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Swim

1 Mile in 36:26

The swim went well, which was kind of a big deal because 6 months ago I couldn’t swim a lap freestyle. Now I’ve done a mile swim in open water. There was a wicked current as you got further out, all the pros ended up swimming up current to get to the first buoy. Successive waves headed further and further to the right. I went around the buoy ok, but ended up kind of far out, not totally out, but I swam further than I needed to (or maybe the current kept pushing me out or something). When I made the final turn it was closer to shore and calmer. No more waves splashing on me and bobbing up and down, which I wasn’t so prepared for. My practice open water swims were calmer for sure. So for the last 1/3 mile I got into a pretty good rhythm and started to take a few places back. Open water swimming is pretty fun actually. It took like 36 mins, which I’m ok with. Work to be done there to stay with the pack, but it’s ok. I think for my level of open water swimming experience I did fine. I was a little surprised how fast everyone was. Not too many people behind me at all! Tough AG!

The bad thing was I cut my foot all up on the rocks getting into the water. Didn’t notice until the transition when my foot was covered in blood. Nice.

T1

Bike

22 miles in 1:48:52

The bike was my worst event by far. People are so strong and fast and because there was 3 laps the pros (and strong AGers) were flying by continuously on their space age tri bikes. “leeefftt!” whooosh! I was doing about 15-16 miles/hr on average (it was really a very hilly course), about the speed I expected. They were doing 22 miles/hr. Most of the rest of my age group was doing 18+ miles/hr. I’m not going in another tri until I think I can ride 18 miles/hour over hills for 1.5 hours at least. And then, as if I wasn’t doing bad enough relative to everyone else, I got a flat back tire on the last lap! After working on that for a while a former Olympian (Victor Plata) came running by on the run course and offered to help. He changed my tire for me! Actually, like 10 people, all top athletes in the midst of their own race, pretty much offered to help me. In a way that was a highlight. Can you tell the guy who rides a mountain bike and never gets a flat?

T2

Run

10K in 1:00:36

The run was the run. It was 10K. I was kind of tired. A little dejected. Not really feeling like killing myself by then, although I could have moved up like 5 places pretty easily. By that time most people were walking and at least I was able to run the whole way. That’s some kind of achievement in a triathlon I suppose. Took me about an hour. It was a pretty run. There were deer.

At the finish line Kelly ran across with me. At least one person doesn’t think I suck, though she thinks I’m crazy.

Post race

Total time: 3 hrs, 34 min

Not my greatest event, but at least I finished as people keep trying to tell me.

Triathlon Biking, marin, olympic, race, Race reports, Running, swimming, Triathlon

Yesterday Patty and I ran the Dick Houston Woodminster XC race in Oakland and I feel my interest in running restored. Why? Was it because we got to drive to it in our brand new 2010 Prius? I think so. Maybe. A little.

The other reason was because this is really fun. It was our first Handicapped race, which means different age and gender groups leave at different times. It seems a slightly old fashioned notion, but I guess it’s grounded in some real differences. Anyway, the result for us was that Patty headed off with the 2nd group to leave, while I stood around and left with the 35-45 men in the second last group. That put her 12 minutes ahead on a 9M hilly course. The target was a go.

By the time it came to our group there wasn’t too many people at the start. I chatted to Francisco for a while, but I knew he was going to take off and there was no chance of keeping up. When they counted down the last 5 seconds I really hoped I’d be okay. My legs were still a little rough since the half marathon two weeks early and it’s probably fair to say I hadn’t had a good run since then. Anyway, it was too late to worry about if my legs were going to have a good run, we were off and the all male crew headed down the trail at break neck pace. Ahead of us was most of the field with between 4 and 16 minutes head start on us, including Patty, and behind us were the fast young men in the final wave. It seemed like we were going pretty fast. When we hit the first uphill I looked at my watch: 7:20 min/mile pace. Yep, a little fast! But the first big hill (400ft in half a mile) took care of that problem as we first trotted up the bottom section and then settled in to a power walk to the top.

Once that was out of the way we pushed on with runners still close behind and in front of me, onto Sequoia Bayview (one of our favorite East Bay Trails). Around here the first of the super-fast group from behind caught me. Amazing! In here I probably could have moved a little faster, but wasn’t ready to commit to overtaking a bunch of people. We crossed over Skyline and was stopped for a moment to let a car go by. Several people charged pass me when it okay to continue, which didn’t seem entirely sporting. At any rate we ran up the Chabot driveway and back onto the trail. At this point the climbing was done for the moment and it was either rolling or downhill for some miles and people were more spread out so I focused on not twisting an ankle, maintaining fast turnover on the downhills and pushing on the uphills. I managed to maintain a 8:30 min/mile pace through all three miles of this section, which was somewhat of a break-through for me on trails. I was catching people, I was flying down hills with recklessness caution, powering up others and missing aid stations. It was great.

All that came to an end at the famous “Woodmonster” hill which rises 800ft in a mile. Needless to say I walked the whole way up. I wondered if maybe I’d been going to fast, but there wasn’t really anyone passing me. Good runners or not, everyone around me was walking and groaning. “I hate this hill with a passion” declared a runner behind me. I’ve blanked out most of the memory of this part of the course, but my GPS recorded some pretty slow progress in here that I’d rather not document.

At the top I was officially tired, but set off to see how fast I could get this finished. I couldn’t maintain the rate of the earlier miles as easily now, but I was still moving along, hitting 9:30 through the Redwood Bowl and Chabot area followed by 8:45 and around 9:00 paces for the last two miles. It wasn’t enough to catch Patty through, who crossed the finish line about a minute ahead of me. My actual time was just over 1 hr 30 minutes, a time I can’t really compare to anything, but that I’m proud of anyway.

We stayed around for the trophies to be handed out (none came our way), then headed back to the Prius to proudly initialize its floor mats with some hard earned trail dust.

Race reports prius, race, Trail Running, woodminster, xc