AVIA Wildflower Triathlon
Teammate: Bas Sopora
Finished 24th in age group F40-44 (out of 67)
142nd rank of all Females (out of 458)
877 Overall Rank (out of 1726 M&F combined)
Overall Time: 6:35:12
Swim: 53:23 (1.2 miles)
Bike: 3:16:14 (56 miles)
Run: 2:04:36 (13.1 miles)
Add: 20 min for Transition Area
As you may know… I’m not a Triathlete… can’t swim… would call it floating if anything… plus I didn’t train for the swim… just threw the wetsuit on and wouldn’t you know it… you can’t drown wearing that… lucky me. I got passed by everyone and their grandmother on the swim… and it was hella far… the life guards asked me if I wanted to take a rest… but I really had to keep moving forward to make the cut off time!
In the transition area, I took 10 min to change out of the wetsuit into my dry TEAM FREMONT cycling kit… and was standing there butt naked for a couple of minutes… he, he… since we never got a tri-suit!!! Oh well. No one seemed to pay any attention anyway… eveyone was busy getting out on the bike leg of the course.
The 56 miles on the bike was a bit of a recovery for me… did about a 17 m/hr avg on the 56 m hilly course… piece of cake… made up a lot of time… I never got passed by anybody… but I must have passed at least a 100 people… good fun.
Don’t know why it took me another 10 min in the transition area after the bike leg… I guess I was wasting a lot of time eating… hydrating… putting chafing stick on the bottom of my feet… going to the porta potty…
The run was challenging… very hilly trail in the sun… everytime a water stop came up, I kept dumping water on my head to cool off…. passed a whole bunch of people again and started to catch up with the men… (the men started out the Tri at 8 am in 5 min waves based on age group), so that made me feel good. With 3 more miles to go… I saw Bas… can’t really miss him… tall and lean German guy… see you at the finish line… With two more miles to go… I ran with a women named Jill from El Dorado Hills, and she ran out of Electrolytes, so Andrea to the rescue, and the two of us finished up the race together… with ice water soaked towels waiting for us at the finish.
After the race, I packed up… (you need way too much equipment for these stupid tri’s)… and headed towards the line up to get shuttled out of the place… I was starving… sunburnt…and tired… but I drove my ass to King City and had a foot long Subway and a Starbucks latte…. feeling energized… I continued towards Fremont…
Sorry, Bas that I didn’t wait for you at the finish.
Overall, it was a BLAST, but not sure if I’m gonna do it again soon…. these Tri registrations are way too expensive!
Thanks for reading.
Andrea