Next stop… San Diego

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.

looking forward to ITU World Triathlon - San Diego

This year will ‘A’ race is going to be a full Ironman at Lake Placid.  My original plan was to complete a local sprint triathlon in May, then EagleMan 70.3 in June leading up to lake placid in July.

I recently found out about the 2012 ITU World series race in San Diego.  This is the qualifier for the Olympic games for a lot of countries, including the US team.  This was a race that I was interested in seeing, but didn’t really think I would get a chance to see in person.  I found out through the DC Triathlon Club that USA Triathlon CEO Rob Urbach offered FREE bike shipping to and from the ITU San Diego race for all members, on top of that was a $15 discount for the race itself.  Since I travel to California (San Francisco area) regularly for work, I figured it would be a great opportunity to see the top pro’s at ITU racing and complete an Olympic distance race instead of a sprint for my opening race of the season.

After looking more closely, I am pretty excited about this race – the course looks to be amazing, check out this video from the ITU race website.

And in this clip just released, where they preview the bike course.

I think this should be a great experience, and will also serve to keep my mind off the full ironman I will be preparing training for.

A Blast from the Past

A few months ago, I made a trip back to Australia to renew my work visa.  During that time, I finally got to cleaning out all of our things in storage, shipping some of it for us to use. 

There were a few things that I had completely forgotten about, including some old entries into some windsurfing world championships from my early 20’s.

The first one is from 1991, from Adelaide.  I look so young!

This one was from Singapore, I think from 1992, raceboard world championships.  I ended up finishing 10th after having some equipment problems.

and the last one is a really terrible photo, from 1994.

it all seems like so long ago now, but I have fond memories of all of these competitions, especially from Singapore.

to continue with the nostalgia, here are some pictures of me windsurfing.

I was about 16 here.  Between races on at Narrabeen Lake, Sydney.  My dad took this, on the boat the he used for the start/finish of our local races.  The equipment I was using was the original Windsurfer – we raced on these for years.

The next one was taken @ Palm Beach, Sydney.  I still remember this day.  A winter westerly wind.  I was using a large sail (7.3sqm) with a weight jacket.  This was back in the days when our Australian numbers were all ‘KA’ before switching to AUS.

the last one for today was taken at Mona Vale Beach, Sydney.   At the time I was living with friends close enough to walk here.  The photo’s were taken from a rocky point.  The board that I was using was one of my favourites – a custom slalom/racing by John Hall (Hybrid)

after all of this water sports reflection this morning, it’s time to go off to the pool for a swim!

A quick trip to Sydney

Last month, I had to go back home for a week to renew my work visa.  While my main priorities were work and cleaning out our storage unit (after 9 years), I was able to catch up with family and friends and I managed to get a few decent training sessions in.  I am a bit biased, but Sydney has got to be one of the best training places anywhere in the world.

I have one more race this season, the Beach 2 Battleship half (70.3) on October 29th.  Since this will be a cool salt water swim, I wanted to get a few swim sessions in with my wetsuit.  So I headed down to Dee Why Beach, on Sydney’s northern beaches.  There is a 50meter outdoor pool, which sits right on the ocean, and is filled with ocean water.  This was a perfect place to get some good training in, and since the water was still cold (17c/63f) I could get some wetsuit time in too.  A 50meter pool is so much better than the 25yard chlorinated pool I usually swim in.  The salt water was nice too – every race that I do in fresh water (just about all of them) feels a little weird, having grown up at the beach.

Here’s a few pictures of the pool @ Dee Why.
after swimming, letting my wetsuit dry off a little.  That is Long Reef in the background, one of my favorite windsurfing spots.

another view of the pool, the water was perfectly clear, sure beats my local pool.

For me, swimming with the wetsuit is much faster than without – I managed to get in a 2km (2,180y) in just over 35 minutes, that is so much faster than I usually swim.  I hope I can replicate this during my next race!

I also managed to get in a great long run, right in the heart of downtown Sydney.  My course took me from the Opera house, through the botanical gardens, across the harbour bridge, past Luna park, back across the bridge, around to darling harbour and then back to the opera house.  It took 2 hrs and was almost 15 miles.  This continued something that I started in San Francisco when I ran over the Golden Gate Bridge.  I struggled on the last 30 minutes of this run.  I’ll chalk that up to a lack of nutrition/electrolytes whilst running.  Better for that to happen in training than in a race.

Map of my run course, from Garmin connect (used my edge 500 bike computer during the run)

I had also planned a great long ride, but due to heavy rain I had to give it a miss.  I was really looking forward to a solid 3-4hr ride in the hills national park from Church point, to Cottage point.

Even though it was a short trip (7 days) I think I made good use of my time, and get everything done.  I am looking forward to my next trip back home, however I am not sure when that will be.

A run across the Golden Gate Bridge

I often travel to the Bay Area of San Francisco – visiting my company’s headquarters in Redwood City.  I’ve been to the downtown area of San Francisco many times for both business and pleasure.  During that time I’ve made a few trips over the Golden Gate bridge to visit places like Sausalito & the redwood forest, but never on foot.

During my last trip, I had a few hours to kill between finishing up work at 6pm on Friday afternoon and my 11pm red-eye flight back to the D.C area.

I wanted to get a run in before I flew home, so I decided to run across the Golden Gate bridge.

I drove over towards Crissy Field, and here’s the view only a few feet away from my car.
By the time I got changed and ready to run, it was about 7:15 – enough time to run up/over/back and still have time to stretch and get some food before the long flight home.

Here’s the route that I took

I started along the flat section toward the bridge along the bay, to get warmed up before climbing up the stairs to the bridge itself. 

Since it was getting close to sunset, I took the path under the bridge to the western side, hoping to get a nice picture, but I couldn’t really get wide enough for a good view.  This is the best I could get.  It came out pretty well, especially from a phone.

 

 

 

From here I re-traced my steps to the eastern side of the bridge.
and then over to the other side.  The view was amazing.This the view towards Alcatraz above, some day I’ll do the escape from Alcatraz triathlon and swim from there to the city.
this was taken from the visitor’s center on the northern side of the bridge.

It was so nice to have a scenic place to run, the time just flew by.  On the way back the sun was setting.
the trail, heading back down towards the car

In the end I ran close to 7 miles in just over an hour – it was a really great experience, one that I would do again in a heartbeat.