Santa Cruz Triathlon

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!

Sandman Triathlon

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!

Tahoe Ragnar Trail

07/20/2018

After a few short weeks from June Lake, it was time to go trail racing! Tahoe ragnar is an awesome race at 7500’ climbing over 2500’ on 16-ish miles of beautiful trails. I ran with a rag-tag team from Apple and we ended up coming in 18th overall out of 300-ish teams. Not bad for engineers.

My first run was the yellow run. I decided to run the whole thing which was probably a dumb idea because there were some really steep parts. Elevation was killer and I was happy to get a sub-10 pace in. The dust and heat was also constricting, but thats what you train for.

The green run was at 2am and wasn’t nearly as fast as I’d hope. I was gunning for 7:30, but came in averaging 8s. Later that week I ran 5 miles at 6:30 so clearly it wasn’t me being out of shape, it is just that dang hard.

Finally, the red run I gave in and walked what I needed to. Only about a 10k, it still took me just a little over an hour to complete, but the views were spectacular and I passed a ton of people.

This was a great intro to trail racing and can’t wait to get out later this year to the socal race which despite being 2500’ lower still looks like it has some deadly climbs.

June Lake Triathlon

07/07/2018

June lake triathlon is a beautiful event situated 25 minutes north of mammoth and 20 minutes south of Lee Vining where 120 hits 395. The swim is a nice lap around the south end of the lake at 7500’, followed by a great bike ride on the June Lake Loop and lastly a hike up 1000’ over the 10k run to finish back on the beach.

I took the swim on too hard and ended up having to do some chilled out back stroke for the first quarter mile until I could get my heart rate under control... Lesson #1 - when at altitude, ease into the swim! Still finished in 31 minutes so not my worst.

The bike was epic-ly amazing! I cruised at over 20 mph even with 1300 ft of climbing. The Shiv once again proved what a powerful tool it is.

The run however was deadly. I don’t think I’ve ever run a 10k so slow. I should have probably gone easier on the bike, I should have probably drank more fluids because it was super hot, but any way about it I was not ready to hike at altitude in the super tough conditions. Total race time was 2:53 - a new PR for slow, but that was largely due to the run with a hint of altitude and heat.

They always say you’ll be faster next time... but it will be tough to ever get used to this course. Fortunately it is the most beautiful race to date, so I bet once Violet can do the kids race we’ll be back!