San Francisco Anchorman TRI

Woke up and had a bowl of cereal, PBJ, and a few cups of coffee.  Drove to SF and arrived at the registration table at 5:00. After a few minutes we had everything in order. Got ready with the other 150 participants and proceeded on to the busses to be shuttled over to pier 43. Unfortunately, we waited for over 45 minutes to get onto the ferry. You could tell we were all ready to get into the water. We got onto the vessel and away we went. 10 minutes later, we were ready. The line to the ferry door was well organized and everyone was excited! We jumped in the water in pairs and away we went. There were a total of three buoys.  Two of the buoys ran parallel to the shore and one identified where one was to exit. Unfortunately, roughly 1/3 of the participants swam directly to the shore and ran the beach to the last buoy. I am not sure if there will be any penalties, but obviously this was not the planned route. Once out of the water, you had to run roughly a mile to the transition area. I decided to keep my wetsuit on while I ran. Others took them off before the 1 mile run. A few competitors had to run without shoes to the transition area because their bags were not present. OUCH! Once we made it to the transition area, we took two loops through the presidio. It was a fast course with two slight hills. Some of those turns were quite tight, but that’s the fun part! The run went up to the Golden Gate Bridge and through Baker’s Beach. The trail was about 3 miles and had a lot of stairs. The sand ladder was a really neat part of the race, pretty easy going down but the way up was a bit more challenging! Overall, this was a pretty cool race. Obviously, a nice alternative to Escape from Alcatraz at a fraction of the cost. I’d definitely recommend any of the races promoted by Trifreak.com!