Two Tri's in a weekend!

Ok, so here is the race report I've been waiting to write!

This past weekend I did two triathlons - the Tulare Triathlon (sprint; pool swim) and the Golden State Triathlon (also sprint, river swim/criterium style biking). Both went great overall I would say and I wasn't even that tired Monday from them so apparently my post-race stretching and such is getting much better! not to mention I tend to be better prepared for races...

I obviously wasn't ready for the bike (I'd been on the bike one time since August; not even any spinning or at-the-gym bike trainer stuff) but was feeling ok for the swim and run... Tulare was with the Fresno State Tri Club and at the last minute I decided to take a handful of kids with me to Sacramento to volunteer with TBF Racing on Sunday.

Tulare Triathlon
- on the way there we saw a fellow Fresno State Tri Club'er with their bike on the bike. Jokingly I accelerated behind them saying, "the race starts now baby!" and someone in the car made a joke about their bike falling off.

Then it did.

Well, not off but one wheel off and the rest was dragging as we were on the freeway at 5:30am going 75mph. so we honked and flashed our brights to get their attention and it was all ok.

It was butt-cold as we readied for the swim, and the pool deck was SUPER slippery. During the olympic race part which we watched first a lot of people almost fell hard and we had to scream at them to SLOW DOWN!

I got in the third-from-fastest lane because I hadn't trained as much as I normally do for even a sprint distance swim; but I knew I should be ok because I get in the water with my kids "enough".

I was first out of the water! I couldn't believe it but the guy counting laps and my internal counter matched up as I finished the 400 yard swim and hopped out! Very cool. I did good on the to-bike transition and headed out.

Things were going ok considering... then on the way back a group of 3 of us got led astray by the CHP. Seriously... there were quite a few turns getting out of the pool area to the main road part, and as I was with the pack going out and just with the group of us coming in got turned around. So we went straight intead of turning in! I found out later the guy right behind us stopped to ask the police officer guy, "are they going the right way?" to which he replied, "nope," but he waved us to go straight and didn't say anythign when we didn't! So... after at least a 10 minute detour we went through downtown tulare and found our way back to the high school. I was pretty upset because I certainly passed people on the run and was feeling quite good overall. Still got 1:24 overall which isn't bad but... ah well :-)
http://onyourmarkevents.com/results.asp?id=2094

PICTURES

It was great seeing my good friend Luis there and tons of people from the Visalia/Tulare area there (I basically grew up in Visalia but haven't gone back a whole lot since I graduated college in '05, so fun to see people I knew including teachers and old friends!).

SUNDAY - Golden State Triathlon

After going to a students' quincinera saturday night (interesting experience...) I got about 4 hours of sleep saturday night (fri-sat night about 4 too because we went to the Fair on Friday night to see Randy Travis), i was awake at 3am to pick up the students and leave fresno by about 4am. Pretty much everyone awoke and called me like they're supposed to (kids I mean). I got meagan and we took off right about 4:10, and made it to Sacramento at 7am as planned. I got the kids set up volunteering and Meagan was body marking. Met a first-time triathlete next to me who was really cool and we had a good time talking tri and stuff. I kept seeing him throughout the race too which was fun.

Because I've done a lot of TBF events over the past two years with kids and by myself, I love going up there and still have it feeling like home. the TBF Staff could not be more awesome to my kids... it really makes the whole trip worth it. Two kids (Edna and Albert) even got to do the kayak thing for water safety! They totally loved it and got to help a few people too which was a good experience except Edna got wet.)

My arms were really stiff on the swim part (perhaps not enough practice with the wet suit/improper stretching of the arms/warm up before hand?) but I was still 8th out of the water (about 100+ in my field) which was alright but oh man, it was ugly! The bike I loved especially after the first of three laps. I started passing more people in my age group and everything; usually on the bike portion of a Tri I just count how many people pass me...! I felt pretty good on the run but lack of sleep, nutrition and doing a tri the day before/being not in the best of shape caught up to me and I could not lengthen my stride to save my life. I estimate a 26 min 5k on that part, but oh well. the broken-down-results should be up soon, but for now here are the overall results:
http://tbfracing.com/results/results/2008/goldenstate/gstritroverall.html


So overall I would definitely love to do this more often! I loved it. Tomorrow morning the plan is to run about 6 miles while it's still dark. We should have a water polo game at school tomorrow against our arch-rival Roosevelt High School, but something's wrong with their heater and ... our pool too is all messed up. so... we'll see.