Tag: triathlon folsom

I did the Folsom Oly Tri on Sunday. The race is located at the Hazel Ave exit just off 50. My GPS could not find the address. “Gold River” was not there, nor was the address on Hazel listed in Rancho Cordova. But I just went north off the exit, and followed the traffic into the parking lot. It cost $10 to park, but it goes to a good cause, I guess. It took me about 90 minutes to drive from my house.
The weather was unusually COOL (still warm, but not blazing hot. It even took me a while to warm up when I first got on the bike out of the water)
Lake Natoma was clean and fairly clear and slightly cold, probably around 63-64 degrees. The sun was in my eyes outbound so it was hard to see the buoys (like IMAZ). I am sure I swam a huge zig-zag, but oh well. There were rocks at the point we exited from the lake, so I had to be careful. Then a too slow transition to my bike–stubborn wetsuit :). The bike was a bit hillier than I expected, at least it was not too windy. I could tell my bike legs were a bit tired, having ridden the delightful 40 mile loop (almost 4000′ of ascent, according to my Garmin) on Saturday with the CORE and TCM group. (thanks to Shannon for organizing it so well!). I was wondering why I rode the second half of the bike so much faster than the first–After looking at my Garmin results I saw that the first half was mostly and steadily UPHILL to about 625 feet altitude, as which point we turned around and rode back down! The run had some slight up-and-down grades, and the route was along the shadier side of the lake, and an out and back course. That way I knew I really just had to make it 3.1 miles, because then it was all back to the start. The oly seemed so SHORT! 3 hours and out…hardly seems worth the drive.. 🙂
Including myself there were five TriMore Fitness groupies in the race. Neil came in second, Alicia Krueger first! (F40-44) and Lizzy Stock (25-29) came in third. And if I would have been one year older, I would have taken third place. So I need to remember to race in 2011. The winners got bottles of wine and free running shoes!
I only signed up for this tri on Thursday–it is so nice to be able to decide last minute, and be a little more spontaneous and casual. I really enjoyed the race. I still need to work on stripping my wetsuit though…maybe I could hire someone to strip it off me like they do at the IM races…I wonder if there is a USAT rule for that?