Grandman Race Report

Yesterday I competed in the Grandman Triathlon in Fairhope, AL for the third year in a row.  I keep coming back because it always provides a great racing experience.  If you've ever been to downtown Fairhope, you know it's a cool little town with a lot of personality and the course for the race is very scenic with some decent hills on the bike and run course.  The race was a sprint distance, so it was a 600 yd swim, 18 mile bike, and 5k run.
Fairhope is only about an hour away from my house, so we decided just to drive over the morning of the race.  We left the house around 5am to make the quick trip.  At that time of day the only other traffic we saw were other cars with bikes on the back, heading to the same place as us.  Once we got there, Matt dropped me off and then went find a place to park while I set up my transition area and got everything ready.  Once everything was setup, we headed over to the swim start so I could warm-up a little bit.

Getting everything ready

The swim was basically a triangle shaped out and back course in Mobile Bay, which isn't known for being the cleanest water :-).  The funny thing about this course is that it is pretty shallow (only about chest deep), so you'll see some people walk 90% of the way.  I think that's one reason first timers like it, they know if they get in trouble, they can just stand up.  Coming out of the water, I was the first female, but I knew that most of my competition had started in the wave behind me, so I knew I couldn't relax.

Almost ready to start

As I mentioned earlier, the bike course is rolling hills, which I much prefer over a flat course, and it's really scenic, especially the last few miles where you're right next to the water.  Since I was first out of the water, I never saw any other girls on the bike course.  I hammered as hard as I could, hoping not to give up any time to the women who started behind me.  I definitely prefer to be the one "hunting" and trying to catch up rather than the "hunted" that everyone is trying to catch.

The run course has a tough first mile.  Immediately coming out of transition there is a really steep hill and after that there is a small gradual uphill, enough to keep you from feeling comfortable or getting into a rhythm.  I was actually a little discouraged after the first mile, thinking that if it was any indicator of how I was going to feel, it may not be a very pretty finish.  The run had a few turn around points where I was able to gauge where I was in relation to some of the other women.  I knew that some of them were pretty close, so I tried to finish as strong as I could.  

 



Almost done



In the end, I ended up as the second female (out of about 270) and 44th overall (out of 637), I was 2:30 back from first place.  I would have liked to have won, but I can't complain too much, I didn't feel like I left anything out on the course.  My overall time was 1:22:44, which was an improvement of about eight and a half minutes over last year, which it's always exciting to see improvements like that.