...Trail Time: Santa Barbara Triathlon

August 28, 2008

Santa Barbara Triathlon

This last weekend we were fortunate enough to participate in the Santa Barbara Triathlon long distance event. Something that Monique, Keevin, Chuck and I were not really training for specifically but ended up being a solid performance for all of us. This was the longest race for all of us so far and now that we know how much fun the longer stuff is we are all hooked!

(Monique and Chuck in the EARLY morning)

We stayed at Chucks house which was just down the street from the transition area and got to hang out in downtown SB the night before. Such a fun place and it was just a carbo loading time for us and go to bed early... When we got back to Chucks house we heard some music playing from the bowl... Hey, thats Ben Harper!! Dang... I would have been cool to see him play the night before but maybe next year?

The race was so much fun I cannot even go into the details but I have a few lessons learned that I want to remember. The biggest for me was
A)starting slow -the longer the race the more important pace is
B)Consistency -in training lead to the biggest gains

Not that it is new or anything but this race proved to me that even if we were not specifically training for this event the consistency Wednesday night swim/trail run (about the only swim and run I have been doing all week) proved to be a BIG help just because it was consistent week after week.

I was also a little scared about the distance so I started out sllooowww... Maybe too slow in the water but I felt great on the bike...had some technical problems with my chain to rest a bit more and probably had the best run of my life to finish it off. Start slow and finish strong! I cannot remember the last time I ran over 7 miles but finishing this race with 10 miles I was able to hammer on the last 3 miles and felt sooo good. I passed tons of people and was so stoked to hold it at a faster pace than normal for a longer distance than I was training at...