1.2 mile Swim, 56 mile Bike
#1/5 F (55-59) / #12/89 F / #45/166 Overall
Alarm set for 4:45am -- up and out of the house by 5:40am - I arrived to Johnson Beach, Russian River by 7:00am... this was a far cry from the LONG drive up on Friday to check into the race. I live only 50 miles away from Santa Rosa, but the traffic on Friday afternoons is almost always heavy. Once I arrived to the check in at Windsor High School, it didn't take long to go through the lines and pick up my race numbers and chip.
Okay, back at the river in the AM. The Half AquaBike racers had a designated spot in the transition area.. there were spots for the Full Ironman, the Full AquaBike the Vineman Relay and Barb's Race. I didn't really know who I was racing against for most of the race.. I finally figured out that (maybe) the Half Aqua Bike racers all had red race numbers... but that was late in the bike race.
The swim felt long, the water was somewhere in the low 70's, so I just wore my Xterra Speedsuit over my Hammernutrition singlet and De Soto shorts. It was a water start, I didn't hear a countdown... when the gun went off, I was behind the starting line.. I jumped into the chaos of a start which included 166 men and women of all ages swimming up a narrow river. Parts of the river were so shallow that many of us got up and ran in the water. I did a fair amount of this - which made my ankle strap holding the chip get loose. So, instead of taking the risk of losing the chip, I took it off and stuffed it in the top of my speedsuit. The swim seemed endless, but finally I reached the turn around buoy, the swim back to the transition area went quickly.. maybe there was a little current.. I'm not sure. In any case, my swim was 37 minutes... not a fast time for me, but I thought I could make up time on the bike. The bike ride was great -- very cool, rolling terrain, only one major hill - Chalk Hill - near the end. At about mile 42, a red - numbered woman from Chico Tri passed me.. I thought that she was in my age group.. but as it turned out, she wasn't. I chased her anyway for the last 14 miles. At the end of the race, there was a spot for us to rack our bikes, but there really wasn't much information about post race food or about how and where to pick up our swim bags (which had been transported from the river to the high school). I saw someone eating, asked her where she found the food - by the food, our bags were being unloaded from a truck by volunteers.. so everything was good.. for the moment.
The Half Aqua Bike awards were scheduled for 1:30 pm -- I finished the race before noon, the race results were expected to be available by about 12:30 or so. I really didn't know where I placed, it was so hard to tell who was racing who, with so many events going on all at once. I waited patiently by the timing tent, for what turned out to be 45 minutes to an hour. There was a problem with the wireless connection or something.. but the timing folks were not able to give anyone any results at all. As 1:30pm approached, I gave up on hanging around. I don't know when the awards actually happened, but I did find out later that I won my age-group. Yahoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment