.5 mile swim. 6 mile bike. 2 mile run. Super sprint in favor of a swimmer, my kind of race. After less than 4 weeks back home in sunny socal, this is my first race of the summer.
& I won my first race!!!
Believe me, I was more than ecstatic. However, my feelings as I crossed the finish line were nowhere near thrilled. Let’s rewind this back to the beginning and see what happened during this race.
Wakeup
Woke up early. All 4 Naumans meandering around the house at 5am. My dad signed up for the race, but couldn’t do it because of a later scheduled flight he couldn’t skip. Here’s the best part… Garrison’s going to do the race! On dad’s bike! Hah. Should be muy interesante. So dad took his car, we took the truck so that he could take off to work right after Garrison and I finished.
Setup
My dad had picked up our race packet stuff the day before, so all we had to do was set up in the transition area. I did my thing. Organized everything according to how I saw myself approaching each transition and what would be the most efficient.
Wetsuit
Now this was annoying. 5 port-o-potties. And for some reason they closed the permanent bathrooms that were there. So I waited, and threw on my wetsuit quickly afterwards when they started yelling about 10 minutes until the race talk.
Talk
Swarms of people moved down to the beach. And I say down because the transition area was on a nice cliff overlooking the ocean, so we had to go down quite a few steps for the pre-race talk. The race director guy told us everything we needed to know. And after the Star Spangled Banner was tooted buy some kid on a trumpet, we all migrated further down the beach. The swim course was out, to the right, and back into shore. Thus, we walked the length of the swim course to the start. Garrison and I jumped in (he didn’t have a wetsuit, just dad’s tri suit) and warmed up a little bit. I love the water there, very clear, and the water was so calm.
Race start
Bam! Garrison was the first wave in with the 29 and unders. Then the 49 and unders. Bam! Then I was the third wave in with the 29 and under females.
Swim
Just like last year, I dominated. I’m not trying to put anyone down, or be cocky and say that I was better than I really was. I clearly destroyed this swim, really. There were only a few oncoming waves that I quickly got under and I used my legs for as long as possible before I started swimming to the first buoy. There was only one girl next to me as we were getting through the waves. Then I booked it to the buoy and did some backstroke around it to see where I was. Because last year I was way ahead by this point already, and this year it looked to be the same scenario. Awesome. Nothing to worry about, just swim. Well more like dodge and swim. Because our wave was 10 minutes behind the first wave of boys, and 5 minutes behind the second wave of men, I had plenty of guys to swim on by.
Exit
After rounding the last buoy to head back to the beach, I sprinted a bit because I still had some gas left and I wanted to get out of the water as fast as possible. The tricky thing about this swim is the huge run climb up the cliff from the beach that’s included in the time before you run into transition. It hurt, a lot. But I wanted a solid time, so I ran as fast as I could to that mat, and began the search for my bike. One thing to note for next time, keep the goggles on my head until I get to transition.. because I took them off before taking the top of my wetsuit off and they got stuck in the sleeve.
T1
T1 was good. Grabbed the bike and I was off without a glitch. Kinda wobbly legs as I ran with my bike to the start mount line, but that’s normal.
Bike
The goal was around 200 watts for the 6 miles. Because it was only 6 miles, I should be sprinting my ass off. However, it’s a fairly technical 2 lap course, so I pushed the areas I could really push it, and eased around corners and such to be safe. Up the last hill for the second time and into transition. I completely forgot to focus on unstrapping my shoes, but luckily the guy in front of me reminded me. So I started to attempt to take them off and it went as clumsily as possible. I definitely lost a few seconds trying to do that.
T2
Second transition was nice. Last year I forgot my race belt and had to run all the way through transition again.. but this year I learned from my mistake. I was off to a speedy start.
Run
Sprint sprint sprint. Something I cannot do. But gosh darn it I was going to do everything to keep my lead unlike last year. I passed a few guys and one of them said, “Jeez you’re smoking me! Keep it up!” And boy was I going to. I love this run because it’s through the fisherman’s sea market area of Redondo. I ran through all the same fishy smells as last year. In the one U area where I saw the woman who was going to pass me last year, I saw no one behind me. Push it and I’m done, that’s all I was thinking. It’s only 2 miles, right? I hate running, it felt like forever.
Finish
Coming back out and around the fishy area was the uphill back to the finish and transition area. I pushed up the hill and into the small park area with the finish line in site. As I ran over the first time pad for the announcer, I heard him yell that I was going to be the second place finisher… wait, what? I was so angry and confused as I sprinted to the finish anyways. I was pretty certain that no woman had passed me during the entire race so how was this possible. Well I figured it would all get settled.
And sure enough, after a few sets of results papers got posted, I came out on top. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Thus, I’m no sprinter in the swimming world.. but a longer swim and a shorter run played into my advantage for a successful sprint triathlon finish.
After the podium fun, a couple guys came up to me and asked for my time for a quick interview. I kindly accepted, secretly stoked that anyone cared what I had to say about the race : )
http://redondobeach.patch.com/articles/from-second-to-first-in-redondo-beach-triathlon
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2010/06/18/sports/sports2.txt
