Attempted
09/22/2024
Another year, another Santa Cruz Triathlon, but this was the big #10 - if you include the pandemic run. Also the course represented yet another variation of the same-ish race due to both a new race director and more construction on west cliff drive.
The swim was amazing and maybe one of my fastest yet. All of these Saturday masters classes are really sharpening my ability to swim faster. Also - we had no bouys keeping it to just a warf swim. The downside was that we got much closer to the sea lions at the end of the warf. I swam wide knowing their territorial nature, but many swam closer. I considered that a safe buffer. Lastly, we did a rolling start, which was my first time with this format. I had never done a rolling start or at least not in a long time. The advertisement was much less contact, but my race was as much if not more contact than before. The root cause was likely being 5 minutes off in guessing my swim speed, but I thought they had all the buoys out like usual. Oh well, I’ll take 25 min total!
The bike was consistent except for the super tight maneuvering on west cliff drive. That resulted in a slower west cliff bike speed, which I tried to catch up on highway 1. This year, my poor bike training showed and I wasn’t able to muscle forward a huge effort though. The lack of power wasn’t the end of the world and I still pulled a reasonable bike time.
The run was a testament to Nike AlphaFly shoes. My second to last race on this pair before upgrading around christmas, they were so fast. I had been doing 7:30/mile training runs and had dipped down to 7:24, but on the flat/fast course I easily pulled 6:55 miles. Technology has kept me fast as much as training has.
Overall, I finished third in age group and top 5% overall. Super proud of the race and improving over last year! No need to get faster, but always fun when I do.
