Good job especially after a tough one last week.

I needed the week rest.

Way to fight adversity.

Cheers

Thanks Golf Mark

I am very tempted to do Hermosa Beach on OCT 15 , but have to see what my shedule is. So i hope it does not sell out soon.


I just figured out where I got the flat tire . I jumped several hard speed bumps in the ZUMA beach parking lot as I was way too eager to get going on the bike and did not want to wait for slower taffic at the speed bump and my back tire hit all of them hard , probably causing the slow flat. I have done these jumps in practice and got away with it but I was not going as fast. So Some patience in the first mile would have been wise.

This is why I like the LA TRI bike course better . There a very wide road (Venice Blvd) to cycle at your pace.

Way to go, two in a row! And wow, you really did the entire swim breaststroke last year? I relayed the swim this year (wave 3, yay, much better than 15 at LATri) and can't imagine doing it breaststroke! Sounds like you're having a great late-summer season.

You should do Hermosa! Season coming to an end.

You learn from adversity. In golf, I learned more from my bad tournaments than my good ones.

Will keep that in mind if I do Malibu next year -- I prefer to do Los Angeles and won't do it back to back weeks like you though.

Cheers

Thanks I would have prefered them two weeks apart like last year.

How did your swim go?

Last year was my first year racing . I could not swim more than 50 m freestyle . I did all my training and racing Breastroke. My distance speed is 50m in about a minute. Plus in breastroke the sighting is better for an Ocean swim and to avoid the wandering swimmers.

A friend told me to read : Total Immersion book and that encouraged me to try freestyle .
Also did a SCAQ (master swim) clinic and that helped clean up my freestyle stroke.

I had a good swim, but not great (my LA swim was better). I made two rookie mistakes (I have only done two ocean races, Redondo and LA; this is my first season).

I'm not good at the beach run in or out yet, and the all-women relays started with all-men relays and men 25-29, so I was surrounded by very very tall guys. Usually I start right up front but this time I was afraid they'd run me over (I am only 5 feet tall) and so I didn't line up at the VERY front (I don't think ANY women did). I was the first person to dive, and I could see everyone else still running through the water, in my way! Then I had a hard time getting around some of the slower ones in the water; one guy almost drowned me after the first buoy! He wasn't swimming very straight and had a very wide stroke and so kept hitting me on the back as I tried to pass. Finally I just dropped back and swam to his other side, and that was the last I saw of him.

The other error was not picking something big to sight on the exit. I did that really well at LA (well, someone told me what to aim for, given the current) but in Malibu I didn't think of it, and I ended up about 50 yards too far down the beach -- not bad, and surrounded by other swimmers, some a lot further away from the finish chute than I was, but it cost me some serious time because I have a leg injury and can't run much, so I always get passed on the sand. But I still had a 15-min swim time, which is okay for a rookie like me, and now I know what to do next time.

Considering your obstacles That a good swim time . They should really have let the relay women go in a different wave than the men. Perhaps even adding another couple of waves to have smaller groups in the water.

My single mishap in the water is that I got smacked on the head pretty good around the second buoy. I never get that much contact in the pool. Last year when I breastroked in my races i kicked a lot of people that swam too near me .
I did not do it on purpose but this is how i move forward .

No worries and Thanks ! You did not cause my flat I too got passed by my own team during the race without an offer to help . I can understand that they dont want to loose time by stopping . I will try and remember to be curteous during my bike rides . A very nice cyclist who was out training that morning helped me out .

Drafting ....? What is drafting ?