[Disclaimer: as my first 70.3, this will be a long post, but there are pictures! ☺]

This was the most challenging journey I have ever undertaken, and I don’t think I’ve put in as much time and energy into anything else before. I didn’t have a running background, am not the biggest fan of cycling, and while I used to be on the swim team as a kid (like 20 years ago), I’d never done such structured training for anything before. I knew that it would take a lot of hard work and discipline to accomplish more than just finishing the race, so would I be up for it? It definitely wasn’t easy and required a lot of juggling, but I came out of it in the best shape I’ve ever been in.

Pre-Race

Two weeks ago, I did SDIT as a training race for Vineman. SDIT went really well and was a huge confidence booster for me, but unfortunately, I almost immediately caught a cold and was battling congestion everyday until the very morning of Vineman. Is the cure for the common cold to do a 70.3? ☺ Anyways, that made the two weeks leading up to Vineman an interesting mix of taper workouts and trying to discern whether or not I was recovering from the cold at all each and every day. I wouldn’t say I was super nervous about the impending race — I was more concerned about racing with a cold. I was definitely nowhere near as nervous or anxious as I was for my very first triathlon, even the night before, which was surprising. Trusting my training definitely played a huge part in that.

Drove to Santa Rosa on Friday and after dropping my gear off at our rental house, headed out to Johnson’s Beach to test the commute time. Distance-wise, we weren’t super far from swim start, but having to take back roads (parts of which were super sketchy) and local streets, the commute took about 40 minutes. That made me a little nervous about the commute on race morning since I was in the first AG wave, but it just meant we needed to leave a bit earlier.

The next morning, we got up early to head out to Johnson’s Beach and do our pre-race swim, bike and run. Turns out a lot of other athletes had the same idea. Janus and I did our first freshwater open water swim and I was happy to find that the water temp was perfect. It was really weird to not taste salty water, but at least the water didn’t taste weird haha. After that we biked along River Rd for a few miles before turning around, and then did a brief 5 minute run across one of the overpasses above the swim. It was nice to see where we would be competing and it eased our minds.

Afterwards, we headed to Windsor High to try and make the 10:30am mandatory athlete meeting since we couldn’t do anything regarding check-in or our run gear without having attended one of them and they were an hour inbetween. It was packed with Ironman and Vineman veterans — pretty intimidating. Got our packets and met up with Jeanette, dropped off our run gear in T2 and then went shopping for Vineman swag. Left a chunk of money behind (haha) and went to grab lunch before heading home.

Prior to arriving in Sonoma County, we didn’t anticipate how long it would take to get from location to location. Seriously, I drove SO much that weekend as everything was at least 20 minutes apart. We finally got back to our house around 2pm to clean and dry our gear for Sunday, and wanted time to relax before calling it an early night, so we opted to just drive parts of the bike course instead of the whole thing. I drove us out towards Johnson’s Beach to check out the sharp right turn onto Sunset around mile 5, and then the short steep hill onto Westside Rd. Westside was definitely not going to be a smooth road to ride. Anxiety about the bike went up one notch. After that, we cut through to about mile 48 or so and backtracked Chalk Hill before turning around and driving it in the direction we would be racing. Again, not a smooth road and the thing looked intimidating. Definitely got a little more nervous about the bike after seeing it and feeling the rough road beneath my car. We picked up some stuff for a light dinner (thanks for cooking, Janus!) and just relaxed and gathered gear before we all turned in early. I had no trouble sleeping, but I woke up at 2:30am (alarm set for 3am) and was wide awake. Game day!

Made breakfast and coffee, final gear check and then we packed our cars and rolled out by 4:15am. Got to the parking lot and it was pitch black and we had no idea what to do. Decided to drive closer to the start, drop off our gear and bikes with one of Janus’s friends and then park our cars and walk back down. Turns out we could’ve just parked on the street close to the start since we had gotten there so early, but still, where we finally parked wasn’t too far away.

Got in the transition line and that’s when some jitters showed up. I didn’t have a lot of time between getting into transition and my wave starting (< 1 hour) so I really had to get moving. Racked my bike (my AG was way in the back) and started getting my stuff set up. Got body marked, saw Jared, and Sheila snuck in with her volunteer shirt haha, and then walked towards SWIM IN to trace my route to my bike, and then from my bike to BIKE OUT (really far). After that, I got in line for the one porta-potty on our side of transition. The line wasn’t even that long so I figured it’d be quick, but then the pros came over and cut in front of us all, saying their wave was going to start soon, and a bunch of us were like, what the heck, we start 6 minutes after you so we start soon, too! Needless to say, most of my anxiety started bubbling because I was worried I was going to miss my start.

Bolted back to my spot and threw on my wetsuit and then sprinted towards swim start. Didn’t get a chance to warm-up at all, minus the sprinting to the start, but it looked like they hadn’t let anyone in my AG in the water (probably to not interfere with the pro start). Then I hear a “FONTAINE!!” and see Syl running towards me and I go “WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU GUYS DOING HERE?!?” as Jasen and Lin also walk up laughing and Jasen goes “you ruined it!” to Syl. Apparently they had been planning on driving up to Vineman in secret since January and had wanted to capture my reaction, but Syl jumped the gun haha. Craziness!! and SO AWESOME. Jeanette happened to be standing there and witnessed the whole thing so she snapped a quick photo for us ☺ and then it was off to get into the water for as much warm-up as I could do before the start. Had to make sure the suit was on correctly! It was probably the most frantic minutes-before-start I’ve ever had, but knowing my friends were there had a calming effect. Then the countdown, the horn, and our crazy day began!

Race

The swim… I opted to wear my full suit for the slightly better buoyancy boost, but the water temp was really good. I started on the side closer to the woods towards the front as supposedly that was the less crowded side. My plan was to swim hard for the first and second buoy to get clean water to swim and then settle into a steady pace, but I didn’t really have to worry — as the first age group wave, we got to enjoy clean water in front of us. This swim start wasn’t all that frantic and there wasn’t a lot of body contact — couldn’t ask for a more peaceful swim start.

The swim overall was pretty smooth. The way out did seem really long though, and I remembered there was supposed to be a current. It didn’t seem that bad, but after we passed the second overpass I expected us to be turning around soon and realized that I should’ve counted how many buoys there would be as they were numbered and seemed to go on forever. Made the swim seem extra long since I kept looking for the turn buoy.

After the turn, the river suddenly got really shallow. I kept trying to swim closer to the middle where the buoys were, but it was difficult. Finally briefly stood up and dolphin dived towards the buoys. After that, I think I swam a little wide because a pack of guys came rushing up behind us, and I was trying to find someone to draft off of. My wave had stretched out so much that there was no one to draft off of. The guys gave me a brief respite before I couldn’t keep up anymore, but luckily I saw the final turn buoy and knew I was close to being done. Swam hard for the finish and I was out. Heard Syl, Lin and Jasen cheering (still can’t believe they drove all the way up to surprise me haha) and ran off to my racks. Stripped the wetsuit off at the carpet in front of my row per Jeanette’s pro-tip to minimize the mud on all my stuff and it worked. My feet had picked up a ton of mud by the time I got to my spot and I had to towel all the dirt off before putting on socks. Noticed that there were still a good number of bikes on our racks — a good sign! Pocketed my gels, chapstick and SaltStick caps for the run and threw all my remaining things and wetsuit into the bag for them to pick up. Grabbed my shoes and bike and took off for BIKE OUT, which was really far since we were racked at the opposite end of transition. Once I ran up the short hill just out of the mount line (and passed someone trying to spin their way up — so really, you don’t lose any time), I put on my shoes, clipped in and rode off.

Time: 37:30 — slower than I expected, but I’ll take it (25/132 in AG). [Edit: after reading other race reports for this year, seems like a lot of people also logged a 1.3mi swim on their Garmins.]
T1: 3:16 — not bad considering how far we had to run with our bikes from our racks to BIKE OUT after shoving our wetsuits in a plastic bag (15/132 in AG).

The bike… What I had packed: 2 chocolate Honey Stinger waffles broken up into quarters and 2 bags of pomegranate Honey Stinger chews. I had 2 bottles of Lemon+Lime Skratch to start with — one BTA and one on the downtube and planned to grab a PowerBar Perform from one of the aid stations and stash my bottle in the spare rear cage. Originally, I was going to put the Skratch mix in a one-time-use Gatorade bottle, but I was having issues with the sport top lid rotating around so I went to Plan B. Of course, I’d later discover that the PowerBar Perform bottles had the same kind of sport top… and I totally should’ve just stuck with Plan A because Plan A probably would’ve meant NO CRASH… Anyways…

The first 5 miles on River Rd are flat and nice — really easy to get caught up in and ride too fast too soon, which other race reports had mentioned, so I made sure to use those 5 miles to get comfortable and switch to bike mode. During the first couple of miles, 3 or 4 girls in my AG blew by me, but I ended up catching and passing them on the first set of bigger rollers between miles 5-10 so I knew I had done well with holding back.

Everything was uneventful and going well, including the sharp right turn onto Sunset (with a strategically placed photographer — dangerous place to camp out, man!) and short steep hill onto Westside Rd until I hit mile 16 and decided that I wanted to try and get water at the first aid station at mile 18. We were entering a long, smooth stretch of road so I figured it’d be a good time to empty my downtube bottle into my BTA bottle and stash it in the rear cage, leaving the downtube cage free. Big mistake. I had just started refilling the BTA bottle when my front wheel ran over a small pothole, seriously like the. one. pothole. on this stretch and my wheel just completely twisted and I lost control. Looking at my Garmin data later, I went from just under 20mph to 0mph. Ouch.

I can’t really remember how I flipped into the ditch, but from what I can gather with how I landed, where dirt was on my helmet and where my bruises and scrapes are, I basically lost control, my right cleat came undone which made me lose even more control, rode off the edge of the road (there are no shoulders on these roads — just road and then a drop-off of some sort, whether it be a cliff or ditch or sand or rocks) and tumbled, landed on my right shoulder/back, hit the right side of my helmet, flipped over so that my bike actually landed non-derailleur side down and I was facing away from the road towards the grapevines. I think the bruises and cuts on my torso (which I found later) are from my bike and armrests hitting me post-flip since it was resting on top of me when it all ended. I was pretty fortunate though — when my front wheel went crazy and I knew I was about to fall, I felt myself relax so I basically just rolled with it and didn’t stick an arm out to try and stop my fall. Had I done so, things would’ve been a lot worse. I also landed in a ditch filled with soft, fine-grained dirt (THANK GOODNESS) so although I was covered head to toe in sticky dirt, it minimized road rash and cuts. Nothing was bleeding and I think the dirt effectively blocked/clotted the scrapes, but my left knee immediately started to swell. One guy who rode by asked me if I wanted him to stop and I said “No, keep going!” not wanting this to ruin two people’s races, both mine and his. Other people shouted, “Anything broken? “No, I don’t think so.” “You got everything you need?” “Yea.” “I’m sorry!” “Yea.” Triathletes are so nice!

Anyways, I sat there for a moment in disbelief and looked at my knee and wondered if it was broken. Knew I had hit my head and wondered if I had a concussion. Then I wondered what I was supposed to do and if I should keep going and if I could even keep going. Stood up, knee held. Head felt ok, my helmet hit soft dirt so I thought, it can’t be that bad… Checked myself, made sure nothing was out of sorts and then checked my bike. At least half my nutrition was scattered around me in the dirt (note, do not leave bento box open for convenience…), retrieved my car keys, which had been stashed in the bento box, and the bottle that I had been holding. Emptied the bottle into the BTA bottle (haha) and stashed it in the rear cage. I was really hoping nothing was cracked and from what I could discern from under the layer of dirt, it looked like only my left armrest was slightly cracked under the pad. Used my multitool to readjust the armrest since it was askew and then re-tightened/adjusted my front wheel since it had slipped in the drops during the fall. Next test, would my wheels spin true? Both seemed pretty good, no broken spokes so I figured maybe I could finish the bike. I tried to kneel down to put the chain back on the bike and almost screamed in pain. The left knee was NOT happy about being bent that far. “Sh*t,” I thought, “did I break my knee? Am I going to DNF an hour into the bike? Dude all these people came out to see me. And man, I spent all that money on Vineman swag, can I return it? (haha).” Decided to get back on my bike and see if my knee would let me ride and told myself I’d take it easy until I was confident that my bike would also hold. I figured I could at least try to finish the bike and then see if I could do the run afterwards. I was also thinking, “Geez, I still have to ride up Chalk Hill too… ugh…”

Picked up a PowerBar Perform bottle at the aid station on mile 18 and that was the last thing I got from any of the aid stations on the bike course. In hindsight, I should’ve picked up another bottle when I had to stop and stretch at the last aid station before Chalk Hill because I felt my right quad start to cramp, but I wasn’t thinking straight. After the crash, I no longer had clear roads in front of me to ride. It seemed like everyone else in my AG and the waves after us had caught up, creating a lot of congestion. I found myself trying to catch people in my AG who had passed me while I was down and trying to pass groups of riders who clumped together and blocked us from passing. I did manage to catch a bunch of the girls in my AG, but it was a pretty stupid thing to do because I burned a lot of mental and physical energy trying to make up time. I kept kicking myself for squandering a perfect opportunity to finish under 6 hours and place well since I was in the first wave. I also couldn’t ride in aero much anymore since my armrest was cracked, so I ended up burning more of my quads than I was used to doing. Anyways, by the last aid station my right quad had started to cramp so I stopped to stretch and and decided to take one of the SaltStick caps I had in my pocket for the run. I had run out of nutrition and had never eaten a Bonk Breaker bar so I was adverse to trying it for the first time at that moment. The SaltStick cap worked and I headed off again, hoping I wouldn’t cramp going up Chalk Hill.

Turns out, Chalk Hill really wasn’t that bad at all. I actually passed quite a few people going up it. It’s just tough because you can’t see the top, but as Janus kept saying, there’s only three switchbacks so count them and you know where you’re at. Once I crested that hill, I felt relieved — the rest was supposed to be a quick 10 miles of downhill to the finish. My right quad threatened to cramp again so I tried to ride in aero on the straight stretches of roads as we were entering “civilization” again to give them some relief. Prior to that, the roads had been super rough after Chalk Hill so I had to stay on the base bar since I couldn’t control my bike very well with a broken armrest. Every time I went into aero, my quad felt better. Freakin’ crash, might as well have ridden a road bike. ☹

Overall the bike course really wasn’t that bad and it’s a nice route, sans rough road and potholes. I had definitely put in the training time and wanted a chance to prove it. After the crash, I kept saying to myself, “I want to do this again next year and redeem this ride. I could totally do it in 3 hours.” Haha, although that sentiment changed when I got to the run…

Time: 3:21:01 — lost almost 18 minutes during the crash… really wish I could redo this leg (71/132 in AG, 1st bike split with the wreck was 88/132 in AG and 2nd bike split was 38/132 in AG — not a bad recovery I suppose).
T2: 4:33 — Some girl had brought a TALL cooler and set her bag of stuff on top so my wheel knocked her bag off when I was racking my bike. Had to be a good sport and run around and pick the bag back up. BIKE IN was long and then RUN OUT was at the opposite end of T2 and also really long, so also not too bad (37/132).

The run… I’m just going to start off by saying that this run beats the rough run in possibly equally hot weather I had at SUPERSEAL earlier this year for sure. The course itself would be nice under other (i.e. not a high of 91F and after 56 miles of biking) conditions — rolling hills, just challenging enough to keep things interesting for training runs. I’d love to go back and just do that run by itself sometime.

What I had packed: 3 Honey Stinger gels in my pockets, one I picked up from T2 in case I had lost the ones I brought with me from T1 (I was afraid they’d go bad getting baked out in the sun for a full day since we had to drop our run gear off the day before), and 4 SaltStick caps (although I downed one on the bike).

I used the long stretch from transition to the timing mats to test out my left knee. I could feel that it was swollen, but didn’t feel any pain. Yay for adrenaline! I downed a gel and also popped a SaltStick cap for good measure. I had planned to wait until a few miles into the course but given that I’d lost half my nutrition on the bike and had already started cramping, I knew I was in for a rough one. The first 6 miles actually went alright, especially considering the two steeper rollers between mile 2 and 3 and the tough hill around mile 4. My first 2 miles were definitely paced too quickly as I had a hard time pulling back straight off the bike, and to be fair, I was feeling okay at that point (and I was stupid). I think it’s a combo of the cadence on the bike and the feeling like I’m suddenly moving too slow, but I find it easier to run a quicker pace off the bike. The beginning of the run is also great because it’s full of spectators and friends cheering you on. A family saw my More Than Sport top and specifically called me out to cheer me on. Not sure who they were, but I bet they were there to support the dude who passed me on the run during the La Crema part wearing the newer More Than Sport tri kit haha.

Anyways, right before we entered La Crema Winery was when I first walked an aid station. They finally had ice so I grabbed a bunch and stuffed it down my tri top. After that, there was a water mister right at the start of the dirt path — YES. It made all my scrapes sting like crazy, but hey, at least it felt cooler… briefly. After that it was just hot and I started cramping again on the backside of the winery loop so I had to resort to walking that shady segment.

From then on it was a game of walking every aid station and grabbing a cup from almost every volunteer. I ran out of SaltStick caps (damn, should’ve brought more), ate more gels than I have ever taken on a run (which was previously one haha) and I think at one station I pounded a Coke, then a PowerBar Perform, then water, and then grabbed water from the last volunteer to pour over my head. The whole time I was wondering what my stomach would do to me with that mix, but luckily I think my body was too starved to care. I never thought I’d ever drink Coke on a run and I don’t even drink soda anymore, but man, if it’s not flat (the first cup I got was flat and warm — ew) and it’s icy cold, it’s the best thing on the planet at that moment.

My right quad made the latter half of the run pretty miserable. I remember thinking, “Geez I’m almost done,” but couldn’t run for long enough stretches without it seizing up. I wanted to run between the remaining aid stations and then walk them, but I’d often have to walk/stretch between them too. I kept playing yo-yo with these two girls in my age group because of having to stop and stretch, but at this point I already knew I wasn’t going to hit my goal of finishing under 6 hours, so I didn’t push hard to pass them since they’d catch up when I had to stretch anyways. It was more a matter of surviving and finishing. I walked the uphills of most of the rollers in this latter half and ran the downhills and as much of the flats as I could. People were really nice and kept asking me if I was OK when I had to stop and massage my quad. One thing that was weird — the run didn’t feel long, maybe because of all the training runs I’d put in, where I’d regularly run at least 6-8 miles per. I really just wanted my quad to stop seizing up so I could maintain some semblance of a pace, because aerobically, and per my breathing, I was totally fine. I actually felt pretty good considering the heat, it’s just that my quad wouldn’t cooperate (thanks bike). I kept thinking, “Damn, I totally trained enough for this… I put in so many hours, I can’t go out like this.” It was frustrating to say the least.

Sent a final ping home (every time I stepped across one of the split mats and the beeps registered my chip, I pretended I was sending messages to people that I was still OK and moving forward haha), and then tried to run the final 2 miles. I passed both of the girls in my age group that I had been yo-yoing with, but succumbed to another quad seizure and had to stop. They both passed me again and one of the girls I didn’t see again. With about 1 mile to go, I was like “Screw you quad” and just pushed through it and sped up my pace. I passed the other girl and kept going. I could feel my other leg and hamstrings start to cramp, as well as my feet, and said “Dammit, c’mon legs!” Kept going and then hit the stretch where all the spectators were. Saw Lin and then saw Janus turn into the bike finish and yelled to him. Then the family that had cheered for me earlier, cheered me into the final stretch. In my head I was like, “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M ALMOST THERE. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M ABOUT TO FINISH A HALF IRONMAN. OMG.” My legs really wanted to cramp in the final 100 meters and I willed them to stop — I didn’t want to face plant in front of everyone, especially since I could hear friends and family cheering haha. Finally, I hit the first mat to send the announcer a ping with my name. He called my name out and as I was crossing the finish, he called my name again to usher me in. I saw Sheila rushing towards me with my finisher medal and then got a huge bear hug from her haha. Wanted to cry, but oh man, that rush of accomplishment and disbelief and pain and relief and omg, I finished… it was crazy.

Time: 2:17:02 — definitely not my best run, if I can even call it a run lol (62/132 in AG)

Total Time: 6:23:22 (53/132 in AG)