Iron girl Las Vegas

We were back in Vegas a few weeks ago for Annie's Iron Girl Triathlon. She and a few friends had put this one on the calander late last year and she'd been working hard to get ready for the last few months - yet another practice from the school of Annie that I should pick up on, assuming the getting ready part had something to do with how well she did....

We dropped the kids with Grandma and Grandpa on the way down... big thanks to them for taking them for the weekend. Also saw a certain rider that hangs out in Utah on occasion from team Radioshack with his motorpacing crew out in a place I would never expect to see an elite pro riding - he was way, way out in the middle of nowhere, we spent a while trying to guess where he must have started from, didn't come up with any obvious options.

Some observations from the husband.... and right out of the gate - I must conceed, there are things that suck worse than having to watch a womens only triathlon....

• There is a fashion show element at a womens triathlon, can't say for sure, but got the impression that race attire may have been a little higher on the priority list than at a men's race.


• Funniest thing we saw was the girl struggling to get her wetsuit on.... backwards. Her guy was there helping her, so we didn't want to interfere and say anything, just watched. Saw her just prior to the swim, still on backwards, fidgeting with it as if it weren't comfortable.


• They started the race like a time trial, swimmers going in one at a time in quick succession. Helps the anxiety associated with the mosh pit pack start, but negates the head to head racing in the latter legs where one had no way of knowing who was leading the race or had any idea where they stood. There wasn't a winner at the finish line, it was an unknown until times were posted. Pro's a con's, but most of the girls seemed to like it.


• Chicks are every bit as competitive as bro's - saw some serious race within the race battles both at the beginning of the bike leg and the finishing sprints on the run.

This Iron Girl organization is over the top with the body marking. Counted 5 marks in 5 different areas - I volunteered to do fake or real markings....

In case you didn't notice it's dark in the photo above, the day started early, too early. We drove out that morning around 5:00 - race was scheduled to start at 7:00, and they were hustling people almost to the point of being beligerent, to have them lined up ready to go off on the swim at 7 sharp, which was great. But then proceeded to have them stand in said line for about 35 minutes past 7 while they got the course ready. You may also have noticed we had Annie in a down coat that morning - it was cold, especially for the 800 girls standing around waiting. So what do girls do while standing around waiting...? I know what guys would do... we would start bitching, a lot. The girls, they start dancing... and they had choreographed dances for each song that they all seemed to know... it was an amazing sight - like a flash mob, that lasted 6 or 7 songs. And then they were off, one by one, into the water that was starting to churn decent sized waves once out of the little bay they started in.

I love this girl...

Here she is just after finishing.

The swim was a tough one - it was windy, and despite the TT style start, congested. The hardest transition from swimming, to swimming in an open water triathlon, is learning to get your stroke into a rythym with all the variables going on immediately around you. I've never been able to put a complete swim together. Annie wasn't able to either on this day - she had a hard time breathing between waves hitting her in the face, and got a little uncomfortable in a few spots where it bottlenecked. Turned into a survival swim vs. a race swim, and she grinded her way through it. Once out of the water, she turned it on. Her bike split was solid and she ran a top 50 5k. I was a proud husband and foresee more coed duo events in our future. She's diggin the racing, have to thank cyclocross for igniting that spark, and I'm diggin that she's diggin it - it's pretty darn good to be the guy married to her.