Big Rock Sprint Triathlon Medal

It was a last minute decision to enter this race, the last tri of the season. Make no mistake. My main motivation was to podium and get a shiny medal. Is that lame? Oh well, who cares, right?

I raced the Sprint event last year and missed 3rd place in my age group by 2.3 seconds. That stung, especially since I tanked out, aka didn’t go all out, for the last quarter mile. I vowed to make it a different race this time around. If I didn’t get a medal this time, it would not be because I wimped out during my sprint to the line.

Pre-race preparations starting the day before did not go well. I spent most of my Friday afternoon setting up, configuring, and all around geeking out with my new iPhone 4s that arrived in the mail. Although a good thing, needless to say, staying up late oohing and aahing over my super cool phone did not make for a good night’s sleep/rest for the race since I hurried to start packing my race bag at 9:30 PM with a wake up alarm looming at 3:00 AM, and heading out the door by 4:00 AM.

The drive was relatively uneventful save for the occasional slowing to navigate through some fog that obscured my view through the windshield. I reached the Lake Perris State Recreation Area (SRA) a little after 5:00 AM with darkness still enveloping everything. Volunteers were arriving at about the same time. I could tell that the race organizers were still setting up for the race.

That’s one of the things I like about this race. It’s so casual and laid back. Take the Transition Area. You just kinda show up and pick any spot you want, no assigned spots. And so I picked the end spot of the second rack near Bike In/Out. I set up my transition area relatively slowly under the light emanating from the narrow beam of the headlamp I wore. Setting up the area seemed automatic to me, and so I found it amusing to hear the banter going on between a n00b first-timer asking 101 questions to another more experienced female racer. The n00b had brought her one-ton mountain bike to the race. I chuckled when I heard them talking about the swimsuit with laces she was wearing and where she would change into her bike clothes after the swim.

I went for my 10-minute/1 mile warm up a little after 6:00 AM so I could be back in time for the pre-race talk and do a swim warm-up before my start time of 7:36 AM. Oh yea, if anyone has any idea why my bowels go hogwild before races, please let me know. I think I must have gone to the porta-potty seven times (and only three trips were for #1). BTW another thing I like about this race is the prayer the race director does before the race. I think it’s refreshing.

This year, there were four waves. The race keeps growing in size. Last year, I think there were only two waves. This year, there were 129 athletes in the Sprint event and seven in my age group. I started in Wave 3. I did a little pre-swim swim. The water was comfortably warm, not to mention FRESHwater. Oh how I love freshwater swims more than ocean. It’s more like a pool and I don’t have the same panicky feeling that I get whenever I swim in saltwater.

The same fog that slowed me down on the road in the morning prevented the police from giving the all clear on the bike course, and so all the waves were delayed by over 15 minutes. Despite the delayed start I wasn’t anxious about the swim. During my warm-up I got a good feel for what I wanted my level of effort to be for the swim portion. My main concern was to complete the swim at a race pace (hopefully under 2:00 min/100 meters) that wouldn’t jack up my heart rate too high so I could avoid respiratory failure.

To minimize my typical swim fears of getting kicked, punched, or ran over in the water, I decided to start mid-pack, letting the more enthusiastic athletes go ahead of me. When the horn went off, I plowed into the water behind the front group amid lots of splashing, frantic strokes, and bodies everywhere. I even managed to receive a nice punch to the head … so much for my strategy to avoid physical contact. I’m pretty proud of how I handled the initial foray into the water. With the initial jockeying for space over and done with, I focused more on staying relaxed and consistent, pulling with medium-long strokes.

Surprisingly, I began to pass a lot of athletes wearing the same blue-colored swim cap as me. Quickly, I put the surprise out of my head and told myself to just keep doing what I was doing. By the time I reached the quarter-mile turnaround buoy I had reached the stragglers from Wave 2 in white caps, and as far as I could tell, I didn’t see any blue caps around. Turnaround buoys always motivate me because they signal that my least favorite part of the race is almost over. I picked up the pace as I neared the end of the swim, wary that my heart rate and breathing were not relaxed anymore. I didn’t really care at that point because the run back to the transition area is really really really long, so I knew I would have time to catch my breath. Coming out of the water, I couldn’t tell who was in my wave anymore as no one was wearing their swim caps as they ran back to T1. Later I learned that I was first out of the water in my age group with a time of 0:14:24.

T1 was uneventful. Nobody else at my rack was there. I had caught my breath from the long run to transition, and it was because of this I believe that I was able to remove my wetsuit with the least amount of difficulty than in the 15 preceding triathlons I have raced. Oh, and it was also probably due to my new practice of sitting down and sliding the wetsuit leg down towards my ankles as low as possible before using two hands to remove the pesky wetsuit. Although better, I still have much time to remove from T1 to become even more competitive.

With the swim behind I focused on my favorite part of triathlon: cycling. The main thing I worried about was not having done a lot of cycling training since training for Ironman Coeur d’Alene last June. My training regimen since then has focused primarily on running (i.e. training for a Boston Marathon-qualifying race in December). With about 30 miles of running on my legs each week, I was a little worried about fatigue, especially in my quads.

For a sprint triathlon, Big Rock’s 12-mile bike course is longer than most. But the course is mostly flat with a short, steep hill riding back into the Lake Perris SRA at about mile 10 or so. I used the first three-quarters mile to get settled, catch my breath from the swim, and find my legs so that I could cruise for approximately 10 miles until the hill. Similar to the swim, I found a rhythm at the cadence I thought I could sustain for 10 miles. Let the passing begin. It seemed that I was zooming by other athletes continuously. So far so good. My legs held up, surprisingly, to sustain my pace over the 10 miles at 24+ mph. I had one of those a-ha moments while riding: “Wow, is this really happening?” I knew it would be a good bike split. After the race I learned I was first in my age group and second overall for the bike course with a time of 0:33:38. The fastest bike split on the course was 0:32:03 owned by the dude who won the overall race.

After a little skirmish into the bike in finish chute… okay that’s probably a little dramatic… there was this one joker who thought two bikes could fit through a narrow road leading into the bike chute, even while I was taking my feet out of my shoes. JERK! Well, maybe I called him a more expressive name. Anyways, after a quick 46-second transition in T2, I began the 5K, determined to hunt down the wonderful person who almost made me fall while I was in the bike finish lane. By this time, I definitely felt slightly fatigued in my legs and lungs, but it was obvious to me I was having a really, really good race. I thought I was 3rd into T2, but after the race I learned was 14th.

It’s very strange to be so close to the finish as one of the leaders in the race. So quiet. So empty. Oh, and I passed that joker within the first half mile. Good thing he had to pass me while finishing the bike course. The few seconds he gained there were so valuable. I rocked him on the run, and never saw him again. An added bonus for me was that when I passed him, I saw from the body markings on his leg that he was in my age group.

It wasn’t the best 5K in a triathlon I’ve run, but it was good. My run time was 0:22:21 (7:11/mile). I did get passed once by someone not in my age group. He was flying. My most memorable feeling or thought during the run was realizing that I was one of the top athletes in the race, and because the run was a loop I was able to count the people returning towards the finish line. This count let me know my exact overall finish in the race. So if you count male and female athletes, I was 13th overall. With regards to the official race results (males only), I was 12th overall in a field of 129. My final time of 1:15:51 was also good for a first place finish in my age group.

So stoked. I had not won a triathlon medal in three years, not since my very first ever super sprint triathlon. This one, however, was more enjoyable because it was my first podium in a real triathlon.

Big Rock Sprint Triathlon First Place Medal