1:48:21 #1/1 F (60-64)
#76/388 Overall
Even though there were no other women in my age group -- I won a bottle of wine and pint glass anyway. Cool water (63 degrees), warm bike ride and hot run. The details:
I stayed in Woodside with friends.. the drive down was intense.. NPR all the way.. blow by blow of the capture on the Boston Marathon Bomber......whew.... I have comments, but this blog is about my competitions.
I got up at 4:00am and tried not to make too much noise or wake up the dogs while I made coffee, oatmeal and got myself together to head down to Morgan Hill. It took 80 minutes to get to the race site. A pit stop at a McDonald's at 6:15am saved the morning.. luckily the directions to the race were good. I got to Uvas and saw that people were parking along the road, so I didn't try to get into the official parking area.. just pulled along side my other bleary-eyed competitors, got my stuff together and rode my bike to the transition area.
Check-in was quick and easy as was finding a good spot to rack my bike... always as close to the bike out as possible.
The swim is a deep water start... the water was about 63 degrees, so I was a little chilled while treading water waiting for the starting gun. I couldn't see anything because of the sun... luckily, we had a right turn at the first buoy. The race directors told everyone to hug the shoreline, but I just couldn't make my way over to the "lane" of people swimming right next to the shore. The swim seemed longer than 1/2 mile - but maybe that was just because I didn't know the course and because of the fact that you can't see the finish until you are just 25 to 50 yards away - it's a swim around a point. Very strange to not have an end point for sighting... but I got out of the water in good time and ran a little too far up the ramp before taking off my wetsuit... uh oh.. the legs were like glue.. I had waited too long.... (check - next time, sit down at the bottom of the ramp and get the wetsuit off!)
The bike out felt slow and windy. Traffic control wasn't great, I almost crashed into a green Subaru - it was the last in a line of cars behind a large produce truck.. Luckily, the truck finally turned off of the course.
The run felt like the runs usually do... hard..... I was glad to be running just a 5k that day and I still had to talk myself through it with mantras and "deal" making... oh the deals I've made with myself while running races.... Very glad to see the finish line on this one!
