Last years rains did a number on the Santa Cruz triathlon bike course - eliminating the typical west coast drive bike ride before you get out to Highway 1.   The run course did feature west coast drive though despite running around some tortuous barriers… it will be a mystery if they’ll even be able to fix all the damage though as it looks like the road may be permanently caving into the sea.  The other major change was moving us out of a parking lot transition into a large turf field.   The field extended the run in/out of transition and also included the wonderful rubber turf debris that got over our stuff.

Despite the changes, the race still felt as familiar as ever.   The swim was an easy pass around the warf, though my goggles filled with water a few times which significantly slowed me down.   Then after a very long run through transition (must have been close to a third or half mile run), the bike course was quickly remembered after getting through the dips of the new roads out to HWY 1.   The bike course was also slightly shorter than before thanks to the re-routing.  

The bike is where I reeled in the most time from last year.   A whopping 4-5 min faster just by better bike training and fitness really paid off.   Lastly the run was a game of pain as always.   I’m still hovering around a 7 min/mile 10k and ever so slightly slower than last year.   But still fun and hopefully I can focus on some long runs this off season to really bring these times back in to the 6:50 where I would love to be again.

So with a slow swim, fast bike, and average run, it was a great course to get back to with only one race left until the next age group!