Tritonman Classic Race Report 1

by Kent Kubo

3:30am, my alarm goes off, and I’m starting the day early by brushing my teeth. This year, Tritonman is a bit different for me since I am the sponsorship coordinator as well a competitor…By 3:50am I’m out the door and on my way down to Fiesta Island. 4:15am rolls around and the team is off to setting up for Tritonman Day 2. The second day is easier to set up since we all know exactly where things go, it’s just a matter if we can take on 500+ athletes at once. I finish setting up the aid tables (shout out to Dave for the Justin Bieber theme), and then head off over to the transition area so set up my bike. Read more »

UCI Zot Trot (race report 2)

by Jason Pianalto
 

For a sprint tri, UCI is a pretty tough course. The swim is in a pool (yay!) and only 450 yards (double yay!), but they usually send athletes into the pool at 5 second intervals. This, along with the fact that their pool is tiny, uses 25 yards instead of 50, and requires athletes to swim up and down one lane before snaking to the next, means that it’s less like being in a pool and more like being in a blender (boo!) The bike course is four laps in the shape of a bowl – if you aren’t going down into the bowl, you’re climbing out of it. It has two iffy downhill corners and one absolutely terrifying downhill corner. The run is similar to the bike – if you aren’t going uphill, you are going downhill. It finishes with a fast 800m downhill sprint on dirt. Read more »

UCI Zot Trot (race report 1)

by Marcel Aguiar
 

At the very start of 2015 I was SO excited for the season. My swimming was solid, Tuesday morning Swamis rides had me at the fastest ever on the bike, and I PR’d my mile run by a ridiculous half-minute. How could I not be excited for Zot Trot? But as fortune would have it, I had to change my Zot Trot registration to a relay at the end of January. Upper foot pain during runs started in early January, and a month later it wasn’t any better. What seemed like would require a few weeks of rest turned into a month, into 3 months, and eventually the whole season and school year went by and I was still having on and off pain. Read more »

Wildflower (Olympic) Race Report

by Melissa Le Roux

Wildflower is the team’s last major race of the season, but it happened to be my first Olympic distance triathlon. The week before the race I was completely torn whether or not to compete. On the one hand, it was my last chance this season to race with the team, but on the other hand, I had only been back to light training for a month after being on crutches for 6 weeks! I was very nervous that I would not be able to finish, but after going back and forth on the decision, Coach Kim convinced me two days prior to the race that I would be fine. Read more »

Wildflower (Long Course) Race Report

by Kerri Seger

Third WF long course. Fifth half ironman distance. I should have this thing down pat by now, right? Riiiiight. On Friday morning Yuann and Chris picked me up, and after looping around a tractor-trailor turned inside out on the highway, we grabbed Boone Horse from his parents’ place and got to Lake San Antonio relatively early. TriBike Transport wasn’t too hard to find, and I was off to set up transition. Here I was thinking that leaving my bag half-packed from Nationals would prevent forgetting things. Important things. Like pedals. Nope. A quick sprint up the stairs later to find a vendor selling Speedplay 5s returned no luck. As chance would have it, though, the guys at Dimond Bikes are friends with someone I swam with in high school. They lent me one of the sets off their personal bikes – the same pedals Brian used when he forgot his at an IM! #smallworld #swimmerproblems Spoiler alert: not all Speedplays are created equal. Read more »

140 Miles, 11,000+ ft. of Climbing, 30 Miles of Dirt

by Sage Aronson

In February, I get a text from my friend, “Hey do you want to do the Belgian Waffle Ride with me?” I do love waffles and can’t think of anything better than being on the bike. But it was $100… “You get a beer if you finish.” I was sold.

I knew it was a long ride with some dirt sections – but the official course wasn’t posted so I didn’t give it much thought. Prior to the race, Michael Marckx, the President of our generous sponsor, Spy Optics, sent a series of twenty “communiques” outlining and hyping up particular sections of the race in reverse order. Unlike other races where the tendency is to downplay the difficulty of the course to encourage beginners, the purpose of this was exactly the opposite. Here’s a taste: Read more »

by Jason “Dad” Stofleth

The week of this season’s most competitive race had arrived. As I scrambled to help send out emails, pay for cabin reservations, check flight times, read through a team itinerary about 80 times, prep my bike to ship to the race, continue training, show data to my research advisor and discuss work on my project for my upcoming qualifying exam, get a TA to cover my classes for the week, call in a favor from a friend to proctor an exam for me, and packed my bags with gear and clothing; I had no time to be nervous about the race. Maybe this was for the best. Such is life as a grad student triathlete. Read more »

by Lilly McCormick

Some of the women’s team preparing for the swim!

Sometimes it seems harsh that the hours and hours of training and effort put in all year are tested in one short time, on one day, and in whatever conditions that may be present, but that is the nature of the sport, and can be considered part of the challenge. This year’s collegiate national nationals was a true example of this aspect of triathlon… Read more »

by Clare LeGuyader
 

My journey to the DL race at Nationals started a few months ago when Esther cornered me in the locker room after a swim: “Has [Coach] Kim or Jason talked to you about Draft Legal for Nationals?” Me, blank face: “What are you talking about.”

After some gentle persuading by all three of those people, I verbally committed to the race, thinking that obviously this was just a safety net. After all, this is my first season competitively racing triathlons. I’ve been riding a bike less than a year, running when I have to, but swimming my whole life (in a previous life I was distance swimmer at The College of William and Mary). In fact, this season started out spectacularly at Bike Camp in Anza Borrego where I crashed on my first “long” ride (it was less than 35 miles). Read more »

Conference 2015 (Race Report 2)

by Rachel Marty

Ethan, Kent, and Rachel taking a break to pose for a selfie with the beautiful horses!

On Saturday morning, the day before the race, Clare arrived at my house around 6:30am with her little silver Volkswagen. Over the next hour, we managed to fit Sinead, Vivien, Clare, me, Sinead’s bike, Clare’s bike, all of our camping gear, and bags into and onto Clare’s car. After we conquered set up of the bike rack (on the fourth try), we knew nothing would stop us.  During the drive, we alternated between admiring the ocean view and laughing about the age discrepancies of memories associated with old music. We got to SLO around 1:00pm, picked up our race packets and then started setting up camp. Once more people had arrived, we assembled our bikes and rode for about half an hour to acclimate to the course. The whole time, I was in awe of the beauty surrounding us. Naturally, we had to get off our bikes to take a selfie with some of the horses. I mean, who can pass up on opportunity like that??? Read more »