Athlete Race Recap: Relay for Life of Southeastern Connecticut, Loveland Lake to Lake Triathlon, & Cohasset Triathlon

Relay for Life

On Saturday, June 22, 2024, Jen Hanson participated in Relay for Life of Southeastern Connecticut in Norwich, Connecticut!  

Relay for Life is a community-based fundraising event for the American Cancer Society and funds raised from this event aim to improve cancer survival, decrease the incidence of cancer, and improve the quality of life of cancer patients and their caretakers.  Over 5,000 events are held each year in 20 countries around the world.  Participants walk laps in teams continuously for 12 or 24-hour periods of time. 

This has become the most significant and meaningful event that Jen does each year as she beat breast cancer in 2023 and finished all of her treatments and surgeries earlier this year.  Jen, her friends, and her family all came together on Team Happy Chappy (named in honor of her Pop, who did not win his battle with cancer) to walk together for 12 hours to raise money for cancer research and awareness.  (If you’re interested in supporting Jen’s personal fundraiser for Relay for Life, you can do so here.)

Cancer sucks.  But we’re thrilled that Jen beat it so she gets to celebrate more birthdays and spend more time with those who she loves.  Way to go, Team Happy Chappy!

Loveland Lake to Lake Triathlon

Jennifer Pearce kicked off her triathlon season with the Loveland Lake to Lake Triathlon in Loveland, Colorado on Saturday, June 22, 2024!

Jennifer has been putting in a ton of work on her swim technique over the last several months, and she was excited to see her hard work come to fruition in a race situation.  Jennifer did decide to wear a wetsuit, which actually caused some significant issues for her on the swim.  (As I’ve mentioned before, just because you can do something in a race doesn’t always mean you should, and all of us end up learning this lesson through experience.)  Even though this was a negative experience, we learned a lot of things that we are going to apply moving forward to help Jennifer have a more positive experience in the open water swim leg of triathlons.

Despite this, she still averaged a significantly faster pace than she has in the past, and then she had a strong bike.  She finished the race with a fast, excellent run and was very pleased with her overall result.  All of this shows that even if something doesn’t go as we hope on race day, we can still execute a race that we can be proud of and happy with.

Way to go, Jennifer!

Cohasset Triathlon

Sarah Grundy returned to triathlon by racing at the Cohasset Triathlon in Cohasset, Massachusetts on Sunday, June 23, 2024!

It’s been a hot minute since Sarah raced any race, let alone a triathlon, so before the race, I advised her to manage her expectations by going into the race with basically no expectations other than having fun and enjoying the experience of being back in the triathlon racing scene.

All too often, athletes fall into the trap of setting time-based goals and/or comparing their current selves to their former selves in terms of results and performance.  It’s always important to set your expectations for where you currently are, but it’s especially important if you’re returning to racing after a hiatus.  Sarah is wise, so she heeded my advice and had no expectations of herself on the day other than to enjoy the race.  She finished smiling, happy, and looking forward to her upcoming training and races.

Nice job, Sarah!

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