Morgan Hill Sprint Tri Relay Race Report

Forecast: ~100 degrees. 100??!!! Oh boy.

Today I was the swim leg of a relay with fellow Mermaid Jill and her husband Dennis. We were the Smart Hot Cookies:


The race got started a little late so the Athena/Clydesdale/Relay wave was the 12th and last to take off. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a water start. None of the frenzied dash into the water. And, the wave was nice and small. :-)


I started out with a little sprint to get going. I was turning pretty fast to get going and pull away from "crowd." It was a left shoulder swim which was a bit of a problem because I like to breathe to the right. When I started looking for the buoys they were really far away and no one from my wave was near me. :-( I found the next buoy and started heading that way and sighting a lot more. It was a long swim to that second buoy, I thought, "at this rate I'm never going to make my goal time. I finally made it around the second buoy and fell into a nice rhythm.



Here is an aerial shot of Uvas Reservior. The 3/4 mile swim was around the peninsula sticking out in the lake. It started swimming toward the bottom of the image and then counter-clockwise around the peninsula. No wonder the first part felt like it too so long, that's a long way until we turned.

The rest of the swim when well. I started passing people from wave #11 (men 50+) and wave #10 (women 45+). That always feels good. When we made the last turn toward the finish I kicked up the effort and pushed to the water's edge on the boat ramp. The boat ramp was kind of a pain and hard to run up. I tried to walk up quickly. I made it to transition, Jill took off the timing chip off my ankle, transfered it to Dennis, and he was off on the 16 mile ride.

According to Jill's watch I finished in ~21 minutes, meeting my goal of a sub 23:00 swim! We are still waiting for them to post the race results. (click refresh, click refresh, click refresh)

While Dennis was out on the bike course Jill, Wilma, and I cheered Gina, Sara, Gina, Paige, and Harj through their transitions.



I transfered the timing chip from Dennis to Jill and she headed out for a hot run. It sounded like Dennis had a good ride and powered up the evil hill at mile 11.

We had a great area in the transition area for watching the finish. We saw the pros come flying in. Saw some crashes at the bike dismount, and cheered all the Mermaids and other friends in to the finish.


Jill rocked the 5 mile run and finished in ~50 minutes. (I think. Still waiting for the effing results.)

We hung around for the awards and I'm glad we did. Sara placed in the Athena division! Go Sara!!

Overall, a good day. I was very, very hot but I seemed to have escaped without a sunburn. It was fun to be there with so many friends. Go Mermaids!