Breath Of Life Olympic Tri - A Hard Day At The Triathlon Mines

I was quite excited to race another triathlon. It has been three months. I have been training, I generally feel good, it was time to get back into a real situation. 

The Great Magnetic Wife and I headed up to Ventura at about noon on Saturday. We arrived at Buenaventura Beach, the site of the triathlon at about 1:30. Everything went well, we headed out to the beach just to look and ran into Tim Bomba, my frequent early morning ocean swim partner. He was bleeding from his nose and lip. He went out for a swim and when diving through the waves discovered that there was a shelf in the ocean floor and went face first into the sand. We were warned. 

I heeded that warning when I went out for a warm-up swim before the start of the triathlon. The thing I discovered, and forgot from doing this triathlon last year, was that the sand at the shore is very rocky and hard on the feet. As a result, I went into the ocean at the start of the tri quite gingerly. My goal for the day was really to have a good training day. I have not specifically trained for an Olympic length triathlon, I have been doing a lot of long, slow training days just building my base for the Ironman. So I was not going to run in and injure my feet. The swim started good enough, I was swimming well enough and before I expected to, I saw that the first turn buoy was about ten yards away. As I was making the turn, the swimmers were bunching up and then all of a sudden, WHAM, I was kicked pretty hard on the left side of my face. My goggles where askew and half-way off my head. Fortunately, I didn't lose them. However, I did swallow a lot of water in the wrong way. I started to choke hard. I got out of the stream of on-comming swimmers and just had to choke and cough and try to get back to normal. One of the life guards on a paddle board came up to me and wanted to know if I needed to be brought back to the shore. I considered it for a moment, but thought I could get over this. However, it did take a couple of minutes before I could start swimming again. 

While I was getting the water out of my throat, the first swimmers from the next wave stared swimming by. When I finally started swimming again, I was being passed by a lot of swimmers from the following wave. I just was never able to get my groove back. The entire swim after that point was a struggle.

Getting out of the water was a relief, but the run up the sand and back into the transition area was really more of a trudge than a run. I did see The Great Magnetic Wife as I got near the transition area. She said that I did not look happy. The video of this great trudge is below. I was greatly disappointed to see that there were hardy any bikes left in transition and that my bike was the only one left on my rack. It was confirmed, I had a really bad swim.

I took my time in transition, I figured I would have a better bike, if I were a little more calm and recovered from my swim. I don't have any of the splits yet, but I imagine I was in transition for about five minutes. 

The bike was really not too bad. It took about an 1:20 for the 24.8 miles. Hardly a fast time, but certainly in line with how I have been training. The first six miles or so I passed a number of riders and was not passed by anyone. Then I came to a section where I met up with other riders who were already out on the course. At this time I was passed by as many, if not more, than I passed.

The run was the run. I am not a good runner, but I can plod along. I have been training with the run/walk method, so I was going to use it. It did take a couple of water stops to figure out that I should just run a little longer than I normally do, and then my walk breaks would coincide with the water stations. 

The was another L.A. Tri member, who I later learned was named Eddie, who started the run about ten seconds in front of me. I quickly passed him, but he would then pass me during my walk breaks. We always acknowledged each other as we passed. At some point, I decided my goal for the race was to beat him. The plan was to follow closely behind until the last quarter of a mile and then sprint to the end. This seemed to be very doable. On the very last water/walk break, about three quarters of a mile to the finish Eddie passed me and suddenly started running faster. I was keeping up and planning my move, but at the same time I started sprinting, so did he. With about a hundred yards to go I realized I was not going to pass him. Shortly after the finish we introduced ourselves. It was a nice and friendly little competition. It was indicative of the day. 

When I finished, I was exhausted. However, about fifteen minutes later, after eating a hamburger, I was ready to do it again. I would probably have a better time the second time around. I don't know my time, I didn't wear a stopwatch, but I think it was about 3:15 to 3:20. Not a great day.

John Thum