We headed out to scenic Galt, CA (ok, not quite) on Saturday in preparation for the 2010 LUNA Bar All Women's Triathlon Festival on Sunday, August 29 at Rancho Seco Park. This event was hosted by Total Body Fitness Racing. After checking into the Comfort Inn & Suites, we traveled out to the race venue to check out the setup and bike course. I feel the water and it was super warm so I decided against wearing the wetsuit. I would bring it just in case but considering how warm the water was and how short the swim distance would be (.5 mile), I thought it would be best without the suit. After leaving the park, we drove the bike course as it was an out and back 10 miles each way from the park. It was mostly flat with a couple small roller hills (<3% grade). I knew it could definitely make for a very fast ride.
The regular triathlon distance for this race was a .5 mile swim, 20 mile bike and 4 mile bike. There was also a Super Sprint race which started at 8:30AM and the first wave of my race started at 9:00AM. My wave started at 9:05AM with an easy swim around 4 buoys. The one old school thing about TBF Racing was the use of manual timing techniques, instead of timing chips. So on the swim, we wore paper tags with our numbers which timing volunteers pulled on the swim exit. Without the wetsuit, my transition was even faster than normal. I did hit my big toe on my left foot on the ground when trying to get my pedals aligned but it didn't bother me until post-race (like now as I have it taped up).
The bike course was awesome. I had the rocket adjusted last Thursday to remove some of the spacers to lower the bike handle bars down even further. When I tested it on Saturday morning, I thought the body position felt faster but I couldn't tell if it was the bike or the fact that my legs were fresh from 2 full days of recovery! The new bike position did seem to contribute to my super fast bike split. I ended up catching up to most of the women in the 29 and under wave which had started the swim 5 minutes earlier than my wave.
The run course appears to be flat from the distance but there were a couple really short inclines and declines. It was on an exposed dirt road/trail. It could have been a really hot place for a run but the weather was really nice (70-80) and considering how short it was, it wasn't uncomfortable despite the lack of any shade. I stuck with my AVIA racing shoes although I had wanted to try out my Scott racing shoes which I won at Folsom Triathlon two weeks ago. But I only had one workout in the Scott shoes and I got a blister on the back of my left ankle so I thought best to wait and break them in more. My run was decent, much less torturous than Folsom and I'm sure my recovery days helped out with that. I tried to keep my run cadence higher, got an average of 84. Not wonderful but better than the 83 at Folsom and matching the 84 on the magical Santa Cruz Triathlon race leg.
Overall, a great race with a cool 1st Place award plaque and a box of Luna Protein bars! Yummie!
Ranking: 1st Place in Age Group.
Overall Time: 1:47:34
2010 LUNA Bar All Women's Triathlon Bike Course: 56:41. 20 miles
2010 LUNA Bar All Women's Triathlon Run Course: 35:04. 4 miles.
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