Race 7: Vineman Showdown

Date: April 11 2009
Distance: Swim 440, 9 Mile Bike, 3 Mile Run

The 2009 season had an early start when I found a mid day triathlon in San Rafael California. I was really excited to start this race, as I had done a lot more training in the off season. Longer and faster runs, with lots more time in the pool to help out my weakest discipline. My biking could have probably used more work, but I didn't really like riding in the dark, and I could have planned my weekends a bit better.

When the race started I was still a little bit shy about swimming in large groups of people, and still thinking that my swim was weaker than the majority of the competitors, I let most of my fellow age groupers enter the water before me, and slowly started my swim a few seconds behind. This was one of my first swims where I realized that I wasn't as bad as I thought, because I kept finding myself trapped behind packs of slower swimmers, causing me to either swim slower until a space opened up, or take the long route and swim around them. After dealing with about 3 or 4 packs of swimmers, I exited the water in 8 minutes and 17 seconds. One of my fastest swims thus far.

The bike portion started with a long, steep uphill climb. Many of the competitors elected to walk/run their bike up the hill because of the steepness of the climb, but one of my proudest moments of this race was declaring that I muscled though it, and climbed on my bike all the way to the top. After that it was a fairly flat course with small hilly sections along the northern San Francisco bay on an out and back style course. Coming back into the transition area, we were required do dismount our bikes on the top of the steep hill that we climbed up because it was to dangerous to ride down mounted. I finished the bike in just under 37 minutes, and I was feeling like I still had something in the tank for the run.

The run started with the same hill climbed for the bike, which made for a slow start. I was able to hold a steady pace though, and once I reached the top was able to keep my legs moving though the entire run. I even had enough strength to sprint to the finish with one other competitor (he out edged me in the end) and felt like I had really made some real progress over the winter, and was ready to tackle the 2009 season. My final time was 1 hour, 14 minutes and 34 seconds.

It should also be noted that I always remembered this one race, because it was the only one that gave me a free pair of socks instead of a t-shirt, which I thought was pretty original!

Links:

Official Time: http://www.j-chipusa.com/results.php?bib=mccarry&eventid=2671&p=&Go=Search