Treasure Island Olympic Triathlon, November 4, 2006

So many things went wrong for me in this race (some of which were my fault, and others which were the race's) that I'm left with a sour taste in my mouth. In short, unless the race conditions change, I will not be doing this race again.

The morning started off well - Erhan and I arrived early and the weather was surprisingly warm and without rain. I set up my transition area and walked over to the swim start. I got into the water and put on my goggles. My goggles immediately fogged up, but after trying to wipe them clean I realized that the haze wasn't coming off. My first mistake was not buying new goggles for this race. I've been using the same pair for almost 4 months and I was paying the price. I literally could not see the buoys in the distance. I had a serious "oh crap" moment and figured that I would just try and follow the swimmers ahead of me. I couldn't believe that I was swimming blind. I pretty much put my faith in a group of 3 swimmers... we finished together but with a dismal time of 30:25. I was upset because I knew that I would have been capable of swimming in 25 minutes or less.

Official swim time = 30:25 (m:s)

Anyway, I knew that my time was slightly more than 30 minutes since the 3rd age group wave had just started once we finished our swim. I was going to try to make up the time on the bike. My first transition was decent although I had to sit down to take off the wetsuit since it's too tight... I'm getting a larger one for next year.

Official T1 time = 2:22 (m:s)

I was hoping to average close to 22mph for this race, but in hindsight that was a pipedream. The bike course at Treasure Island consists of 6 loops (yes, 6) with a total of 174 turns. The road's pavement condition is unbelievably bad. It's so bad that throughout the entire ride I would hear "F@!K!", or "damn it!" from riders that had just rode through the many potholes. The road was so bad that I hit a rut in the road on the 1st lap that knocked off my sunglasses - I didn't stop to get them. On the second lap I hit a pothole that twisted one of my aero bars downward - it twisted so fast that one of the screws holding it in place became loose. I twisted it back into place but the bar wouldn't hold it's position so I had to ride the rest of the 4 laps without the aero position - argh!!



Official bike time = 1:11:09 (h:m:s) 20.9 mph

During the bike ride, I became more upset with the race itself. I jumped off my bike and had a pretty fast second transition.

Official T2 time = 0:50 (m:s)

As I exited the transition, I began the run too fast and started cramping before the 1st turn-around of the 2-loop run course. Both of my quads were hurting pretty bad, but I ran through the pain. I didn't slow down and finished with my fastest Olympic 10K run thus far.

Official run time = 42:19 (m:s) 6:43 min/mile average



I crossed the finish line in 2:27:05, and 11th out of 52 in my age group.

Unofficial total time = 2:27:05 (h:m:s)

The overall time was respectable but I was very disappointed with my swim and bike performances - I'll blame myself for the swim, but I blame the race for the bike since I wasn't able to ride in aero for 2/3 of the bike.

So it doesn't end here... I came home and unpacked. Erhan had stayed at the race to hang out with his Team In Training buddies. He called me to tell me that they posted the results at the race and that I had placed pretty high (roughly top 20% in my age group). That made me feel better since I had such a bad experience at the race.... a couple of hours later they posted the results online and I saw that my official time was 2:29:05... huh?

Official total time = 2:29:05 (h:m:s)

They assessed me a 2 minute penalty for a "5.10 F Position violation." This penalty is for riding on the left of the road without completing a pass in the alloted time.


All in all - I wouldn't recommend this race to others. I would, however, highly recommend the San Jose triathlon.

I now look forward to a more relaxing off-season, and a fun 2007 half-ironman season.

On the flip side, Erhan and Christine both had great races.

Erhan completed his first Triathlon and broke his 3-hour goal with a time of 2:53:35.



Christine completed her 2nd sprint triathlon, although she'll tell you it was her first "real" race. She took 2nd place in her age group, and finished 12th overall - very impressive.



Cheers!