Oceanside Ironman 70.3
posted in Uncategorized |
 Bike Box |
 Cyndee at Flower Fields |
 Flower Fields |
 Pre-race backpacker |
 Just before swim start |
 Sunny Oceanside, CA |
This past weekend I traveled to San Diego to see my sister, Cyndee, and competed in my first triathlon of the year, the Ironman California 70.3 in Oceanside, CA.
AA canceled over 200 S80 flights on Wednesday due to some electrical wiring safety issues and this wrecked havoc on my standby travel plans, and thus the only way I could get to Southern California on Wed. evening was to fly into Palm Beach (PSP), 2.5 hours away from my sister’s apartment. I felt really bad making her drive all the way out there, but I really needed to get there on Wed. night instead of Thursday. I made it OK and Cyndee picked me up just fine. She wasn’t even that pissed off like I would have been. She’s a great sister.
On Thursday, I was forced to wait around most of the day at Cyndee’s apartment for FedEx to delivery my bike box. I couldn’t have picked it up at their facility b/c the huge box would not have fit in her Camry. It finally came around 5pm, and I put it together quickly to make sure nothing got damaged during shipping. Everything checked out OK, and I was happy to have my bike in CA for the first time ever! That evening, we went into Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego and walked around a bit before settling on a nice Italian place for some good carbo loading.
On Friday, I got up early and drove to Mission Bay for a final brick workout before the race. It was really cool to bike around Mission Bay and Beach. I didn’t care too much about getting in much of a the workout as I was just making sure my re-assembled bike rode OK while enjoying the simple pleasure of biking along the beach boardwalk. There is something magical about biking along the beach. It was my first time to ever do this, and I won’t soon forget it
We then drove the 30+ minutes from SD up to Oceanside and went to the expo and packet pickup. Cyndee was kind enough to wait in registration line for me while I chatted it up with some online friends. Following packet pickup, we took a short jaunt over to Carsbad, CA and went to the Flower Fields. This 50 acre field of flower was incredible, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, taking pictures almost every minute! For Cyndee’s sake, I’m really glad we were able to do something new and fun that didn’t involve triathlon. After stopping for quick lunch at an awesome huge salad bar called Souplantation, we made it back to her place just in time to see UT whoop up on Stanford!
Saturday was race day and I won’t bore you with all the race details, but if you really want them you can read my full race report here. To summarize in one sentence: While the ocean harbor swim wasn’t as cold as expected, the hills and headwinds on the bike course tired my legs enough to force me to have a sub-optimal run. Despite some tough mental spots on the bike and run, I’m still happy my overall performance. I’m also happy to have snagged an Ironman Lake Placid (IMLP) slot for July 20th, 2008. This was one of the main reasons I did this race.
I, however, was not the star of this weekend. That award goes to my sister Cyndee. She was very supportive the whole weekend especially on Saturday when she got up at 3:30am with me and then spent the whole day cheering me on at the race; over 15 hours! She put up with me converting her breakfast room into my own personal triathlon staging area. She even slept on an air mattress so I could get a good nights rest. I feel kinda bad that this trip was pretty much all about the race, but I still enjoyed visiting with her and her love and support reminded me how lucky I am to have such a wonderful sister.
