May 6, 2012 - Lake Las Vegas, NV

Iron Girl Triathlon

Sprint Distance 800 meter swim / 22.5k bike / 5k run

Christina Ekonomi- Going into my second season in triathlon, I wanted to do a fun sprint distance race as a "warm-up" before my first Olympic distance race, ITU San Diego. Iron Girl was the perfect choice. Iron Girl is a women's only triathlon that takes place in the same location as Ironman World Championship 70.3 in the beautiful resort community of Lake Las Vegas just outside of Vegas.  My husband Kerim and I packed up the SUV and headed out for Vegas early Friday evening. Packet pick-up/bike check-in was quick and very well organized the next morning. I usually don't sleep well the night before a race, but thankfully was in bed and fast asleep by 10pm. I woke up at 4am Sunday morning feeling fresh and very calm. No pre race jitters. Nice! Partly because I was treating this more as a training day and also probably because I was no longer a "rookie."  I ate my favorite pre race breakfast, a banana with peanut butter (actually my favorite ANYTIME) and headed out to transition.

Transition and the swim start were located on the grounds of the resort we were staying out, so the walk over to set up and the start was very quick.  There were no age group waves as it was a time trial start. I didn't get out to the start early enough, so ended up near the back of the line. The race started on time at 6:30am with athletes entering the water in pairs about 2 seconds apart. The time trail start was great. No limbs hitting me as I enter the water? I could get used to that! The lake was warm and calm. I settled into a nice pace and passed a good amount of people.

There was a long run from the swim exit to T1, but my legs felt great and I quickly made my way into transition area. I stripped my wetsuit off pretty quickly and decided to skip the socks for the bike.

 I'm a pretty good climber, so I made up a lot of ground on the rolling hills. The bike course was my favorite of all the races I've done so far. The perfect amount of hills to make it challenging. I passed a lot of people and wasn't feeling fatigued at all. Only two girls passed me and they had bikes much fancier than my Trek Lexa. I ended up with the 3rd fastest bike split in my age group.

T2 went well. I thought about skipping the socks for the run too, but decided the extra 10 seconds was better than the chance of getting a blister since the desert was really starting to heat up.

There was a pretty decent sized hill coming out of T2 that was challenging. After that I settled into my race pace. There was another pretty challenging hill on the way back after the turnaround, which lots of people were walking up. I powered my way past them and it was smooth sailing to the finish and a new PR for me! To my surprise I finished 5th out of 76 in my AG (5/97 if you count the DNF's) and 27th overall. I was happy with my race, but it was frustrating to learn I was just 30 seconds off 3rd place in my AG. That gives me more motivation going into future races. I plan to get on that podium very soon! The race was very well organized with a lot of volunteers and spectators cheering the athletes on and an awesome post race breakfast. I will definitely add to this one to my calendar again.

]

Post Race Report update from Christina:

“And I just woke up to an email notifying me because I placed in the top 10% in my age group at Iron girl, I qualified for USA Olympic distance Championships in Vermont!! 🙂  “