Renegade Off=Road Triathlon

A beautiful day in Southern California, I was up early and off to Bonelli Park. It was perfectly clear as the sun came up. One of the great things about races at Bonelli is they are 15 minutes from home. I arrived just after they opened the gate and had plenty of time to check in, find me a transition spot and wander around to relax.

Here's the starting line about an hour before start time.


I chose a spot next to the fence so I wouldn't get crowded. That really didn't prove to be a problem as this was a much less crowded event than others I've been to.


KC and the kids arrived 15 minutes before the start to cheer me on.


On my way to test the water.


The swim was long.... well it felt long. I haven't trained for swimming, and haven't done that well even when I was training so I did about as I expected. There weren't many people coming out of the water after me, but I made it.


From the swim I headed to the transition, got changed, hit send on a pre-written Facebook status update on my phone and headed out on the bike.


The ride was good. Some pretty killer hills that I wasn't the only one walking up. The first lap was pretty strong and things started to hit me on the second lap and I walked a couple more of the hills. There was one point when riding down a path line with 5ft tall weeds in full bloom, I took a deep breath and could feel the polin enter my lungs. I kept pushing on and could feel my allergies coming on in full force.

Back to the transition I racked the bike, changed shoes, grabbed my visor and headed out.


KC actually got a great parking spot right out of the transition area so the kids were able to hang out in the car and watch the runners and bikers go by, including me. It was a great encouragement to hear them yell, "Go Daddy, Go!"


The run was 2 miles of some killer hills that I did my best to try to run. At one point my right hamstring started to knot up, a slow stretch and walk it was OK. Later the same thing happened with the left quad. I saw a guy limping along who said he had a knot in is quad so I guess I was lucky it worked out and I was able to run most of the last 1.2 miles. Not fast, but I was able to run.

Overall, I don't think I did as well as I had hoped, I wanted to finish in under 2.5 hours and I think I was over that. Official results are supposed to be posted tomorrow.


Overall it was a good race and I have a good feeling of accomplishment.