Race Event/Length: Triathlon Sprint (Swim: 600 yards, Bike: 10.5 mi, Run: 3.4)
Race Location: Bear Valley, CA
Finish Time: 1 hour, 5 minutes, 18 seconds
Place: 1st overall/46 participants
Lead up to the Race:
A triathlon consists of swimming, biking, and running. This is my second time participating in the Bear Valley Triathlon or any triathlon for that matter. I did the event in 2019 and had a finishing time of 1 hour, 30 minutes, which was good for 22nd place out of 37 participants. That was three year ago and since then, I’ve taken up backpacking and trail running with some pretty serious rigor. I don’t feel as if I have any glaring weakness heading into the triathlon, as I swim once a week on average with a Master’s swim team down in Angels Camp. Additionally, I’m borrowing a road bike from my friend as I opposed to the heavy mountain bike I lugged up the steep inclines two years ago in the event. While my training over these past few years has been in no way specific to this triathlon, I find myself believing I have the ability to do well. My lack of familiarity with the sport of triathlons gives me nerves though, but I counter that with advice from friends in the sport who talk about quick transition times and being as aerodynamic as possible on the bike.
Race Day: Sunday, September 4th
I get to to Bear Lake, where we will be starting with the swim, about an hour before race time and I see a bunch of familiar local faces. After racking my bike and checking-in I jump in the water and swim around 500 yards to warm-up. Upon finishing my warm-up, the race organizer, a colorful gentleman from Arnold gives us a background on the event. “This is the 29th annual Bear Valley Triathlon. It always takes place on Labor Day Weekend and in the history of the event, we have twice had snow on the beach from early season storms.” Today is the opposite, as a massive heatwave has arrived upon the West Coast. Up here in the mountains at 7,200 feet, the high today is supposed to be 90 degrees which is mercifully cool compared to the foothills and valley that surrounds us, as places such as Murphys and Stockton have highs ranging from 105-113 degrees.
Despite the warm weather, I’m absolutely positively shivering as the talk goes on. I always shiver if I’m just standing around in open water. About half the people around me are wearing wetsuits and while I should be warm enough once I start swimming, I’m not doing great now. I make a mental note for next year that while it’s not necessary I buy a wetsuit, I should get out during the talk and keep warm with a towel, as opposed to burning energy with all of this shivering.
At last, we get the countdown from 5 and the race is off! I jump to the front of the pack and try to draft a bit off a female swimmer, but she’s too fast for me and pulls away. My swim feels a bit like hell, as I find myself swimming head-up every five breaths or so, in order to see the buoy marking the course. I never find anything close resembling a rhythm and the air feels really thin, even though I live up here. Still, when I exit the water I estimate I’m about fifth and the people in front of me seem pretty close. I glance down at my watch which reads I finished in the swim in 9 minutes, 15 seconds. This lifts my spirits as I wanted to be out of the water in 10-12 minutes and so this makes great time.
I make my transition from swim to bike quick, with a very quick dry-off and then just throwing on my socks, shoes, and helmet. I ride my bike in my jammer and without a shirt, after getting some advice from my friend Kevin to be as aerodynamic as possible. I pass the female swimmer early on in the bike ride, who seems to have smoked everyone on the swim. I’ll get the chance to talk to her at the end of the race and she made quite a buzz, beating everyone out of the water by nearly 2 minutes (a really large amount of time on such a short swim). She tells me after how she played Division 1 water polo in college only 2 years back and is now coaching a high school girls team in Oakland. She’s pretty funny as she tells me she has to get in the water sometimes with her team in order for her players to not get too big of heads. I’m sure she’s a great water polo player.
The bike portion is three laps around town and totals 10.5 mile. The first lap goes well and I’m conservative with my speed on the downhills of the course, as I’m riding a true road bike with thin break pads. Crashing would be catastrophic and I figure I can rely on my fitness to make-up time on the hilly climb at the end of each lap.
On laps two and three on the bike, I play with pushing my speed more on the downhills and flats. Biking is turning out to be not too bad and I realize many of my pre-race worries about the bike were for not. It’s impossible to tell who is in front and behind, as all race participants are looping the same road three times. I seem be to doing well enough though on the uphill sections in particular, which are steep enough to the point that a few people have gotten off their bike and are walking it.
As I finish my third and final lap on the bike, I hustle it into the rack and begin the transition into the run. People are cheering and on my way out, I choke down some electrolyte drink, my first consumption of food or water for the duration of the race. My ability to take in oxygen is compromised by consuming the liquid but it’s necessary as my throat feels really dry. I’m breathing fairly hard and hurting a bit but I still feel I have energy reserves in the tank. I’ll be running one lap around town which is advertised as 3.3 miles.
I’m only a few minutes into the run when I catch a male runner who looks to be a few years younger than me. I run side by side with him for a bit and ask if he knows if anyone is in front of us. “Ya. One guy. He’s a few minutes ahead.” I thank him for the information and start to pull away, putting me in second place.
I maintain a steady pace on my run, telling myself that this should be my strength in the race. My feet pound on the road and still no sign of the guy in first. There are a couple of crowds cheering out on the road and as I go by, I ask for any information on the guy in front of me. After hesitating a bit, not a great sign, he shouts out “He’s a bit ahead. Came by a few minutes ago.”
I finish mile 2 and with only have a little over a mile of running left, I’m starting to let go of hope that this guy is catchable and console myself that I’ve still had a good race. But right as I’m resigning myself to second place, a long stretch of the road comes up, and I spot a runner with a wetsuit halfway down his waist. He’s probably three or four hundred yards ahead and is running steady. I’m both excited and appalled by this spotting- excited because I have a chance of catching him and appalled because I realize my pain level may go higher if we end up gutting out a sprint finish.
I steadily close the gap on him until I’m running right behind him. He glances back and spots me and doesn’t say anything. I make a passing comment about it being a fun race so far and he agrees. We run side-by-side for a minute until I finally make a push, with probably 3-4 minutes left in the race, and it doesn’t look like he has the energy to make this a true sprint finish. Thank God because everything hurts right now and I’d really rather not make the pain worse.
I make the final turn into the finish line. It’s a straight stretch and I feel the bounce in my stride return as I cross the line to cheers. After finishing, I immediately walk over to my bag near my bike and throw shorts over my jammer and change shirts into a tank-top. By the time I do this, second place has already finished and caught his breath, coming in only 27 seconds after my finishing time.
I greet him and he congratulates me. “I was really hoping you were part of a team relay and not in the individual event.” We chat and he looks like he is in his mid-30’s, but during the award ceremony I find out his real age is 42. This is his seventh time doing the Bear Valley Triathlon and he traveled from Stockton with a group of his buddies who consistently do triathlons. As we are talking, his friends start to trickle in and join our conversation. One of them talks about hyperventilating during the swim portion. “I’m so pissed that happened,” he says looking at me. “It sucks more because I have a $200 bet with this guy right here,” gesturing to his friend who finished ahead of him. I guess the only thing worse than hyperventilating while in the water is knowing it’s also costing you $200.
More participants come into the finish line and it’s a mix of all ages. The oldest participant is a 72 years old local, George, and he puts in a very solid time of 1:42. On the other side of the coin, there are several kids that have joined together to do a team event with each taking a leg of the race. I know several of them, one being a former student of mine and two I coached this past summer at a basketball camp.
The event comes to a conclusion with a group lunch and the event organizer reads results and raffles off a bunch of wine donated by Michael David Winery in Lodi. There are even two cross-country ski season passes that get raffled off from the Bear Valley Adventure Company. I’m sitting next to George and he eggs me on to get into cross-country skiing this winter, calling it the best aerobic training I could find. I’ve already been thinking the same thing and am excited to take up the new sport as cross-training. I have a few more running events left before Winter hits, and I’m considering these next two months the home stretch of my running season.
In Reflection:
A final word here, focusing more on the performance part of my triathlon. To drop 25 minutes from my last race time in 2019 is a lot of time and it brings up an interesting question of how much fitness is adaptable and trainable. One variable I can’t quantify is exactly how much time I saved switching from a mountain bike to a road bike, which certainly made me faster without any type of fitness related adaptation on my part.
I’ve taken up trail running with some pretty serious rigor over this past year, putting in several 70 mile weeks this past summer. This type of training should lead to significant increases in aerobic capacity, allowing me to better utilize oxygen during strenuous exercise. Additionally, my age may have put me in good position to reap the benefits of this increase in training stimulus. According to research, you can raise your aerobic capacity 15-25% through training, while you may experience age related declines of 3-6% beginning in your 20’s-30’s. As I was 26 years old in my 2019 performance and 29 at the time of this race, I may have been well-suited to see minimal natural drops in aerobic capacity while reaping the benefits of my training.
Next year, I think I could benefit from specific triathlon training, practicing open water swims and road biking, neither of which I did more than a week outside of the race. On the flip side of that, I fully acknowledge that part of my successful was aided by the fact I live at altitude and could practice on the course itself a week out from the race. To me, a big part of the fun in athletic performance is to see how all of these factors combine together (big trail running miles, switching bikes, living at altitude, etc) and races let you see the results of all this tinkering. I don’t think it’s a question you can ever fully answer, how to completely optimize athletic performance, but it’s something that should be continually adjusted and monitored and I’ve had a lot of fun in doing so over this past year.
