2008 Danskin Results

Yahoo!! -- both Deb and I were among the thousands of awesome women who completed the 2008 Seattle Danskin Spring Distance Triathlon today.

Before I talk about us, let's take a moment to congratulate Lisa Ballou and the Kitsap Tri Babe team! Every single Tri Babe who started the Danskin completed it! And we were the largest group there. We had 115 finishers, which means that one out of every 32 Danskin finishers was a Tri Babe. Plus we had many Tri Babes who came in top 3 of their age class! Pam Kiesel, my mentor from last year (and another Team Survivor Northwest member) was among those.

It was a great day, except for missing Karen. She was in our thoughts particularly often this weekend. Friday night, while sitting in the hotel in about the same spot that we all sat in for dinner the night before last year's tri, I even tried to talk to her just in case her spirit was hovering around (just so you don't think I'm completely looney, if she answered I couldn't tell).

Once again, we are SO Grateful for all the support we have received both while training with the Kitsap Tri Babes and at the Danskin Triathlon event. Deb and I are lucky because we get to belong to two teams, both the Kitsap Tri Babes and Team Survivor Northwest. Incredible numbers of people are extremely generous with their time, and I hope they all know that we appreciate them very, very much.

Sally Edwards gave every one of us a high-5 as we went into the water. And whoever is the next-to-last finisher at the Danskin gets a special honor because they are accompanied by Sally, who always makes sure she finishes last. I feel so blessed to be in the company of such considerate and inspiring women.

I'm particularly grateful for the swim angels. Deb is very comfortable in the water, but although I'm not afraid of drowning, I'm not, and the fact that these ladies are out there looking out for us makes the swim course so much easier and less stressful. Coach Kim, from Team Survivor was there as we got out of the water and gave us encouragement as we moved into our transition. Thank You Coach Kim.

Tri-turtle Coach Lisa Bee set up a station near the finish line and cheered on all the tri-babes as they came close to the end. After doing the whole tri herself, she then kept track of every one of us and made sure we were OK. Like Coach Kim, Coach Lisa is an Ironwoman.

During our Saturday "brick" training sessions in SeaBeck, husbands and friends of Tri Babes help watch out for traffic in the places where we cross roads, and help make sure we don't get lost. They also cruise the course and help us with any issues we might have like flat tires, or if our bike chain comes off (and mine did this year). At the Danskin, REI provides bike support, and they are all over the course helping out. Deb actually stopped during the bike course to take off her jacket and said there were four people there almost instantly making sure she was ok. They helped her peel out of her jacket and stuffed it in her pack for her so she could get along on her way.

On the run course during our bricks, more Kitsap Tri Babe supporters help make sure we don't get lost, and help look after us in case one of us has a problem. The run course on the Danskin is also well manned with volunteers who were handing out water. Monica, from Team Survivor, stationed herself along the "big hill" towards the end near the drummers and took the time to greet TSNW members as they came up the hill and gave us a little extra energy. Thank You Monica!

So, what were our times? Interestingly they were about the same as last year. The swim leg of the course was a little longer so that means we did improve a little. Right before the event Tri Turtle Coach Lisa warned all the Kitsap Tri Babe Vets not to be suprised if they actually take longer to complete their 2nd or 3rd triathlon than on their first time. Her logic for that is that as a vet, you know that you can skip a few training sessions and still complete the course, and that was certainly true for both of us; neither one of us trained as hard this year as last. So I think we both were happily surprised that we did as well as we did.

Just like last year, this blog doesn't like "tables" so please scroll down for the numbers...

2008	Deb	Diane
bib	577	581
swim	0:22:16	0:34:22
swim rank	1945	3444
transition	0:08:47	0:09:59
bike	0:44:28	0:48:32
bike rank	2330	2955
bike mph	16.1	14.8
transition	0:07:06	0:03:20
run/walk	0:33:00	0:44:08
run/walk rank	1584	3089
pace	0:10:38	0:14:14
final	01:55:38	2:20:34
overall rank	2325	3251 of 3710
class rank	174	261 of 290
2007
final	1:55:48	2:23:24

I haven't analyzed our times, but I'm guessing that the slight improvement was mostly due to shorter transition times. If you want to compare the individual scores for 2007 and 2008, see 2007 Seattle Danskin Results (remember that the 2007 swim was about a third of a mile instead of a half, and that Deb lost a little time this year on the bike leg when she stopped to take off her jacket).

Yep, I have lots of room for improvement, but at least I wasn't last! (although the woman who was is actively going through cancer treatment - imagine!... she was one of the early starters so she was out on the course for hours - she has incredible courage) This will give me some fitness goals for next year. I hope you don't mind if I critique my performance. Don't take this wrong - I'm not apologizing for my performance in any manner. I've very proud to have completed the event. But I think I'm allowed to note where I can do better. I'm afraid I "wimped out" and did the backstroke again even though I am finally doing laps of freestroke in the pool, and did a combination of backstroke and crawl/freestroke for part of last Tuesday's Wildcat Lake final swim practice. Lake Washington was kinda choppy, and the backstroke was what I felt comfortable doing. I also need to religiously do the anti-shin split exercises that Sym (our Monday "active women/healthy women" instructor) shared with me.

If you're not familar with triathlons, there are 4 basic types: sprint, olympic, half-ironman, and ironman. Distances vary a little within each category, and so does the level of difficulty. For the Danskin sprint distance triathlon, the course was .75k swim, 20k bike, and 5k run walk. In miles, this is approx. 1/2-, 12+, 3+. The Tri Turtle sprint distance triathlon that is coming up in early September will be a full half mile swim, 15 miles on the bike (with more hills) and a very similar 3.2 mile run (or walk/trot if you're marshmallow Diane).

This year the elites finished the Danskin course in about 1:10+. Tri Turtle Coach Lisa and Tri Babe Shari finished it in under an hour and fourty minutes.

The medals we received this year are a little different - square instead of round.