Ukiah Triathalon

Nicole, Andrew and I went and raced a triathlon on Sunday the 11th of September. Andrew had decided to race and Nicole and I decided last min to join him. The race was in Ukiah so only a little more an hour and a half away from home. Nicole and I got ready the day before. She rocked the Marin cross bike with some road tires and I built up my new cxr carbon fiber 29er hardtail and threw on some nano raptors. Sure that it was going to be a pretty small race with not many people there we didn't get too nervous. After the alarm didn't go off and we were late waking up at 4:30am and we were late picking Andrew up we raced over to ukiah making a personal best from gualala to ukiah in an hour and 6 min. Nicole and Andrew stepped out of the car a bit car sick and we headed to registration. While registering we realized it was going to be a bigger race than we thought. There were a little more than 400 participants there. Most people there had time trial bikes and lots had aero helmets. I saw a few solid disc carbon fiber aero wheels there as well. Andrew was the only one in our group with a straight up tri bike so he looked like he fit in. Looking at the tri bikes and then looking back at my mountain bike I felt a little under prepared. Nicole was a bit nervous because this was her first swim, bike ,run triathlon ever. She has race a tri before but there was a kayak leg and not a swim leg. We got to the bike to run transition zone and prepared our things. We rode over to the swim to bike transition area which ended up being a pretty good warm up and got all set up. The morning was kind of cool and I saw people shivering all over the place in the water waiting for the gun to go off. I saw Nic just before the race started and we wish each other good luck. Same with Andrew, I said stay out of my way or I'll kill you. Just kidding I said good luck to him as well.

The race started and we were off. It was a half mile swim into a 21.7 mile ride. The swim was over pretty quick and then the ride was on. It was an out and back so I saw Andrew and Nicole on my way back, they looked like they were doing really well. Nicole had gotten out of the water and layed it down on the ride. She used the ride as her opportunity to pass tons of people on the bike, great job Nic. I managed to not get passed by more than three people during the ride which was pretty sweet. Everyone who passed me made a comment about my bike with regular mountain bike tires, everything was positive. The last guy who passed me said I needed an aero helmet, which I thought was pretty funny and I told him that I needed and had forgotten my arm ferrings at home. Having built my bike up until late the night before I hadn't quite gotten my seat position right and now my ass and back were so tight. I got to the bike to run trans and got changed up quick and took off in a short strided super speedy shuffle. My back was so tight by then I couldn't open my stride up. I managed to pass two or three guys on the run and ended up in first for my age group and 5th over all which I was pretty happy about. I saw Andrew a little bit later coming in from the run with a strong finish line sprint. The dude was wearing sandles he had been training in for a barefoot half marathon. He ended up in 6th for his age group. Way to kill it Drew. I went over to the race course were it double back to look for Nicole. I only had to wait a second before I saw here charging the course in her vibrams. I was surprised see how fast she was moving and the rate she was picking people off. I cheered her on and assured her that the finish line was so close and to give it everything, she did and ended up killing it and placing 6th for her age group. Great job with your first triathlon Nic! Same to Andrew! We got bottles of wine and lots of fruit after the race and went home and did a two hour mountain bike ride. What a great way

to finish off an on road triathlon. That was the day that never ended.

Ps. Nicole's front tire blew out in the transition zone after the ride leg was over. The tire blew completely off the rim. Luckily no one was injured. And luckily I wasn't the one who put the tire on. I hate getting blamed. peace out and see you at the races!