Superseal Race Report

This past Sunday I raced Superseal in Coronado, CA...sort of. Mother Nature decided to bring a huge storm through Southern California, intent on ruining any plans for racing.  First, the swim was canceled due to a small craft double red flag warning.  The bike portion was then canceled on race morning due to 30+ mph wind gusts making riding rather dangerous.  In the end, the Olympic distance triathlon was reduced to a 2.9 mile sand run.  That's not quite what I had in mind when I signed up for this race, but I figured I had traveled down to San Diego to race, so I might as well take what I can get.

Just before the run, the sun started to come out and a rainbow formed.

I guess one of the main takeaways I got from this race is that triathletes look really dorky.  I was especially dorky looking with my extra cold weather gear on.

There were around 1300 people signed up for the race but only about 250 stuck around for the run.  Since I was in the elite division and I found out they were still giving out the prize money to the winners, I thought "Hey, maybe all the real pros went home and I can take their prize money". That wasn't the case.  Some fast dudes stuck around.  I like the picture of the start below.  I suggest clicking on it to see the big version.

Photo by Louis Roberto

I am smiling because I was happy to be off the sand.  Out of the 2.9 miles only 0.3 mile was on pavement.

Hanging out after the race with some other dorky looking triathletes, Steven and Mott.

I ended up placing 6th overall with a time of 16:51.  Click here to see my GPS data.

Up next is Wildflower Olympic on May 6th. This weekend I am excited to once again be traveling to Tucson, AZ for TriFest hosted by trisports.com. I'll be sure to post some picture from the Mt. Lemmon ride.

Superseal Race Preview

This weekend I will be racing at Superseal in Coronado, CA.  This will be my first Olympic distance race of the season and I have been looking forward to it because I will be racing in the Pro/Elite division. Because this race is not USAT sanctioned, I was able to enter in the Pro division despite the fact that I do not have my USAT professional license.  There will be some former teammates and other fast competitors in my wave that I'm excited to be racing side-by-side with.

The only slight disappointment going into the race is the weather forecast for this weekend.  There is a large storm that is supposed to come through the area tomorrow and the race directors have said that if there is more than 0.1 inches of rain, the swim portion will be canceled.  I believe the reason is that the rain run-off from the city makes the water too dirty to swim in.  If this happens, the swim would be replaced by a 1 mile beach run and the race would essentially turn into a duathlon (run-bike-run).  As someone who for the most part excels in the swim, the likelihood that the swim will be canceled is disappointing.  Regardless, if it happens, it happens. I'll just have to deal with it.  I've never raced a duathlon, so it might be an interesting experience. We'll see...

Off-season Recap and 2012 Schedule

The 2012 triathlon season has started and I am currently heavy into my training with a race quickly approaching this upcoming weekend.  Before I get into discussing 2012, let me bring you up to speed with what I've been up to in the months since the Los Angeles Triathlon last year...

I have spent a large part my off season and the beginning of 2012 season battling a left ankle injury.  The injury began when I started to feel pain following the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in September of last year.  I decided to race through the pain two weeks later at the LA Triathlon, which may not have been the best idea.  The next several months consisted of several trips to the podiatrist and about 2 months of physical therapy.  During all of this, I maintained my conditioning through continued swim workouts, and tried to work in moderate cycle/run training while at the same time trying to avoid hindering the recovery of my ankle.  Things were progressing quite well until early February when I tweaked my ankle on a training ride.  My doctor had previously been going with the physical therapy and rest treatment, but with my season soon approaching, he decided it was best to get an MRI to evaluate whether there was any soft tissue damage or stress fractures.  The MRI results ended up coming back favorable with no apparent injury. The joint inflammation continued, so I was given a cortisone shot to treat the inflammation. Right now my ankle is not 100%, but is significantly improved and reacting favorable to the cortisone shot treatment.  I have ramped up my training and am on track towards meeting my training plan for the season.

During my ankle rehab and off-season workouts, there was also this:

That is the aftermath of me T-boning a pick-up truck on Paseo Del Mar in Ranchos Palos Verdes Estates in early January.  Essentially, the driver did not see me and decided to make an illegal U-turn right in front of me. As he made the turn and blocked my right-of-way, I did not have time to stop or swerve around him, so I essentially tucked my shoulder and braced for the impact.  I ended up having some pretty gnarly bruises on my knee, shoulder, and ribs, and also snapped a shifter into two pieces on my bar ends.  Other than that, my bike and my body were OK.  The crash could have definitely been worse.

Right now, I am just into the 2012 race season and my body is feeling quite well considering the off-season I had.  I have a pretty packed race schedule ahead of me.  There are a lot of the same races from last year, but also some new ones...the most prominent being Ironman 70.3 Switzerland on June 3rd.  I will discuss that race in greater detail in a future post, but shall just say I'm super excited about it.  My currently planned 2012 race schedule is the following:

Date	Race	Distance
2/25/2012	Race on the Base Reverse Sprint	Sprint
3/18/2012	Superseal Triathlon	Olympic Triathlon
5/5/2012	Avia Wildflower	Olympic or Long Course
6/3/2012	Ironman 70.3 Switzerland	Long Course Triathlon
6/24/2012	San Diego International Triathlon	International Triathlon
7/15/2012	Ironman 70.3 Vineman	Long Course Triathlon
8/4/2012	Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon	Sprint Triathlon
9/9/2012	Ironman 70.3 World Championship	Long Course Triathlon
9/23/2012	Los Angeles Triathlon	Olympic Triathlon

As always, my race schedule and results can be seen here.

My second race of the season is Superseal this coming Sunday in Coronado, CA. Come back later this week and I'll have a race preview posted. Till then, gute nacht.

2012: Here We Go!

Well, the 2012 triathlon season is upon us!  I've been blog-lazy over the past several months, so I'm working on a post summarize my happenings in the time since my final race last season. In the meantime, I wanted to point out some updates I made to the blog sidebar on the right.  First, I added a slideshow with an assortment of pictures from the 2011 season.  Below the slideshow is a widget showing the GPS data from my Strava account.  For some reason it is only showing ride data, but if you click a link on the widget you can navigate to see my run data too.  Enjoy!