time getting down much breakfast. Probably should have planned to have some energy bars on hand. The race start was nice, cool and everybody seemed pretty collected. I saw Art who was psyched and Aubrey who. I also did a little gape out at the pros and their gear. The swim start was easy, I didn't get run over by anybody and I found the cord underwater pretty quickly. I just settled in and swam. Tried to focus on keeping my eyes pointed down and my body turning to maximize glide. I came out about 2 minutes faster than other races!! I was happy.
Jumped on the bike and settled in quickly. The climbing was fun and I kept getting paced by or was pacing a Scott Plasma. I passed a lot of people in my age group who were faster swimmers. Even got going 50+mph on a downhill. I have never gone that fast before. At one point I was in the zone. Just pedalling and pedalling. My bottle however, had 3hours worth of calories in it and I didn't drink all of it. Maybe had an hours worth in the end. This I think was the beginning of the end.
For the run I had prepared a Perpeteum bottle with 2 hours of calories and my goal was not to stop at the aid stations, but grab water on the go. In actuality though, on the run I just lost it. I felt like I was anemic with lack of energy just emminating from my core. After one lap I realized I had to do something or this race was going to get very painful. I was covered in a layer of salt which doesn't usually happen so tried eating gels at the aid station to replenish a potential electrolyte imbalance/depletion. It really seemed to work. I started feeling better and my feet would go around a little faster. The last couple of miles felt better but I was still pretty bummed. If I had eaten more and had some endurolytes I think I could have taken 10 minutes off my overall time in the run.
In the end it was a good race with a disappointing finish. I learned a lot though. The next race will be on the new Cannondale Slice which I am very excited about.