Yesterday I participated in the Santa Cruz triathlon. There were two options, sprint and olympic, and I did the olympic distance, which means that I swam 1500 meters, biked 40km and ran 10km. It’s not the longest triathlon I’ve ever done - I did a half ironman - but I haven’t done one in many years and so it was a great re-introduction to the sport. The weather was perfect for this sort of event - slightly overcast. I got up way too early because I was confused/concerned about the schedule, so I ended up standing around before the race but that was OK because I met some really nice folks, including a guy who had been to a wedding the night before.

The swim was interesting - the water was very choppy and the waves were high - the Santa Cruz boardwalk is known for having a community of surfers, so the waves are pretty intense and one of them took me and slammed me right into another person before the race even started. The bike and the ran were just simple out and backs along the coast and the up on Highway 1. It’s a great course, very flat, very beginner friendly. The only thing I wasn’t crazy about is that they broke us up into lots of different age brackets and started the sprint and olympic at different times and also ran the course a bit oddly with overlapping routes. The net effect was a bit of chaos especially near the transition and the two different finish lines (for the full tri and the aquabike). You had people coming and going every which way and - especially on the bike - I really had to pay attention to what was going on not to either go the wrong way or hit a runner (yes, the runners and cyclists were very close to each other).

I was very happy with my overall time - 2:59:41, so just under 3 hours. I had no time goals for the event, just to finish, but I think that’s a good time. I was expecting the bike to be my best event and the swim second and to really struggle with the run, but actually in the end, all 3 of my times were basically just average. I actually probably did best in the run with a time of 57 minutes, which is under a ten minute mile. Surprisingly I never really had to walk for any significant amount of time, which I definitely was expecting.

So all in all, a great event, a good result, and I’m ready for more!