The Sandman Triathlon - Aug 1, 2010

I always look forward to this one because most of my buddies will be there and it's a nice short race. Still, I'm resolved to fixing my ongoing surgery recovery issues with my left leg before doing any more race-pace runs. So I decided I'd just do the swim and the bike. A shark had been cruising around the race area for the past week, as reported by several fisherman from the Santa Cruz harbor - good motivation to have a fast swim. Not a good race to be at the back of the pack.

All pix here are taken with my Lumin F3K pocket camera. You'll just have to get used to the arm's length shot at races from now on, folks.

I find that I did not record my 2008 race - the first triathlon I've done since my June 2007 hip resurfacing surgery. So here's the results of the 2008 race. 2:17:19 time, 8th/11 in my age group, 199th/243 overall. The official results don't break out each leg... why didn't I write down my swim time??! But I recall it was 18 minutes and some odd seconds, and I was a full minute or so behind Rick Ferrell.

The fun of setting up your transition area proceeds. A smaller than usual field, no doubt the economy?

Great to see Dave Slothower again. That meant only one thing - Ferrell and Sloth duelling it out

Dave's got his $600 almost illegally great wetsuit on, and ready to smoke the competition in the water

My goal for the swim - Beat Ferrell! A friendly competition which I've always lost. However, he's 7 years younger than I am, way fitter, and yet I'm getting closer... this year, I did a PR of 17:14 exiting the water, only 14 seconds behind Rick. He had a fast transition and we only had time for a few grunts together in the transition area (that's his bike, next to my beautiful Serrotta below) before he took off, not to be seen again till it was over.

I missed an epic battle between Rick and Slothower - Dave is a famously strong swimmer and had already left on the bike before Rick and I emerged from the water. Ferrel's a great cyclist, but so's Dave, and Rick managed to make up only a couple minutes on the bike, and still behind as they started the run. At the run turnaround, Rick figured he was behind now by only 1 minute. The beach run was tough, being at mid tide and a very slanted surface. Rick is recovering from two knee surgeries, so catching Slothower looked unlikely. But he put on a big effort and had caught up heading into the finish. But Slothower hung on by just 1 second. Quietly, though, it was Dave Delucchi who beat the whole gang, at 1:25:42, as his hard work on rebalancing his running form is paying off.