Scratching the Itch

Tri Club San Diego is a huge club and it's difficult for it to exude that "welcome" feeling to prospective or new members, but they do put on some cool events and their support of local races acheives near-legendary status.

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Wednesday night I bombed their monthly summer Aquathlon series to get my race on.

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The good:

TONS of fast people come out of the woodwork for these things and it's easy to dial up the intensity racing them.

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The bad:

Chip timing only if you pre-reg. No chip = no time. Womp womp.

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The ugly:

Awesome food spread, I feel guilty eating club food when I'm not an official member so I stand there...starving.

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Some pics:

The group heading off to the start. I was already down by the start location body-surfing at this point. Hey, the surf was good...Coming out of the water. Probably 800 meters or so. Still a PR for me at 12:50; over a minute faster than my split at Xterra REAL, which is billed as 1/2 mile. Stoked!
Heading out of "transition" for the 5k beach run. T1 took too long as I fought to get my wetsuit off around my feet. Time to shorten the legs on the suit.
Finishing up. Ran the 5k in around 20:47.
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Not my best by far, but a good result considering the month lay-off for illness and that I'm back to putting in base miles.

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Got "chicked" by Jessi Stensland who won the women's side and probably Amanda Felder, but I'm OK with that since they're short-course stud-ettes anyway. Nice to see Jessi back racing.

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All told, a quality mid-week workout and some good validation that the work I'm doing in the pool is paying off...finally!

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Off to work.

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E.