Bonelli Tri-Express #1

Sunday 26 April was the first of 3 Bonelli Tri-Express races for 2009 (I'm not sure yet how many of them I'm going to do.) This first race was 300 meter swim, 13.5k bike and 5k run. I've heard this series of races called the "romp in swamp", but it's a fun race for the start of the season. This is the race series that got me started with triathlon a few years ago.

As when I did this race before, my buddy Wade joined in. It's fun to have a racing team.

It was pretty cold getting there a little before 7am and only warmed up as the sun came above the valley. By 8am for start time it was getting comfortable. Kerrianne, Ethan, Junia, Tanja, Luke and David all arrived just before start time to encourage us on.

I think both Wade and I felt much more comfortable than we did 3 years ago at our first race.


The water actually felt pretty good, not too cold. Someone said it was about 65 degrees. We were in wave 4 of 5, and headed into the water about 8:15am.


I came out feeling the best I've come out of the water 8 minutes later. My best swim time yet but I still have a long way to go to make it something I can really do. I got about 1/2 way through and found my arms had nothing more so I resorted to my normal plan of "survive the swim."

I did catch up to Wade in the transition. Here he's getting his helmet on and grabbing his bike while I'm getting my bike shoes on. This was one of my best transitions yet, likely from the shorter swim and not being as wiped out but I was able to get changed and out on the bike in 2 min 16 seconds.


I entered in the Men's Mountain Bike category, Wade was in the 40-44 year old men category where everyone was on road bikes. I haven't ridden my road bike since September so I went with the mountain bike. The bike felt good, there were really just 2 big hills and the rest was just rolling hills, I actually passed quite a few people (though I did get passed by some of the long course riders that were coming around on their second lap.)


My bike and T2 times didn't get show up on the race web site but I calculated it to be just over 32 minutes all together.

Then off on the run. I got to the end of the transition area and realized I still had my bike gloves on, I decided to save the time and just wear them. I was able to actually run the whole distance, that's a first for me for this rolling hill course. I did see Wade at one point and he was running strong, we yelled at each other as we passed on the out and back part. With about 2 miles to go I saw a guy that I was pretty sure had been on a mountain bike so I thought, "I need to pass him." I didn't want to burn out so I went with a strategy of just slowly closing the distance until the last 1/4 mile when I dug in and sprinted. I guess I needed just a little bit more, I finished 5 seconds behind him.


After the race we waited around to see the times posted. Junia wanted to sit on my bike.


Scores were posted and I came up second in the Men's Mountain Bike category, 5 seconds out of first place. My time was 1 hour 9 minutes 8 seconds.


Wade had a good race too. He ended up with 2nd place in the Men 40-44 years with a time of 1 hour 46 seconds. A very encouraging thing for me was that even if I had rode my mountain bike in the age group category I would have come in 3rd place. Which means even with my slow swim I did really well on both the bike and the run to make up time.


Here's the stats:
Swim Time: 08:08
Swim Rank: 53

T1 Time: 02:16
T1 Rank: 45

Bike Time: 32.:30 including transition
Bike Rank: 42 - 45 somewhere depending on how much of my total bike time was due to transition

Run Time: 26:14
Run Rank: 27

2nd Place Men's Mountain Bike
3rd Place Men 40-44 (not officially but looking at the times, that's where mine falls.)

Overall:
Overall Time: 1:09:08
Overall Rank: 37

There were 90 male entries overall, so I finished in the right side of the percentages.

Check out the course, be sure to select hybrid view to see the satellite picutre.

Pinewood Derby

Today was the big race.... the Pinewood Derby.

Ethan and I got the wheels on our cars earlier this week and used some teflon powder to lube them up a bit. We didn't have a scale to check the weight so we left that till last minute when we got to the race. Some minor weight adjustments and borrowed some graphite from another racer and we checked in the cars, ready to go.

Here are the cars from the Tiger Cub Den.

Ethan's is the white one in the front row.

The event started with the Tiger Cub den. Each car raced 4 times and got points based on what place they were in each. The car with the fewest points was the winner to move on to the championships.

Ethan got a 1st, 3rd and 2 seconds for a total of 8 points, which meant 3rd place in the den, good enough for a ribbon!


My car raced in the "Dads" group. I was consistent at least. 4th place in each of 4 races. But my car looked good.

Ethan and I ran our cars down the track together .

The Next Race

Tonight I registered for the LA Tri-Express on April 26......doh! That's just over a week away! Actually I've been planning on it but had to work some things out at work since I'm supposed to be on-call. Since I haven't been on the road bike since September I'll be doing this one on the mountain bike even though it's a road race. I entered in the category for mountain bike so hopeully that will even things out.

Details on the race are at: www.trievents.com

I'll be doing the race with my buddy Wade. He and I got into this whole triathlon thing together a few years ago.

Results

So they posted the results from the Renegade Off-Road Triathlon. Apparently I was in the water a lot longer than I even imagined.

I'm happy that I finished but would have liked to have done better.

Here's the stats:
Swim: 29.23
T1: 4:03
Bike: 1:46:39
T2: 1:23
Run: 45:57
Total: 3:07:26

Which put me in 83rd place overall.

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.

Almost Race Day

Well, in about 15 hours the Renegade Off-Road Triathlon starts. I'm feeling pretty good though I missed taking an allergy pill yesterday morning and by afternoon felt pretty awful. Picked up some Claratin on the way home and started to feel better, though not perfect. Felt even better after a good nights sleep and a pill this morning. I don't want to have any excuses for not doing as well as I'd like but I'll push through.

According to the web site the race results will be posted by 5pm on Monday 6 April 2009.

Yesterday Ethan and I went with the Tiger Cubs to visit a radio station. We went to the local Public Radio station KPCC. It was pretty interesting for me to see how stuff has changed from analog to digital in the 18 years since I did public radio in college. All of the Tiger Cubs got a chance to talk into the microphone.