Official Time: 02:36:06
1.5k Swim: 00:33:03
T1: 00:01:50
40k Bike: 01:11:02
T2: 00:02:12
10k Run: 00:48:02
Overall: 48th of 416
35-39 AG: 2nd of 30
In 2014, after completing my third sprint distance race and getting completely hooked on the sport, I decided it was time to do a longer event. The Olympic distance (1.5k (.93 mi) swim, 40k (25 mi) bike, 10k (6.2 mi) run) was about as far as I could fathom. Unsure what life would be like with a second child, particularly how much triathlon training I would be able to fit in, I chose OC Tri purely on the merit of timing; the event took place a few weeks before our scheduled cesarean for my daughter. I had no idea how challenging an Olympic triathlon this one was… and still is.
The swim is a mass start from the beach of a small, calm, man-made lake. The bike is an out and back through Santiago Canyon; past Saddleback Church and Cook’s Corner, then turn around just before Irvine Lake. Long climbs over continual rolling hills for more than 1600′ elevation gained in less than 25 miles. The run deceivingly starts out on an easy, gradual descent on a bike path, but then turns into a non-stop-punchy-mixed-terrain-hill-fest with one devastatingly long and steep climb between mile 4 and 5. It’s the kind of hill that even time doesn’t soften the pain, its brutality lives on in memories forever. The course finishes with a quick downhill sprint back to the shoreline of Lake Mission Viejo.
I was excited to see how my improvements and experience in the sport over the last 5 years would coalesce and compare to my performance the first time around. I expected time improvements in all three disciplines, totaling at least 10 minutes.
On race day, as we make our way into Orange County, the weather turns from average brisk morning with marine-layer cloud coverage to a very wet, misty rain and fog. The unexpected change in weather threw off my T1 set-up routine. I got caught up in trying to wipe my bike down and worrying about my family, who was also unprepared for rain and had to sit around and wait for me for the next few hours, that I forgot my secret performance weapons – my second dose of AltRed, some BCAAs and some AMP sodium bicarb lotion on the legs to minimize the lactic acid burn. I even forgot to apply chamois cream.
SWIM:
The water temperature was perfect, but the weather made the water seem extra dark and murky and made sighting a little difficult with tinted goggles. My age group was (inexplicably) put in the sixth of 8 waves, so I anticipated going a little longer than 1500 meters, figuring I’d end up taking an outside line to avoid swimming over the top of people in earlier waves. However, I did not anticipate swimming nearly the distance of a 70.3 race. GPS on my watch measured about 1875 meters and a half-ironman swim is about 1925 meters. I exited the water in an initially disappointing 33 minutes. I’ll explain who I got over my disappointment in a bit.
Bike:
Even though the bike-mount line was on an incline, and my bike and the ground were slick and wet, I managed to smoothly execute a flying mount and get the crazy rollercoaster ride started. It was still so foggy and misty that I couldn’t see through the visor on my helmet, but the mist was close enough to rain that it pelted the eyes and face when I took the visor off.
The conditions were less than favorable, but it only felt somewhat dangerous on one section of the return route. The canyon road was not closed to car traffic and the bike lane is extra narrow from overgrown trees on a fast descent near Cook’s Corner (biker bar), so taking this section at 35 mph when the road is wet and visibility isn’t great was the only time I felt like it might be a little unsafe.
I made a conscious decision to start a little slower and at a higher cadence, take some nutrition early, and somewhat save my legs for the very challenging run that was to come. Translation: wait to attack until I get over the first couple rollers, then get after it. The hills on the bike course were no-joke either, it’s one of the only races where I ran out of gears in both directions.
The last two miles of the ride are on a bike path down in a wooded canyon. I didn’t think to check the distance on my Garmin first and from memory the bike path section was much shorter, so I took my feet out of my shoes ready for dismount way too soon. Not only made for about a mile of inefficient pedaling, but also froze the toes and numbed my feet to feeling like stumps for the run. Otherwise, I had a strong finish, smooth dismount, and was headed into the muddy transition area.
Run:
T2 was set up on a flat patch of silty dirt next to the bike path and after the morning’s continuous light rain, the area was a muddy mess. I took a little extra time to try to brush some of the mud off my feet with my grass mat before putting on socks and shoes. About a quarter mile into the run, I realized I really was sensing pain beyond the weird tingly numbness of waiting for blood to return to my foot, so I stopped to adjust the tongue of my shoe that had folded over itself when I put the shoes on. After that, I was ready to take on the grueling hills that plagued my memories for the last few years.
There is one hill in particular that I’ll never forget. It starts at mile 3.5 and continuously climbs for .75 miles with the steepest section at a 14% grade. It is kind of demoralizing, though, because it begins after exiting a labyrinth of walking trails and gets back out on to a neighborhood road; a long steep neighborhood road. At what you think should be the top of the road, the track takes a blind turn onto another walking path and continues with an unexpected 12% grade climb. My first time around, my heart sank and I succumbed to walking for a minute to catch my breath at the blind turn. This time I was prepared for it, but my heart rate was definitely red-lined and I established a new heart rate threshold in training peaks.
After that, there were a couple more gradual rolling hills followed by a downhill finish that took me a total of 2 hours and 36 minutes to cross. As I previously mentioned, at first I was pretty disappointed that the 5 years of work that I put in to get faster only set me up to beat my original time by four minutes. But after I got to look at the numbers, when I realized how much farther the swim was, I felt better about my performance. My average pace was 1:36/100 yd; not a personal best but a solid swim for me. I know for a fact I was not as strong a swimmer in 2014, but I also didn’t have a watch that could engage GPS in open water, so I only have official times and the assumption that it was 1500 meters for comparison.
| OC Tri | 2014 | 2019 |
| Swim | 0:25:41 | 0:33:03 |
| T1 | 0:02:11 | 0:01:50 |
| Bike | 1:19:02 | 1:11:02 |
| T2 | 0:01:39 | 0:02:12 |
| Run | 0:52:58 | 0:48:02 |
| Finish | 2:41:33 | 2:36:06 |
Even if I didn’t improve my swim pace in 5 years, the extra distance added more than 7 minutes to my previous time. I shaved 8 minutes off of my bike split and about 5 minutes off the run. That makes my overall time improvement closer to 20 minutes, much better than the 5 minute delta a direct comparison of official finish times indicates, and it was good enough to take second place in the 35-39 age group. It was a good day, a great challenge, and an effort I am proud of.
