Triathlon

In sunny Santa Cruz, I finished my first Half Ironman Triathlon yesterday :-) It started at 7:15 in the morning, with the sun barely up, with a 1.2 mile (2 km) swim around the Santa Cruz Pier. John was kind enough to join me and take some pictures; unfortunately Sabine couldn't make it since she was traveling to San Antonio for a conference. This is me at the start with the Boardwalk in the background.


The water wasn't too cold with the wetsuit, although it took a few minutes before I could get a decent breath due to temperature adjustment. As most of you know, I don't like swimming for the lack of scenic enjoyment, so I was doing the breast stroke. It is not the most efficient use of my energy, but I was still able to be faster than 30 people out of 845 participants........ (I suck at swimming). When I finally got out of the water, I had to run a quarter mile to the transition area, where I had to get out of my wetsuit and in my bike gear.


This took me quite a while, as I am pretty clumsy..... But I finally got going on my favorite part, the 56 mile (90 km) bike ride along the beautiful California coast on Highway 1.


It was overcast during the whole ride, and I averaged 20 miles per hour (32 km/h), which I was very excited about.

During the second transition from bike to run I couldn't locate my gear, which was very frustrating. I finally headed out on the half marathon run, 13.1 miles (21 km) along the Santa Cruz coastline.


The sun had come out, and it got fairly warm, so I was happy with all the water stops provided. After 5 hours and 52 minutes, I finally made it to the beach for a grueling finish in the sand.


I was very happy with my time, I finished 458th out of 845 participants, not bad for my first time.