Saturday morning I completed the second triathlon of my 2016 season, the Malibu Triathlon, International Distance. (Or, as it was drilled into my head dozens of times between 5:15 AM and 10:15 AM, “The Nautica Malibu Triathlon presented by Equinox, Herbalife International Distance.”) This was also my first Olympic distance triathlon of the season.

So it’s time once again to reflect on the event and my performance in it. Let’s get to it!

The Event

The Malibu Triathlon—I swear I just had to stop myself from typing “Nautica Malibu Triathlon [et cetera]”—takes place every year at Zuma Beach, and this was its thirtieth anniversary. They didn’t do anything special to mark the milestone, so far as I know, and I didn’t know this going into the event (even though, yes, it is on their website and even in their logo). But I think thirty is notable, especially compared to the rest of the events I’ve done.

It’s an expensive event compared to the others as well, and it’s heavily branded with sponsors and some hoopla too about the celebrities that participate, but it’s run very well. The only minor wrinkles I can even think to mention are that my timing chip didn’t come in my race packet—I had to go back to the registration tent and pick it up from another table—and instead of firing the shotgun for my wave, as they did for the first, they had to use an airhorn.

I also didn’t get many good pictures of myself from the official event photographers, and those pictures are, as usual, expensive to buy, so I’m using my dad and my brother’s pictures for this post. (I have some videos, but my WordPress account doesn’t let me post those unless I upgrade. Here’s one on Instagram.)

This event is also huge. According to the organizers, there were two thousand people in the race on Saturday, and on Sunday there were going to be four thousand more in the Classic (sprint) distance. That’s crazy. The event raised over a million dollars for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and while I don’t personally list “fundraising for charity” on my list of reasons that I race, that number is pretty impressive and a good indicator of the scale of this event.

Swim

Goal Time: 24-25 minutes / Race Time: 23 minutes 25 seconds

We swam parallel to the shore for this race, and I have to say, 1500 meters of swimming looks much more intimidating when it’s laid out all in one line like that. The only other Olympic distance I’ve done was swam in a lake, doing two laps around the buoys, so it doesn’t feel like it’s as long.

The water conditions were perfect. The surf was small, the surface was incredibly glassy, and the water was a beautiful crystal clear blue that made it easy to see the swimmers around me. The buoys were also giant orange balloons that were easy to spot. It’s surprising how hard it is to see the buoys in some races, like when the Long Beach Triathlon used black buoys. I think this visibility must have helped my time by helping me keep a straight line and avoid other swimmers.

I don’t usually think too much about the swim, but I’m pleasantly surprised that I beat my goal time for this leg of the race.
As a bit of an afterthought, I need to figure out how to not get such a bad rash from my wetsuit. Maybe I didn’t put enough Body Glide on.

Bike

Goal Time: 75-80 minutes / Race Time: 75 minutes 57 seconds

I wasn’t feeling this ride. I don’t know why. It was a beautiful ride along PCH, but I was feeling just a little bit more tired than I felt like I should have, I was paranoid about my rear wheel being loose, and my right aero bar came loose a little more than halfway through.

Nevertheless, I came within one minute of my high mark. I knew I needed to keep an average speed of 30-32 kilometers per hour to stay in my goal time, and I was watching my bike computer’s speed reading the entire time to try to keep my average speed as close to 32 as I could, which is more difficult when hills are involved because my speed necessary changed throughout the course. I hit a max speed, according to my bike computer, of 61 kilometers per hour (38 miles per hour) coming down the hill northbound to Leo Carrillo.

I know that I lost some time on aerodynamics. In addition to my busted aero bar, my lower back felt stiff, so I didn’t spend as much time down on my drops and aero bars as I should have.

I figured they would have shut down PCH in one direction and redirected traffic down one of the lanes in the other direction, but they instead shut down one lane in each direction (except where there was only one lane in that direction, in which case we were riding on the shoulder). It was just one out and back, which meant that we weren’t making multiple laps around the same course, maximizing the scenery we got out of our ride. At the turnaround, they stopped vehicular traffic for cyclists, presumably never stopping cyclists themselves to let the cars through. I felt bad for the drivers, but I was impressed with the dedication that they would cripple traffic on PCH that way.

So beside riding harder in training, I guess I’ll make sure my aero bars are installed firmly and try to stretch my lower back? Fifty-seven seconds shouldn’t be too hard to make up. I hear shaving your legs might do the trick.

Run

Goal Time: 50-52 minutes / Race Time: 49 minutes 59 seconds

If you’ve ever heard me talk about triathlons or training or maybe even just working out, then you probably know that I hate running. Not in the way that I hate not being able to work out when I’m injured, or the way I hate injustices; more in the way I hate absurd ideas plagued with cognitive dissonance. It’s just the worst. It hurts and it’s inefficient and I sweat like a mother fucker when I do it. I want to hate it less, and since I started training for triathlons, exactly that has happened.

But still, running sucks. And I hate it. (Again, see this video. It summarizes my feelings pretty well, endorphin-induced smile included.)

My goal pace for the run was between 8:00 per mile and about 8:30 per mile. I had held about 8:00 per mile for most of my race the weekend before, which was only a sprint distance (5K run instead of 10K), so I was dubious of my prospects of holding 8:00 for twice that distance. I managed to stay under that mark for the first half of the run, but around the five kilometer mark, I just really wanted to stop and walk instead.

I also realized around this time that I had the refrain from “What Makes You Beautiful” stuck in my head. I usually end up with some random song lyric mentally looping, not one I’ve even necessarily I’ve heard recently, but this was maddening. I spent a great deal of the rest of the race trying to focus on my breathing just so I had something to replace the insipid pop music.

Looking at my splits on Strava, I seem to have recovered my pacing in the last mile or so after dipping down to around 8:15 for a couple miles. I knew I still had a chance at hitting my goal time for the run, and that motivated me. This GPS watch has undeniably done a great deal for my running game, because now I know the stakes of pushing a little harder through the pain and exhaustion and how much I hate running and how much it sucks.

Transitions

Goal Time: 4-7 minutes / Race Time: 5 minutes 47 seconds (combined)

I got within my goal time range, so I’m not terribly disappointed, but this remains my worst portion of the race. Granted, this transition area was by far the largest I’ve ever seen, due to the scale of the event. (Did I mention there were two thousand racers on Saturday?) But even with the extra time needed to run through the transition area, I should be able to cut this down.

Learning how to leave my shoes clipped into the pedals of my bike would save a fair amount of time, for starters. This helps both with running through the transition area, since bike shoes are really not designed for running, and with the time it takes to get them on and off. There would be only, I think, a minimal amount of time lost on the bike while I get my feet strapped into and out of my shoes at the start and end of the bike portion.

Eschewing bike gloves would also save a fair amount of time. My only worry is whether this would get uncomfortable for a 40 kilometer ride, but for sprint distances, I think I should be able to suck it up for 20 kilometers at a time.

The biggest thing though is probably just getting my routine down better. I could do with spending less time thinking through the things I need to do at each transition. I definitely worry too much about whether I’ve forgotten this thing or the other, and lose precious seconds in the process. This time around, for example, I took off my sunglasses at T2 (bike to run), got everything ready to go, then put my sunglasses back on. That probably only cost me about five seconds, but these little hesitations add up.

Overall and Final Thoughts

Goal Time: 153-164 minutes / Race Time: 155 minutes 9 seconds

Overall, I did better than I expected, and I’m left with the optimal situation, feeling that I did well but wondering how I could crack the high end of my goal time if I were to do this race again.

 

My placement statistics are as follows:

• Age group (30-34 male): 27 of 131, 79th percentile
• Gender (still male): 129 of 857, 85th percentile
• Overall: 145 of 1192, 88th percentile

I was about to make some joke about being first of one in the “People I know” category, but I actually do know at least a couple of people who have done this race, and I don’t want to gloat about my time.

Speaking of people I know, I didn’t do this one completely alone. Danielle, Keegan, and my dad all came out to support me. Danielle got up early in the morning with me; my dad took pictures and videos of me from the sideline as I passed him during the race; and Keegan showed up on his bike to say what’s up as I passed him while running down Westward Beach Road, then later took me out to a buffet lunch.

I’m hoping that, if I do this race again—and I think I might—I can bring my age group placement to well within the top quintile. I have a few years, being at the bottom of the age range now. Even though the race is expensive, it’s an exemplary event, and there’s something nice about competing on my home turf.

Next race is at the end of October, the Trick or Tri, which I completed last year and is now in its second year. Hopefully they get the run course right this time!