San Jose International Triathlon (SJIT), June 25, 2006

The San Jose International Triathlon is a great local race. The organizers do a fantastic job and the food at the end of the race is quite good (this year it was catered by the Sonoma Chicken Coop). The race itself is known to be an "almost Olympic distance," because the swim portion is 1.25k in distance - just shy of the Olympic distance of 1.5k. The bike and run legs are the standard Olympic distances of 40k and 10k respectively. The swim takes place in lake Almaden, and the bike leg does a loop around Santa Teresa Blvd., up the Bailey climb, and back down Almaden Expy to the transition area. The run leg is a flat out-and-back around the percolation ponds within the area.

I had done this race last year with the following times:

• swim: 28:39 (m:s)
• T1: 3:18 (m:s)
• bike: 1:11:18 (h:m:s)
• T2: 2:34 (m:s)
• run: 49:31 (m:s)
• total time: 2:35:21 (h:m:s)

I wanted to improve in 2006 by breaking 2:30:00 (h:m:s). I was pretty confident that I would be able to do this, as I had worked a lot on my swimming.

SWIM LEG

The gun went off for my age group 4 minutes after the pros (7:04 am). I stayed to the left of the pack and aimed straight for the next buoy. To my surprise, I had swam a perfect straight line to the buoy. I made a sharp left turn and once again swam perfectly straight to the next buoy. I had passed several swimmers in my age group - this was a first! I could tell that this was going to be a much faster swim than I had done the previous year. Towards the end of my swim, the fastest swimmers of the next age group were catching up to me. Last year, those faster swimmers had already caught me by the half-way point of the swim, not towards the end. Once again, I was not wearing a watch so I did not know what my time was, but I was 100% confident that I had done better than last year.

Official swim time: 23:54 (m:s)

Transition #1

I still need to practice taking off my wetsuit because it's slowing me down. I still need to sit down to get it off passed my ankles.

Official T1 time: 3:11 (m:s)

BIKE LEG

I was really happy with my swim so I forged ahead on the bike. I took the extra time to hydrate and eat some gels, unlike previous races where I faltered towards the end due to inadequate nutrition. The bike leg felt the same as last year - headwind down Santa Teresa followed by a tailwind at the top of Bailey Hill. My speedo indicated that I had slightly improved from last year's time.

Official bike time: 1:10:11 (h:m:s), 21.2 mph average

Transition #2

Because I had not improved as much on the bike course as I would have liked, I rushed myself through T2. I actually did not forget to do anything in T2 and had a pretty fast split.

Official T2 time: 1:06 (m:s)

RUN LEG

I had done a lot more running this year than last year and I hoped to improve a lot on my run time. Unfortunately, I had not done enough brick workouts (a bike workout immediately followed by a run). It took my legs almost two miles to finally start feeling comfortable enough to run.

I felt good enough by mile three to pick up the pace.

Miles three, four, and five were pretty solid and I felt like they were around a seven minute pace, but my legs started to cramp in the last mile and a quarter. I fought through the cramps but they really slowed me down. I was still able to push it to the finish line, but I was really disappointed with my run.

Official run time: 47:42 (m:s), 7:41 min/mile pace

Official Total Time: 2:26:05 (h:m:s)

All in all, I was pleased with my overall time and my swim performance, but my legs let me down at the end of the race. Next year's goal will be to break 2:20:00 (h:m:s).

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For all of you UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fans out there, I ran into Nick Diaz after the race - he finished the race in 2:19 (h:m).