Race Coverage

My Very First Win...

Friday, 07 September 2018 23:10

By Simone Lundquist (trosisterswhotriblog.com)

Young Life Sprint Race Report - When I first started doing triathlons my goal was to just not be the last person to finish, but as I got older those goals changed. As I started to improve I wanted to try to make it on the podium for my age group, and then the goal changed to wanting to win my age group. Once I was able to win my age group a few times I wanted to get an overall podium spot, and once I finally accomplished that I wanted to win my first race. All of those goals were things that I really wanted to accomplish at the time, but they all led up to making an overall win seem achievable. In my last tri season I knew that it might be possible to get my first win soon, but I didn’t know when or what race it would be at. All I knew was that it was a goal that was always in the back of my head every time I raced this year.

Throughout the season I was able to make the top ten in most of my races, but I had not gotten an overall podium spot yet, and it kept fueling the fire for me to push even harder at my next race. Going into my weekend racing at young life, I had just came off of racing at nationals and I still felt fired up from that, which seemed to benefit me. I knew that I had placed well the year before, but I wanted to do even better this year and I still had the goal of an overall win in the back of my head. Nothing felt different leading up to the race except for the fact that my racing partner (also my sister) was off at college doing cooler things and I missed her a lot. I knew that the race would feel weird not seeing her in transition, or seeing her fly by me on the bike, and especially not hearing her obnoxious cheering as I finished, but I knew that I would still enjoy my time competing....

As I got out of the car on the day of the race, I was excited to see lots of volunteers, familiar faces, the sunshine, and people who were energetic and ready to race. When I was walking into transition that day I felt especially cool as I got to roll in a new bike that our family was eagerly waiting for throughout the summer. I carefully put it on the bike rack because I had never ridden anything that looked so cool, and once I finished that and all of my other transition preparations I had a little bit of time for some fun before the race. I always love to talk to people or dance before my race because it gives me a chance to forget about my nerves and instead focus on the fun things that I am currently doing. When they called us over for a pre race meeting I really enjoyed hearing about the good cause that the race serves, and I also loved hearing that there were so many volunteers helping out that day because then I knew that it would be a well organized race.  READ MORE