The gory details - St A's

Got up before my alarm at about 3am, early.... Pretty much had everything packed up so morning routine was Red Bull, oatmeal, toilet and out the door. Really uneventful morning, had parking spot picked out from the previous day which was nice. Checked on Lucille (the bike, remember?), pumped up her tires and set up my LITTLE area. Said hi to a couple people, did 10 minute jog then the 20 minute walk to swim start. Walked a little with/behind Andy Potts, boy is he tall and skinny! Got my 2XU wetsuit on, checked out the sandy bottom of the run in on the beach and felt pretty good, not nervous at all. The swim start for the elite wave is a lot less nerve wracking with only a fraction of the numbers of the AG wave! On my brief warm up swim, noted the water to have a bit of chop but nothing scary. Gun goes off (actually, the guy said GO, so I went), had a good run in and got going. A little bumping and jiving for position but nothing bad, everyone behaves within this experienced group of FAST women! I thought I had a good little group but found the water to be a lot rougher than my warm up swim. Anyhow, it was a little currenty too which didn't help. I didn't swim hard, pretty steady but just couldn't switch into that next gear. Got out of the swim, finally, and didn't even look at my watch, I knew it was slow. Grabbed Lucy and we headed out of T1. Immediately on the bike, I could feel my legs still had a bit of fatigue in them. I decided, HARDEN UP was going to be the mantra of the day (too much time on my feet the previous two days?). I watched the SRM with interest, mostly to make sure I didn't let up. I passed a few gals and a couple passed me and I hung on with another girl, legally of course. The bike actually went by pretty fast even though I was hurting the whole time. Anyway, got back to T2, racked Lucy, put on my runners and exited. If I thought my legs were bad for the bike, the run was a bit of a nightmare. Not only did I just PR for 40K bike by over 2 minutes, I'm not in the best run shape right now. Went out a little too fast but caught a couple gals in the process. I then went into damage control, my quads were done. Decided a steady pace was better than a serious positive split on the out and back course so just went into cruise mode. Honestly, I thought I was running a lot slower than I ended up! I think I finished ok, not where I wanted but I raced as hard as I could. Not bad for a long course gal like myself with some of the fastest amateur women in the country. I had a great experience overall and may make this an A race next year and see if I can crack top 10. I'm really sore and am taking a couple days pretty easy now to recover. Thanks to everyone who cheered for me and to Val and Paul for helping get Lucille set up. And always, my favorite training partner and motivator, the Dane.
Kia Kaha
p.s. from St Pete Times 4/30/08: The highest Tampa Bay area woman was Kathy Frailing, 41, of Belleair Beach, who finished 228th overall. Christina Noordstar, 32, of Tierra Verde came in 319th. Kailand Cosgrove, 18, of Tarpon Springs came in 434th, followed by Amy Keener, 32, of St. Petersburg in 492nd.