California 70.3 Race Report

Sorry for the delay but Timex camp has been keeping my busy. Anyway now that I'm headed home I finally had a bit of time to sit down and bang out a report. First of all I need to thank Mr. and Mrs. Mathios for letting me stay at their place on Thursday and Friday night. They provided a bed and Devin cooked up a couple of awesome meals. Now, on to the race!

The day started with a short drive up I5 to Oceanside. Going through the motions in transition, I felt pretty good and was pleased as the temperature felt surprising warm even though it was in the low 50s. As I was setting my transition area up, I had to make some final decisions regarding what I would wear in the race. The announced water temp was 60 with air temps in mid 50s to low 60s so I decided to ditch the neoprene for the swim and throw on a shirt in T1 for the bike.

Pretty soon we were in the water and more than ready to start. Needless to say, it was cold and I was more than a bit disappointed when the guy singing the national anthem decided to extend the last note wayyyy too long. When he finally finished the cannon fired and we were underway. After getting beat up more than usual and swallowing a few mouthfuls of the Pacific Ocean, a little pack formed with about 10 or so athletes. I was feeling good and couldn’t really get out of it so I just decided to go with the flow. I had no idea what group I was in, but I couldn’t really get out of it, so that was that.

The rest of the swim was reatively uneventful and while running out of the water I noticed Craig Alexander right in front of me, so I figured the swim had gone pretty well. When I got to my bike I started screwing around with the shirt I was going to put on which was really frustrating. I hadn’t tried that before but I found out pretty quickly that trying to put on a tight shirt when you are all wet isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. So I finally got that on and after having a bunch of people pass me, I was out on the ride.

Right away I was feeling really good and riding with a couple other athletes. Then about 7 miles into the ride I hit a huge bump and out went BOTH my bottles. AWESOME. A few miles later as I was shifting to go up a short, steep hill, my rear derailleur decided to stop working. This sucked. I lost the guys I was riding with and had to push a big gear up the remaining hills. Considering the fact that I can leg press about as much as a 12 yr old girl, using a big gear up hills does not agree with me. But such is life. Finally after being passed by who knows how many people I had finished the ride and just wanted to get out on the run.

Once I started running I knew I was pretty far back so I knew I had a lot to make up. However, I still wanted to try to head out in a comfortable pace so I wouldn’t blow up. First mile was around 5:40 and I was nice and comfortable so I was pleased with that. Paulo was out on the course giving encouraging words but I knew I was pretty far back when he wasn’t actually giving any time splits to guys ahead of me. Anyway, I felt nice and relaxed and just kept clicking off the miles as efficiently as possible. Finally my right glute really started to tighten up the last mile, so I figured I had put in a pretty good effort.

So I ended up 20th overall in a time of 4:17. Full results can be found here. Overall though not a bad start to the season. The swim, the run, and T2 were good but the bike and T1 sucked. But hey, what else is new?