Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Race Report: Long Beach Triathon!

Gee, I had no idea I signed up for the Silent Hill Marathon!
This past Sunday was the Long Beach Triathlon!  The swim portion was an 880 yard (half mile) swim through the usually calm waters of the Alamitos Beach in Long Beach.  I swam an abbreviated part of the race course in a meet up swim clinic hosted by the LB Tri Club.  So I was pretty confident about completing the course.  Unfortunately, after I dropped off my bike at the transition area, the fog had rolled on in!  Visibility was extremely low.  My friend and I walked the half mile from T1 to the start area.  After a frantic search for an unlocked bathroom (and my friend lending me her shoes, since I really REALLY did not want to go into the toilet on my bare feet and I had to leave my flip flops in T1), we were busting out bottoms back to the start line a half mile back down the beach.
Putting on the Wetsuit :3

After I got sort of close to the start line, I started putting on my suit on.  Good thing I was in the 7:12AM wave, since I was still putting the suit on when the elites wave started!  XD 

I did a quick warmup  dive into the water and a couple of strokes.  The water wasn't really that cold so I was satisfied with a 2 minute warmup and trotted back to the start line to see the two waves in front of me start.  I was surprised how wide to the left people were standing to the left of the first turn buoy. 

 Conditions were slightly choppy, but at least the fog started to lift a little bit so we could see two buoys ahead.  I had a whole strategy of starting a little to the left of the buoy and then going wide since I didn't want to get entangled in some arm/foot/face fight for position as my A goal was to swim well, and B goal was to complete the swim, so I played conservative
Warm Up in the Water!  A little choppy...




 I checked out the waves before me but with the excitement I forgot to keep a closer eye at how the people actually swam when they went out, so I missed signs of there being a pretty strong current going north along the shore.   No bueno! 





Strolling into the water :3
Our wave finally started.  I was lined up pretty to the left and strolled into the water behind the other races.  I was immediately caught into the current and had to backtrack a good number of yards back to the first buoy >_<  Lesson learned about really paying attention to the waves ahead of me instead of zoning out!

Action Shot!  There's my right arm :3
Aside from that, and having a life guard point me back on course later in the race (the fog rolled back in again and it was very disorienting.) everything went very well.  I swam wide outside the buoy line so I didn't get much swim contact from the other races, which worked to my advantage and well worth the extra 50 yards to the swim.  I should have also pre-walked the swim course along the beach to see how the buoys were positioned (but I was looking for a bathroom!) since the part where I pointed back on course by a lifeguard was when the buoys took a diagonal from the straight, and that was this weird loop thing I was not expecting for the end part of the course (probably because they pulled the race buoys inside the regular swim buoys due to the fog and they needed a slight loop hook to make it a half mile swim.)
Run run to T1!

I walked up the beach since I aggravated my foot injury running in the sand after the swim.  I think this may have thrown off my swim time.  I stopped my watch when I got out of the water so it looked like the LONGEST T1 ever as I walked the 100 yards back to transition.  Once I hit the concrete I started running :3


All in all a great race :3  The bike was a bit difficult what with the random fog rolling in, but the run went well and when  you do a first race, you always PR :3  I learned a lot about race swimming here so I'm glad I entered.  (I also learned a lot about transitions, too. UGH, same thing happened with T1 an T2 about plans going out the window due to the excitement XD)