This coming Saturday is my first race of the 2012 triathlon season. The ITU World Triathlon in San Diego. I am racing the Olympic age-group race. This event also serves as an Olympic qualifier for many countries. The women’s pro race is on Friday afternoon, age groupers race early Saturday and the men’s pro race is Saturday afternoon. The location for the race is Mission Beach/Bay, San Diego – the same location where the first triathlon was held almost 40 years ago. I can’t wait to get out there and experience all of it.
The picture below shows the bike course (in red).
My main goal is to get out there and have a lot of fun, with no real time goals other than to go hard for the whole race. I hope to get out of the swim in 28-30minutes, bike the 25 miles in 1:05-1:15, and run somewhere in the low 40’s for the 10k. Looking at the course profile (picture below) there is a challenging hill that we climb on both loops of the bike. My plan for the bike is to go hard for the whole ride, and see what I might have left on the run.
I think USAT have done a great job with this race, especially by offering free bike transport for athletes from the DC/VA area, as a part of the world club challenge. I took my bike to the truck on Sunday afternoon and got to meet Siphiwe who is driving the truck across country. He is a triathlete, and recently finished IronMan South Africa. I am sure the bikes will be well taken care of. They have created a twitter account (@FitnessTrucking & @kanebicycles) , and a blog so we can follow their progress! (http://sandiegoorbust2012.blogspot.com/). They are making good progress and we all really appreciate that they are making this possible. Here is a picture from the blog post, showing the 55 bikes from DC all nicely packed.
I wouldn’t be traveling to this race had it not been for the free bike shipping. Getting to see the pro’s fight it out for Olympic spots, especially the Australian and USA teams should be a real highlight.
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