Ironbabe Sprint Triathlon Race Report

This race was awesome. Just awesome. In fact, it may be my favorite of all the triathlons I’ve done. A lot of tris are well-organzied, and a lot of tris are fun to do. But no tri that I can think of has had a course that I enjoyed as much as Ironbabe.

Jose decided to come along, and it was extra cool to have him there. We left Clear Lake at 5:30 and arrived at Deussen Park a bit after 6:15. The road signs were very hard to see in the dark, but we managed to make it with only one wrong turn. This was my sixth triathlon of the summer, which means that by this poing I’ve pretty much got my transition set-up routine down to an art form. Rack bike hanging from the seat. Fold towel such that it’s long and thin, and lay it down to the right of my bike tire. Leave a spot at the front to wipe my feet on when I get there from the swim. Behind that, bike shoes, velcro undone so I can slip them on easily. Helmet sits on my bike seat so that I must touch it (and thus put it on) before removing the bike from the rack. Sunglasses are stuck between my handlebars and the brake cables, and I put them on once I’m riding. Running shoes sit behind the bike shoes, with quick laces. Race belt and hat underneath the shoes to grab and go.

When I first started doing triathlons, I had so much junk with me in transition. Now I’ve pared things down so much that I always have a nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten something!

The race started a couple minutes late because so many people had trouble finding the turns in the dark, but soon enough we were off! There was no Athena category (one of my two, and very minor, complaints), so I was racing with my age group — but that meant I was finally in the first wave of a race! Woohoo! I love being in the front, because it means I get to see a lot more people on the run course.

The swim in Lake Houston was a straight out-and-back — a line of noodles and buoys was set up to go 150 yards out, swim around a buoy, and 150 yards back in. I don’t like out and backs for runs, but I loved it for the swim. It made sighting very easy, and luckily I swim pretty straight to begin with. I never got off course, and the crowd wasn’t too bad since I’d started near the front of my wave and stayed there. I did get one hard kick right in the face with about 75 yards to go that almost knocked my goggles off, but thankfully they stayed in place. The water was pretty murky, but it’s a big enough lake that the water has stayed fairly cool all summer. I did the swim in 6:50 and saw Jose as I came out of the water. Not bad, though I can do better. The cool twist, however, is that since I was in the first wave and since I’m a decent swimmer, I came out of the water in 10th place overall. It didn’t last long, but it happened!

The bike was awesome. We rode out of Deussen Park to do two loops around Eisenhower Park before heading back in. The course went down smooth roads through tall trees and shade with a couple small hills, and the whole thing was so pretty that I could’ve done two more loops and still been perfectly happy. On the first loop, I rode mostly alone since I’d come out of the water early in the first wave. I passed one or two people, and a handful of people from the next wave passed me. When I started the second loop, there were a lot more racers around and they must have inspired me to really race, because I seemed to find another gear — I flew around the second loop picking off riders as I went (to be fair, they were still on their first loop). A few more fast cyclists passed me, but overall I averaged 18.1 mph and finished the bike in 36:24. Jose just missed me coming back from the bike — I’d told him to expect me in 40-45 minutes, so he was just walking over to transition when I was leaving on the run! Oops.

I was 10th in my age group in the swim, and 13th on the bike. Alas, I still had to run, and this is where I always lose ground. That said, I had a pretty good run for me. Though I did a lot of run/walk intervals and suffered some pretty bad jelly legs at the beginning of the run, I felt better and better as the run went on. I finished with negative splits of 11:32, 11:09, and 10:35 so even though I didn’t manage a sub-11:00 pace, I was still happy with the run. The course was out-and-back, but again the scenery made up for it. The second mile was especially pretty along a shaded dirt and gravel forest road. I ended up 40th in my age group for the run.

I crossed the finish line in 1:19:03 and was 24/50 in my age group overall — woohoo, I squeaked into the top half!

The post-race party was excellent, with plenty of food including breakfast tacos (my favorite) and Marble Slab ice cream! Since there was no Athena category I didn’t get a chance to take home any hardware, but the prizes looked nice — coffee mugs imprinted with the race name and date. I’m always a fan of functional prizes.

Overall, it was a great race and now ranks as one of my favorites. I will definitely be doing this one again next year!