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March 18, 2006
Guam Isla Triathlon
I know it's been a couple weeks since my last post. Sorry, just we've not done anything website worthy. :-)
Last weekend, however, I decided to continue my masochistic habit of triathlons. If you've been following the site, you'll notice that last year, I was very active, racing something like 12 times last year. This year, however, is a different story. Perhaps it's that I've been working too much, but I haven't been out training hardly at all, let alone racing.
This is our last year on the island, and I have heard stories of how great the X-Terra Offroad Triathlon in Saipan is. So, to determine if I would be able to survive it, I decided that I should try another one first. That's where the Guam Isla comes in. My goal in this race was survival, not placement. :-)
The Guam Isla was an Olympic distance race, which means we did a 1.5K (about 1 mile) swim, a 40K (about 26 miles) bike, and a 10K (about 6.5 miles) run. The site was down in Merizo on the far southern end of the island.
It was a floating start, so we all swam out to the starting buoy and did an out and back course. The water is very clear on Guam and this swim was quite pretty. I have to admit though ... last year when I did the Cocos Crossing (a 2.5 mile swim from the small island back to the bigger island) a girl on the boat going to the start told me she saw a hammerhead shark in the channel from the helicopter she was flying just a few days before. I didn't pay much attention then because we were only crossing the channel, not swimming in it. However, the swim course for this tri was entirely in the channel. Most of the time, I couldn't see the sea floor (it was a pretty blue though) but the thought of the hammerheads in the water kept popping in my head and (here's the admission) was a bit unnerving.
Anyway, here we are with the kayaker/jet ski support crews out in full force.
This is me on the left getting out of the water about a half an hour later.
It was a little harder to get through the transitions this time, since I was a rather out of practice. (yes, I did fix my helmet before I started biking :-) ).
Once we left on our bikes, it was over an hour before we'd be back, so this is what everyone did to amuse themselves. As you can see, they had a good time.
After a couple large hills, rough roads, and almost an hour and a half later, I came back in to transition to the run.
It was a long, hot, but fortunately flat run course. The only bad part was pyschcological ... I got to the run turn around point and thought that the course was marked short (according to my GPS). So, I cruised in and pushed hard for what I thought was the last half mile or so. Unfortunately, when I got to the end (or so I thought), to my surprise they said, "keep going!"
Here I am right after I heard that ... I don't know if you can tell by my expression, but I was not pleased at the thought of running more. :-)
So, in reality it was another half mile out and back. That was a minor point they forgot to point out on the course map. Oh well, it was only a mile right?
Here's our friend finishing up. Way to go Mark!
FINALLY, here I am finishing up after just about 3 hours.
Can you see the relief in my face I am done?? I know I have done these races before, but this was by far the most difficult because I did it with no training and the run was a bit tough mentally.
So, looks like I am all set for X-Terra. We're scheduled to be there for the race on April 1st.
Sometime after, I will post how it goes. :-)
--Jim
Posted by jim at March 18, 2006 09:28 AM