Being injured for the past 18 months has been rough.   I’ve had a nerve that was pulled in my hip (or at least that’s our best guess) and my training has been suffering because of it.    After lots of rest and PT we are finally starting to get back at it very gradually.    I can now run sub 7-min 5ks (like this one!) and am just starting to bike more.   In fact I don’t think I biked more than 100 miles this year before getting into the race.   So COVID has been a bit of a silver lining in that I wasn’t going to race much this year anyways!

The virtual race format is what it is.   The swim had no bouys so my way out was wandering as I tried to spot off of the swim bouys around Cowells.   Coming back in was a breeze as always though.   Makes you miss those big orange Doritos!

The bike was also a pain.   You don’t appreciate races until you realize that you pass 10 cars riding west cliff drive in Santa Cruz and have to stop for all of the stop signs you didn’t know were there.   Also crossing highway 1 is… special.   Still very happy with the highway 1 portions of the ride as my body feels out going harder than it has done all year.

Lastly the run was the best part of the virtual race.   There were tons of folks on the sidewalk like usual, there was nothing really in my way.   The only thing I missed were the aid stations at the end, but hey what can you do.   It was only a sprint anyways so the only aid I brought was on the bike.    Still slower than normal due to the elongated recovery, but breaking 7-min miles was a good goal.  

Finally, I didn’t talk about transitions.  T1 was… 8 minutes!   I mean I had to get the bike off the car, I had to put the tire on, I had to wrap up my wetsuit in a towel.   When not on the clock or in a secure corral why rush it.   T2 was much more respectable around 2 minutes including putting the bike back up on the roof.  

So for the only triathlon of 2020, it was a blast and it reminds me why I still want to keep getting healthy so I can try and compete more in 2021 when we have a vaccine and maybe a few other good things along the way.   Till then, thanks to the folks of Santa Cruz for not running me over and I’ll dream of Doritos, police waving me on, and aid stations.