Helloooo!! It’s time for a race report!

Yesterday I did the San Diego International Triathlon. This was my first ever race in the Elite category too!

I was pretty nervous about my pro debut! I felt like I needed to perform well and not embarrass myself. I also wasn’t sure how big the pro wave would be at this race. I looked at the results from previous years and it looked like there were usually like 4 or 5 pro women.

I travelled down to SD on Saturday and arrived at race check-in by 12:30 or so. I got my bib and found out I was number 2 which was pretty cool! Since I was number 2, I assumed there would be at least one other pro woman.

My hotel was right across the street from the race start which was SO nice. I think this is where most of us stayed. It was a whole 5 minute walk from the hotel to transition! This was super nice on race day because I was able to sleep in a little later than normal and there was no worrying about parking!

On race morning, we walked over to transition and I got my area set up on the rack for wave # 1, which was the wave for elites and para-athletes. Bib number 1 had already racked their bike and there was one para-athlete racking his bike too. So in total, there were 3 bikes on the whole rack. I was wondering if this would be it, or if there were other elite athletes who might still show up.

I walked down to the water to go pee and warm up. The water felt amazing! It wasn’t too cold at all. I splashed around for a bit then wandered over to the race start. This is where I met bib number 1, an Elite male, and found out that we were in fact the only two pro athletes in this race. I was a little disappointed because I wanted some competition, BUT it also took a lot of the pressure off.

For this race, you start the swim with your wave and each wave starts 5 minutes apart. Also, instead of running into the water, each wave swam about 25 meters out to a buoy and treaded water until the start. All of us in wave 1 went out to the buoy and waited for the start. We were then informed that there was a slight 5-10 minute delay. They said we could get out of the water and wait if we wanted, but no one wanted to get cold standing on the beach, so we just floated out there until the start.

This swim course was great! I should mention, I thought this race was an actual international distance (1 mile swim, 25 mile bike, 6.2 mile run), but I was wrong. The swim was actually 1,000 meters, bike was 18 miles, and run was still 6.2 miles. I was little disappointed that my two best legs were shorter!!

Anyway, the swim course was in a bay so there absolutely no waves which was SO nice! The swim was shaped kind of like a rectangle and it was very easy to navigate and see all of the buoys. The pro guy was a really strong swimmer and he ended up getting pretty far in front of me, so I was all by myself since our wave was so small. Honestly, it was so nice not having to dodge other swimmers or swim around anyone! I guess that a perk of being in the Elite wave!

I finished the swim in about 13 minutes 30 seconds, which was a pace of 1:27, which is pretty good for me in open water. When I got out of the water and started running towards transition, the crowd was going NUTS which was SUPER cool. I smiled all the way into transition.

This transition area was pretty small which was nice! I was able to get T1 done in about 2:30 mins and head out onto the bike. Since I was the second person out onto the bike course, and since the pro guy was way ahead of me at this point, I was PRAYING that the bike course was well-marked because I had literally no one to follow LOL.

Luckily, it was well-marked! The course itself took us away from the bay and up into Cabrillo National Monument. Then, the course takes you back out of the park, where there is U-turn to go back up and do it again, then you head back towards transition.

The bike course was pretty hilly the whole way, which I enjoyed! It was hard the first loop because I had no one around me and couldn’t tell if I was doing well or not. When I went to do my second loop in Cabrillo, there were way more people on the course which gave me a better indication of my speed! (How many people I was passing and how fast I was able to pass them LOL)

All in all, I really liked this course! My only complaint is that there were huge speed bumps going into the park. And these were the kind of speed bumps that can be removed, so I wish they had taken them out. Unfortunately, I lost one of my favorite water bottles (the one that looks like a mustard bottle… I lost my pickle relish bottle during the LA triathlon) after hitting one of the speed bumps. When I came back out of the park, I saw my bottle had rolled off to the side and into the grass. I was just happy it was off the course and wouldn’t cause any crashes! But RIP to my mustard bottle.

After this incident, I was about 3 miles from finishing the bike when I heard the sound of something metal hit the ground under my bike. I was hoping I had just ran over something on the street. My bike was still riding well, so I figured everything was okay. But when I finished the bike and got off, I noticed my rear bottle cage was dangling to one side. One of the screws came loose and fell off. Luckily the cage stayed on! But annoying nevertheless.

I ran into transition and completed T1 in about 1:30 mins. Then I was off onto my least favorite leg, the run.

I went into the run feeling surprisingly amazing. It was a little weird because I really didn’t see many other runners until about halfway in (that’s when I started getting passed LOL). Also, I should mention this run course is amazing. It’s super flat and right next to the water, so very pretty!

I was holding a pretty steady 7:20-7:30 pace and even did mile 3 at a 7:18 pace! That was really fast for me. I just felt so smooth and comfortable at this pace, but also knew I physically could not run faster than that without dying. I just can’t wrap my head around these girls that can hold 6:30 min miles on a 10K, let alone a 13.1!? LIKE HOW?! My heart rate was MAXED OUT at my pace. I averaged a 190 HR!

ANYWAY, I ended up finishing my 10K run at an average 7:30 pace, which was great for me!

Also, side note, I did recently hire a triathlon coach! There is a ton of room for improvement on my run, so I’m excited to see what we can do. We only started working together about a month ago, and he did not have me taper for this race at all, so my expectations for my run were pretty low. HOWEVER, the fact that I could comfortably hold a 7:30 pace and I’m not even sore today at all is very telling!

My race time ended up being a 1:52:22. I wasn’t sure if this was good because I had nothing to compare it to! I’ve never done a race that was this distance before.

I got first for the elite women (because it was just me LOLLOL) but overall, I got second out of all women! And I know the girl who beat me and she is SOOOOO fast. I knew I didn’t stand a chance against her!

I stuck around for the awards even though I knew I would be the only Elite woman on the podium, but I just really wanted the other medal! ALSO, my friend Becky has done this race like 5 times and she said there has always been prize money for the pros!!! So I held out hope for the money. But sadly, there was zero prize purse yesterday 😦 That could have been my only chance to win money as a pro! UGH. Oh well!

My other small beef about this race was that the finish line was over two miles from transition. However, they have really nice shuttles that took the athletes back to transition, so it really isn’t bad! But the awards took forever and my hotel checkout was at noon. I left my stuff in the room assuming I would have plenty of time since I was literally done racing before 8:30 am. But with the slow awards ceremony and having to shuttle back over to transition, I barely made it in time!

Overall, this was a really fun race! I highly recommend it to anyone in the SoCal area! I’m not sure I would travel from far away just for this race, BUT you could turn it into a really nice vacation/destination race!