Leon's Triathlon Relay RR

So, a few weeks back I was talking to one of my friends, who was having a minor freakout about having signed up for an Olympic distance triathlon as her first race. She has a problem with this because she starts every year with a sprint distance, then Oly, then half-IM... I dread the year for her when she decides to do a full-IM haha!

Anyways, she told me she was thinking of splitting it to a relay and was wondering if I wanted to do the bike. Having just built my custom race bike and having been focusing on my bike speed it really was a no-brainer for me. Of course I would do the bike leg.

Before the race I started getting interested in Team Red White & Blue. A friend who is prior-service Army had talked to me about them and I decided I would check them out. If you haven't already, you really should check them out. They focus on helping veterans overcome they're injuries by bringing them to athletics, which is such a powerful tool in curing depression, PTSD and many, many things that plague our veterans today. As a part of Team RWB I was invited to a dinner with the team members who were going to be racing the next day. It was pretty great to meet everyone and to hear a little about what their goals and experiences were. I had given Marnie the day off of mom duties, so Genevieve was with me and immediately made friends by tasting their fingers.

Caroline Gaynor of Team RWB and Genevieve

This morning I got up around 4:50 because my daughter wanted to be fed and then continued to get ready. I haven't really paid attention to my nutrition in the past with races, so I made a point of going for micronutrients that would give me an overload of healthiness. I've started juicing every morning and I feel great. My buddy Jeff met me at 5:30 so we could make the hour drive into Hammond, IN again for the race. We were expecting nice(not) weather. It was supposed to be cloudy with a 20% chance of rain. When we got to the transition at 6:30 we actually had sunny skies... 30 minutes later it was completely cloud-covered. And just as the opening ceremonies started a frigid wind came in and knocked 10 degrees out of the air. It was FREEZING. And I had to wait almost 2 hours before I would get my chance to warm up. Then it started to drizzle and mist making things way colder and more miserable. Once on the bike I was able to hammer out pretty good times and keep my hr around 170 to stay warm. I knew I didn't have to run afterwards, so I wasn't worried about fresh legs for the run.

At the halfway point before I overtook these two.

I ended up completing the bike which was on my Garmin as 25.3 miles in 1:08:20 maintaining an avg speed of 22.2 mph. Pretty happy with everything overall... I especially loved all the people on super aero expensive TT bikes with aero helmets and how I blew past them.