01/12/2019
Another year in the books and what a fun one it was. From three ridiculous mountain top-reaching races to another great PR at santa cruz Tri, 2018 goes down as one of the best years yet. I upped my swimming to reach 250k yards this year. Running was well over 850 miles and balanced that with 1200 miles of biking. That and I only took 100 off days... which with some injury in the spring is pretty awesome.
11/09/2018
Final race of the year, family went down to beautiful San Diego CA to do another Trail Ragnar. Having done Tahoe, I thought I was a pro and how hard could it be. Turns out this race was way colder and even steeper!
First run was the brutal 8 mile course up and over the pass, but the view midway through out to the ocean from the hills made it all worth it. And the KT tape on my healing feet from bad work shoes made it bearable. After cresting the peak, it was a smooth 3 miles down hill with a few areas so steep I had to walk.
The next leg was at 2am after a few snafus on the team (one had to do the entire long loop without a headlight). Running at night is never fast, but it was still beautiful in the crisp freezing weather.
09/29/2018
Swimming from alcatraz is amazing as they say. Fortunately this version is short and super well supported. The current pull was strong, and only was able to pull off a 1:49/100 pace as opposed to the faster swim from the triathlon the week before. The views were still epic and sighting was easy the whole way. Only a little chop causing a few mouth fulls of water made the experience a little more salty.
Hoping for better current next time, but can’t complain with an easy jump, swim, escape!
08/23/2018
Santa Cruz Triathlon was my A-race for the year. Since it is the race I try to do every year, I had been building up my training for the event. Of course I started the week with a bad cold, but I was still determined to race.
The swim went better than ever. I eased myself into the water and then pounded out the next 1400 yards. My watch gave me a little more favorable rate, but I definitely set a PR showing all of my masters classes and Tower 26 workouts coming into good use.
After the swim the bike was a blast as usual. A roller of a course, I probably could have paced myself on the downhill a little better, but still came in strong over 22 mph average. Of course the best part was racing a 36-year-old which I befriended on facebook after the race.
I thought I had overdone it on the run, but the Nike Zoom Flys turned out to be the miracles everyone says they are. I ran an easy 6:40 pace, way faster than last year and came in at a nice 2:19 as an Olympic PR on what is not the easiest course. Looking forward to more races next year and maybe we’ll shave a few more minutes off the swim!
08/19/2018
Not supposed to be a big race, sandman triathlon proved to be an awesome experience and I performed way better than expected. Definitely not attacking the swim start proved valuable to not freak out, and then I still managed to get an 18 min 1200 yard swim in which is right on pace. The bike was not as hilly as the trainer predicted, shaving time to 39 minutes despite having to deal with traffic (ugh). The run was a solid 6:49 pace and it was only 3.75 miles of sand running even though the website said 4. I felt really slow and groggy running, but in the end I think it was the sand. With two sub-1 minute transitions overall race time was 1:24:17 which knocked out my expected race time by 6 minutes (was aiming for 1:30).
The good: relaxed into the swim start and a solid bike
Next time for better: practice running on sand!
