Life Time Tri (not the channel), directions, and the aftermath
For our triathlon finale, we decided to compete in the Life Time Triathlon up in Oceanside, CA, sprint distance, of course. Aside from the sprint distance, they had an Intermediate/International/Olympic/longerthansprintbutnotaslongasironman distance that was highlighted by the finale of the Life Time series championships. After having done 2 triathlons in the span of a month, I was a bit on the fence, but decided to do it after seeing a number of our Team Challenge teammates were participating. Yeller originally planned to show up and cheer us on since she wanted to focus on her cycling and swimming skills, but after some “arm twisting,” she caved and signed up. And by arm twisting, I mean “I did nothing and she eventually decided to sign up on her own.” 🙂
After we finished with the football tournament the day before, we hustled home to take care of the dogs and then hit the road up to Oceanside to register and pick up our swag. Speaking of, the swag was pretty great. We got: an awesome backpack with a drawstring bag inside it, another drawstring backpack kinda thing, a lifetime visor, coupons, some snacks, deodorant, and, of course, a sweet tech-tee. They also gave us a couple bags so they could handle trucking our stuff to the finish after the start, which turned out to be pretty awesome (more on this later). After grabbing our things, we sat down to listen to the course rundown so we were clear on where we were going and so we wouldn’t get lost. While the meeting was getting started, we noticed two of our teammates walking by, so they stopped to say hi and listen to the course rundown as well. This is the part of the story where, if it were a TV show, there would be some ominous music or a sound effect or something to signify some level of importance.
After the rundown of the course, we strolled around the expo and, of course, ran into one of Yeller’s friends managing the Tri Club San Diego booth… who twisted our arms (and by twisted, I mean offered us beer glasses) and got us to sign up. It seemed like she was doing a bit of arm twisting because we noticed the name of a teammate on the signup sheet. Yes, we’re addicted.
One of the new things to us was the fact the transition areas were split in two. Instead of the swim to bike and bike to run transition being in one spot, the swim to bike (T1) was by the start and the bike to run (T2) was about a mile away near the finish. This is where the bags came in handy: before we started our swim, we could put stuff we hung onto (sweaters for example) into one of the bags and drop it in a box. After we got out of the water, we put all our stuff in another bag and they’d truck everything to the finish so we didn’t have to go all over to pick up our items. After the meeting, we dropped our running stuff at T2 and drove to T1 just so we could scout the area. Unfortunately, we hadn’t brought our bikes, which meant the next morning we would need to ride them to T1 to rack them and get ready for the start. But after a quick walk around the area we were pretty comfortable with how everything would go down.
Pre-tri, aside from us being a little sore, it seemed like this was shaping up to be a pretty good event. Of course things aren’t always how they seem…