Race Coverage

"Life Outside Triathlon Exists..."

Saturday, 21 December 2019 23:10

By Erin Weiler (sweetsweatlife.com)

TCM Race Report - Racing’s taken a backseat this year – more on the season of travel and fun later – but I knew I had to do something. So after my hammie (mostly) healed and I was home long enough to string together some consistent weeks of training, I signed up for my second ever 26.2: Twin Cities Marathon.

Not gonna lie, it was weird dialing back the swim and bike volume and keeping the run volume the same as an ironman build. And there was fomo as Nick hopped on his bike for seven-hour Sundays. But like anything, I adjusted and found the time back in my week pretty fantastic. Life outside of triathlon exists, and it’s been pretty fun to find it again (don’t worry, I still love triathlon! It’s just been refreshing to step back for a bit).

Anyway, my build was a bit shorter than coach and I would have liked – my longest run was 17 miles – but unlike the past couple years of training, I thoroughly enjoyed almost every training mile. Sure, there were weeks I didn’t wanna run...

long – mostly because of am-I-gonna-have-to-race-to-the-porta-potty anxiety (anyone else experience that, too?). But I once I was running – usually after a lovely lazy morning of coffee and reading – the River Road miles were fun and somewhat effortless. 

So the race!

There’s not much to say other than I had so much fun running my favorite routes in two of my favorite cities. We hit the weather jackpot: 50F and sunny with a tailwind the last five miles down Summit. I should have taken an Imodium (two porta-potty stops: miles 6 and 14). My legs felt fresh and strong – even on the Summit uphill – and given how much I had left the last couple miles (um, hello, 7-minute pace), I wonder if I could have run a bit faster the entire 26.2. But that’s why we race, right? To continually challenge ourselves to see what we’ve capable of (it’s always more than we think) and as a reminder that we can do hard things!  READ MORE