June 2024: Learnings from Magnolia Hill Texas XTerra (Race Recap)

This is a fairly small race in the XTerra series. I love XTerras! From the three I’ve done in Texas there are smaller crowds, and have a fun variety of terrain to race through. This one was outside of Houston at a private ranch. 

The lesson I learned from doing this event is to never underestimate short distance triathlons. In this case, we did the “super sprint” distance, which was as follows: 

• 400 m swim

• 7.5 mile bike (my Garmin clocked ~7 miles)

• 2.11 mile run

Easy breezy right? So we made a few mistakes such as working out the day before, skipping some gear checks, and planning hydration. Some of those misses bit us in the butt day of, so I am walking away with a renewed respect for planning and checklists when it comes to multi-sport events, no matter the distance. Oh, and training. Don’t forget to train! 

Course

The Magnolia Hill course is fun. I think it's a good one if you are wanting to dip your toe in off road triathlons as it's pretty mellow.

The swim was super calm in a pond on the property. No currents. Water was warm.

For the biking portion, it reminded me of east Tx terrain with pine trees all around. No tech on this course. Bridges, skinnies, woods, woops and corners everywhere. It was a wooded, loose track. I can see how if you are used to this terrain the rocky trails in the Austin XTerras would be a bit of a surprise, especially Pace Bend.

The run was the same terrain, with one big climb but mostly grass and wooded flat trails (not rocky).

My Results

I’m a mid-packer almost all the time. You can use this to decide whether to listen to my advice on tris, haha.

• 1:33 chip time

• 1 out of 2 in my age group (women). It was a small population of racers.

• 5 out of 11 in all women – 4/11 in women bike. 23/49 in bike place overall.

• 27 out of 49 overall. 

Hydration and Fuel

I carried a Camelbak Women's Chase Bike Vest for the bike for a few reasons. Due to my small size I don’t fit much in my bike frame. I also don’t want to mess with bottles while I’m trying to navigate corners, g outs, bridges and tech on a mountain bike, even my beloved Fidlock bottles. For me, I have to go with the hydration pack even though they look kind of dorky. I want to eliminate any toil to get the water into my system while I’m racing. It also carries gels, and a phone if needed.

For extra carbs, I chugged a half bottle of Skratch mix during each transition. I took one energy gel at each transition, and one gulp of gatorade and one of water during the run at the aid station.

I highly recommend Maurten gels during a race to minimize any gag effect from flavor that you thought you wanted but now that it’s a race you don’t. I am the first in line for chocolate or caramel Gus during training but Maurtens are where it's at when your heart rate is through the roof and you cannot eat.

A list of Challenges Encountered

I'm listing our challenges so that you may read this and consider what could happen in your race, some controllable, some not.

We haven’t been training on swim or run. We are in year two of training for endurance mountain biking events, so our swim and run results were pretty poor and our bike times were pretty decent.

Not Magnolia Hill but a good representation of what it looks like during the swim. Thanks stock photo!

Jason joked that everything that could have gone wrong did. Ok, well it wasn’t that dramatic but several challenges ensued:

Me 

• Gear: I forgot to bring goggles, socks and bike gloves to the transition area. We had organized everything in a rush at the motel we stayed at the night before, and I didn’t sort gear into the right bag. So I swam without goggles, and biked and ran without socks or gloves. It was wet and sweaty. Not great. Some people don’t bike or run with socks/gloves for time’s sake, but with temps in the 90s, there was a lot of muddy sweat and both would have really helped.

• Crashes: I crashed twice on the bike. Dumb. It was a straightforward loop with no tech and windy ups and downs through the trees. However:
  

  • Crash 1 - A rider had stopped in a corner. I tried to stay on my bike and ride around him on the inside line, but given my bike skills I instead tacoed my bike and crashed on the ground, injuring my quad. I should have dismounted when I saw what was going on. My quad is still sore and bruised a few days later.
    

  • Crash 2 - Completely my fault, over-corrected avoiding one tree and ran straight into another tree. So dumb. 

• External Factors / Timing Chip: The antennae at T1 broke for some of us including me, and my swim time was recorded incorrectly. (now fixed)
  

Jason's woes:

• External Factors / Course tape: Someone had blown the tape, and Jason took a wrong turn. Had to backtrack and lost time. 

• Hydration Strategy: Jason didn’t bring a hydration pack and was moving too fast to mess with bottles and stay in the front. So he became super dehydrated for the rest of the race.

Both

• Weather: It was hot and muggy, no surprise given that we were outside of Houston in July. 
  

• Legs not Fresh: Accidental too long pre-ride day before. We pre-rode the loop the day before, which was our second ride after our stationary bike workouts Friday. We were misled by the website’s instructions, thinking the pre-ride would be short and we would loop it several times on race day. It turned out to be one full 7-8 mile loop that we didn't get a chance to exit. So, legs were not as fresh on tri day as we'd like. ps: The website is still incorrect when I last checked, and shows a 4 mile loop with instructions to repeat several loops.

Lessons Learned

Learnings and advice I'm leaving you with from our race experience.

• Gear

  • I followed these instructions on the Nike site to take apart and wash three pairs of shoes after the race. They were super muddy, sweaty and gross. Now they are back to almost new!

• Biking

  • It is probably always going to help to have a hydration pack vs bottles in the mountain bike leg of an off road triathlon. But whatever you do hydrate!!

  • If you see some shenanigans on the bike portion, aka someone is parked where you need to be, dismounting is an option to strongly consider. Again, this applies to single track / mountain bike races more so than a road race where there is usually way more room to pass.

• Planning: Gear, rest, pre-race supplies

  • Plan ahead even if the race is no big deal. It will create better conditions for success every time. I should have confirmed my goggles, gloves and socks were packed in my transition bag! 

  • If you stay in a hotel the day before, bring your own creature comforts. We stayed at a Day’s Inn near the race the night before. We brought a french press, ground coffee and our own: coffee mugs, pillows, large bar of soap, a pyrex container full of eggs and rice to cook for breakfast, an electric hot pot to heat water and then cook eggs. We wouldn’t have found pre-race breakfast in Navasota Tx at 6 am otherwise. Highly recommend research and bring your own supplies. 

  • Rest the day before a tri, even if it’s not your A race. 

• Miscellaneous

  • Something happens in super hot and muggy races where I get contact dermatitis (aka a rash) on my face where my bike helmet straps are. If this happens to you, you can apply hydrocortisone cream to bring it down. 

Here we are after:

Cleaning Shoes: Take out insoles, wash laces separately, wash upper and insoles with Woolite and a soft brush (hard brush on the soles). Dry, relace and voila!