I spent this past weekend was the
Alcatraz Challenge in San Francisco and was my first race of the season. This is a swim-run event where participants swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco. In March, I was supposed to race in the SuperSeal Triathlon in San Diego but it was canceled due to inclement weather.We arrived on Friday night, settling in and making a plan for Sunday race day.
Saturday: On the schedule for Saturday was an easy swim to feel out the bay water (currrents and temperature) and do an easy run to get the legs moving. We also had to go pick up our race packets and listen to the pre-race chat, where they went over some logistics and discussed sighting and how to swim the San Francisco Bay. Then it was off to Fisherman's Wharf for a pre-race late lunch/snack of yummy clam chowder and dungeness crab.
And then onto the big day...!
Sunday Morning: Big race day. For breakfast, always eat your "safe" items so there is no gastrointestinal issues during the day. Today, breakfast consisted of instant oatmeal and a PB&J sandwich before heading out from home base with a coffee on the way to the race site. At the race site, we were told to drop off our transition bags, suit up for the swim, then take the shuttle to the ferry building where we would get on the boat that takes us to Alcatraz for the beginning of the swim. I like to eat a Clif bar at least a half hour before a morning training. In this case, I had my Clif bar on the ferry. I had also packed some gummi bears since I thought we would be on the boat for a while, though it didn't turn out to be that long. There wasn't as much downtime as I thought there would be, plus all of the athletes were very friendly so in the enclosed space of the boat, we were chatting it up with many of the athletes. The feeling of a common bond, a certain special camaraderie was palpable in the air.
The Swim: Scheduled to start at 800am, everyone told to quickly jump off the boat and into the water. As you can see from the map, we jumped off the coast of Alcatraz. The event organizers didn't want anyone to crash up against the rocks of the island. Teams of kayakers helped corral swimmers along the course all the way to shore so nobody accidentally swims off or gets swept up by the current. This was scheduled to be a 1.5 mile swim.
According the my Garmin, my actual mileage was 2.22 miles. That's a whopping 0.7 additional miles! With an average moving pace of 22:58 minutes per mile, I was significantly faster than my average training swim times. This is likely due to two factors: current and race adrenaline, with the current taking the bulk of the credit. With this kind of pace, I would be completing the Ironman swim (2.4 miles) in under an hour! Actual average based on training swims in Long Beach open water: 32.32, 39.22, 37.55, and 37.22 minutes per mile. So realistically, I'm likely looking at a few minutes under an hour and a half in the water during Ironman.
The swim may have took a little longer than I had hoped, but I also swam much farther than initially anticipated. Focus was on catching water with my arms and twisting the torso. Sighting was difficult at times - I even got stopped by a kayaker telling me to veer left (meanwhile, I thought I already was veering left). Water was a warm 60 degrees.
Looking at the data, this swim provides me a huge confidence boost for the one segment of the Ironman that I had some reservations about due to my slower-than-average pace.
The Transition: In previous years, I spent time focusing on transition to try to make it out of the transition area as quickly as possible. Since my training is focused on Ironman this year, I have not thought a lot about transition, partially thinking that a few extra minutes in transition may be a good thing since the Ironman is such a long event. The Alcatraz Challenge is a much shorter event, so my easygoing pace in transition really hurt my overall time. It also reminded me of all the kinks to work out in your transition area - careful thought needs to be taken in the layout of gear. It's been a while since I've raced, and things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. Since I was taking my time, it did not matter and did not add to the race time stress, but if I were trying to rush out of transition, how I set up my transition area surely would have hurt my flow.
Transition time is also a time for a quick jolt of nutrition. In a normal triathlon, it may not be necessary as nutrition can come during the cycling portion. Since we were going straight into the run, I would not have any water with me. Water is recommended when taking Gu, so I quickly finished a packet and chugged some water along with it in transition. Always be careful not to drink too much water.
The Run: The event organizers advertised a 7 mile run. Based on Google maps by judging where the transition area and the turnaround point is, the run course is actually 6.6 miles. But the actual run course I ran was 7.35 miles according to my Garmin. So what happened?
The run course runs along a dirt path for approximately 1.25 miles, where you take a sharp left up some stairs. We're told the stairs are a half mile long and 400 feet in elevation. At the top of the stairs, you run a few hundred feet and then you're on the Bridge. The bottom of the stairs is an aid station where I grabbed water. Every time I grab water at a running event, I slow to a walk so I can take in the liquids. Then I continue to run. Except nobody told me to make a left up the stairs - in fact, I didn't even see the stairs! So I kept running (see brown arrow showing the dead end run I had near the south end of the Bridge). I wasn't the only runner going the wrong way, but it wasn't until we reached the dead end that we realized we were no longer on the course. So we had to double back, tell the aid volunteers, then get up those stairs.
Running Golden Gate Bridge is a beautiful experience. There was still some cloud cover so the weather was perfect and being able to see Alcatraz Island and thinking, "hey, I just swam from there" is really something else.
With relatively fresh legs, I was able to push the run and maintain a pace similar to the pace I run in training. Other than the half mile of stairs with 400 ft elevation, the run course did not have steep inclines or declines. This allowed me to push a little harder and maintain an average of 8:06 minute per mile pace. Focus was on high cadence which seems to help me keep the pace high. Each time I wanted to kick it up a notch, I always had to remember to keep short strides.
Not counting Mile 6 (which included the descent and stairway), the last 1.35 miles were my fastest miles. I was pushing myself towards the end of the run, trying to pass as many runners as possible before the end. As we always say,
Finish stronger than you started! Of course I've also been told you do that so you look good in the pictures. And I'm ok with that!
Post-Race: Definitely a great experience and very happy with the results. The training and tapering looks to have paid off. Post-race celebration included a nice hot shower and dim sum, where I was very talkative, jocular and charming as always, while also digesting all of my Garmin data (and being surprised by my swim times).
As the race directors had recommended, I took my time during the swim to pause for a moment, tread water and just look around. There I was, in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, looking at Alcatraz Island behind me and San Francisco in front of me - a water-level perspective most people will never see but I highly recommend trying out. As stated earlier, even during the run it was nice to take a mental pause (but never stopping the running) to look to the side and see the Bay, with Alcatraz in the middle, and remembering that I had just swam all that distance and was now running on one of the most iconic bridges in the world.
The sense of accomplishment one has after each race was amplified in this one because of the Alcatraz mythology and the Golden Gate Bridge. Still on the post-race high, I'm now considering other races this season that may fit well into my training schedule prior to Ironman. Perhaps a half-Ironman or an Olympic length after Santa Barbara Triathlon will be in the cards. We'll have to see.
. There no plastic-y taste and the bottle is advertised as having an "insulating layer" to keep your drinks refreshingly chilled, to which I can happily attest works. It's even surprised my friends, who grabbed my bottle expecting a quick splash of warm water but got a surprising and very welcomed splash of cold water instead. It always comes out with my bike and is in my gear bag when I head out for a training swim or run.
. It's quite tasty, and very thick and gooey. 
. The main benefits I see are: (1) flip up arm rests and (2) one-piece aero bar is connected at the top end. Perhaps the shape of this bar might be more comfortable for the wrists as well? 
socks and haven't worn anything else for working out since. Just read some of the reviews on Amazon - they are incredible! It's like the Cult of Feetures. Seems like most running store staffers and enthusiastic runners love Feetures and once they get a pair, there's no going back. 