#2-melanie mociun, #1-tove shere, #3-jeanne davis thompson
Classic Distance Malibu Nautica Triathlon
1:53:18 #2(F55-59) | #35/587 F | #261/1501 overall
This is one of my favorite triathlons... I love the ocean swim, I love being at the beach in the early morning fog and the race organization is top notch!
Details: To bed at 9:30pm.. up at 2:00am, 3:30am, 4:00am and then 4:40am... ugh. I set my watch alarm for pm instead of am.. luckily my phone alarm did go off, but so did the low battery alarm, at least a few times in the night. This is a new phone, I didn't recognize the sound of the alarm, so in my dream state, I thought that maybe there were raccoons outside. I was staying on an estate one mile inland with lots of horses, a dog and many, many green parrots... there could have been a raccoon too.
Okay.. getting to the race. There were 3000 race participants, many parking in the lots at Zuma Beach, many parking on the side streets, in other words.. crowded chaos. I prefer to ride my bike to race starts if I'm staying close enough. I was definitely close enough, but the problem was.. it was DARK!!! I left the cottage at 5:45am, headlamp on the front and flasher on my back pack... I crossed Pacific Coast Highway at a crosswalk and headed down to the transition area - a 2.5 mile flat ride in the dark.
I held my yellow wrist band high while passing through the entrance and prepared myself for a long walk, searching for my race number on the bike racks. To my complete surprise and delight, I saw my number on the third rack in.. three racks from the bike out... sweet! Now I didn't need to worry about running to the bike out in my bike shoes on wet pavement. Two years ago, I carried my shoes and socks and ran barefoot to the bike out after the swim -- I'm not sure that I saved any time.. but my feet were dry for the ride and the run.
The transition area was cleared at 6:55am for the mandatory pre race meeting on the beach. Everyone filed out and hung out in the cold fog until their wave (one of fourteen) gathered in the corral and dashed to the waves to start the race. My wave went off at 8:20am. For us, the blue caps, there was a slight current moving towards the race finish. The water was 58 degrees, I was happy to have two caps and my full wetsuit.. the wetsuit I use in San Francisco!!! My swim felt great, I passed the buoys closely and got to the finish within 15 or 16 minutes. I took off the top of my wet suit while running out the the water, then took off the rest of it before running down the parking lot to my bike.
As I ran out to start the bike, a volunteer yelled "where's your chip?". I stopped and said, "right here on my leg". I used my own chip strap instead of the orange plastic band.. he didn't see it because my strap is black... oh well...on to the bike.
The bike felt great, I passed lots of people and near the end some 45+ year old women passed me, but I hadn't seen anyone in my age group yet. The Bike In was at the far end of the transition area, so there was another long run up to my running shoes.
I changed shoes, grabbed my number belt and an espresso hammer gel and took off. It wasn't long before a 58 year old woman passed me.. I simply couldn't keep up with her.. I just hoped that there were no other 55+ women close to me. The run felt good, I was just kind of slow, I averaged 8:45 minute miles, which felt good, considering I really do not run much anymore. The finish was fantastic, except that I went the wrong way just before coming in to the shute -- one of the volunteers had yelled "stay right".. they were talking to people running the opposite direction from me. Over all, I had a blast and will definitely plan to come back to this race!
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