Sunday, April 13, 2014

HITS NAPA TRIATHLON April 13, 2014

750M Swim | 12.4 Mile Bike | 3.1 Mile Run
1:32:13  1/1 (F 60-64)  | 25/208 F overall | 85/408 Overall

Post Race - Jeff Pfeiffer, Karen Chequer-Pfeiffer, and Me all representing HAMMER!

Lake Berryessa is a 76 mile drive from Mill Valley.  I got up at 3:00am, took a shower, drank some coffee, made oatmeal w/banana and Hammer Gel to eat in the car on the way up, bagged my vitamins, loaded up the car and took off in the dark.  In fact it was dark for another 2 1/2 hours.. which made forgetting to put my headlamp in my tri bag unfortunate....

I have raced at Lake Berryessa many times, the route there:
Uh - oh... the gun went off, no where to go....
Hwy 101 to Hwy 37 to Hwy 121/12 to Hwy 29 to Trancas to Hwy 121 to Hwy 128 to Knoxville Road..... arrival at race venue in just under two hours.  Parking was easy, check in was easy, I downed my Race Caps and Endurolytes at 6:00am and drank most of a bottle of Heed after that. The race started on time @ 7:00am in the morning fog.  All women went off at 7:06am after two waves of men, three minutes apart.  The water was a very comfortable 64 degrees, but the swim was kind of chaotic.  I didn't get in front of the pack before the start, so I had to work my way through flailing arms, legs and wetsuits to get a swim line.  The buoys were very hard to see - I felt like I was swimming blind most of the time.  I caught up to some of the men quickly and encountered lots of slow moving large guys.  The swim felt long for some reason.. but the turn buoy finally showed up, I turned and got to shore and ran up to my bike while taking off my wetsuit.

The bike was a little chilly but nothing like it was two years ago.   I drank a little bit of Heed and took a few slugs of my Hammergel mixed with water -- chocolate and espresso, yum!  No incidents on the bike, T2 was quick and the run wasn't bad at all... an uphill(ish) out and downhill(ish) back.  I loved that part and loved getting to the finish line.  All in all, a very well run race!

Heading out on the bike
Happy to have just crossed the finish line!