Xterra Del Valle Long Course 5/8/10

Someone needs to invent a machine that allows the user to slap themselves upside the head when they feel the desire to do something potentially stupid. Often, there is not a spouse, mother, family pet, or complete stranger willing to perform this service, so a machine with easy to read directions would be extremely beneficial to those of us prone to poor decision making.

Case in point would have been the decision to sign up for this past Saturday’s Xterra Long Course Triathlon. I sure could have used that Head Slapper 2000 to smack some sense into me. What was I thinking? Yes, I have been on the bike quite a bit over the past few months, but not on the one with the knobby tires and big brakes to enable it to scream down rock strewn dirt cow paths at sphincter tightening speeds. Yes, I owned a Mt. Bike with said attributes, but had hardly even glanced at it for the past three years other than a cobweb shakeout ride last Wednesday. I’m sure my Mt. Bike felt like the old girlfriend who got dumped in favor of the hot new French exchange student, not hearing from me for years, only to be called up one night in a drunken stupor and asked what she was doing Saturday morning. And I will leave that analogy right there. You can fill in the rest.

Race morning was fairly uneventful with the rather civilized 9AM race start. I loaded up old Betsy, all shiny with a new coat of lube, onto the bike rack and headed out to Del Valle Reservoir. The event drew relatively small numbers, probably due to the high death consequences associated with the bike leg of the race. I ran into Lee Cannon while registering and later saw Monica Zucker, Chris McCrary, Dave Stark, and Scott Bergman setting up their gear. As I was laying out my stuff, I noticed a rather large, moderately battered gentleman racked near me. I tuned into the conversation around me and found out the guy was a UFC fighter from the Sacramento area. He competed in many of the Xterra events on the circuit. I made a mental note to be very careful whose feet I tapped in the swim or who I challenged on the bike for the good line. I also quietly moved my gear over to give him a tad more space. Hey, all in the name of good sportsmanship (and self preservation), right?

The swim was unremarkable other than the fact it was two loops bookending a painful pebble laced jog down the beach. The other notable aspect of the swim was the water temp. Compared to the shrinkage inducing temperature of Shadowcliffs and from what I heard, the glacial runoff temps of IM Saint George, the water temperature at Del Valle was positively tropical. The mass start of 120 racers was pretty tame compared to some races, I only took one elbow into the ribs, a foot into the kidneys, and an unidentifiable body part into back of my head (maybe that was a tardy head slap?). I kept a weary eye out for Mister UFC, but either he swam with the fishes up front or he had some poor age grouper in a reverse straight arm choke-out back on the beach.

Chris, Lee, and I came out of the swim together, but they had their act together in transition while I sat and tried to remember if the socks were suppose to go on my feet before my shoes. Once I had that puzzle solved, I tried putting gloves on wet hands without much success so I stuffed them in my jersey pockets and headed out. The bike course started out with a fairly flat section paralleling the shoreline, then took a hard right onto singletrack. Not having spent much time on 12 inch wide trails in many years, I freaked out a bit until I realized I was in front of about 6-8 riders and did not have many options other than to suck it up and ride the singletrack with some purpose. Exiting the single track we encountered the first of many, many, MANY hills requiring gearing so low that 5 pedal strokes got you only 1 wheel rotation. I quickly learned I needed to “ride the nose” of my saddle in order to keep enough weight on the rear tire, but also enough weight on the front tire so I did not go ass over teakettle back down the hill. The remainder of the course followed a similar pattern; a section of single track followed by an insanely steep climbing section, then a knuckle whitening descent, rinse, repeat. Just to keep it interesting, the race organizers tried to conserve resources by placing the minimum number of directional signs on the course leading to a comedy of sorts where no two race finishers probably rode the exact same race.

Towards the end of the bike leg, I found myself riding with Chris and Monica, Lee was off the front probably finished with the run and enjoying the post race BBQ. I followed my teammates down the final hills, but they gapped me due to their utter disregard for their own mortality and my healthy respect for my skin, unbroken bones, and continued ability to feed myself. On one rather steep section, somewhere between “steep” and “vertical”, I thought I had a good smooth line to the bottom of the hill so I let off the brakes and put a little trust in old Betsy to get me to the bottom intact. But, then I saw coming up in front of me, parallel ruts in the trail. At this point I had sort of an out of body experience. I was looking down on myself thinking, “wow, that dude down there is really going to eat sh*t, that’s going to really hurt”, but then I was down the hill and still breathing. Old Betsy had pulled me through it.

Fatigued from the bike, I spent longer in T2 than I should trying to remember which foot was my left one so I could put on my running shoes, in the end playing the odds and jamming a shoe on each foot. I exited transition somewhere between a crawl and a shuffle, but was able to crank it up to a jog when I saw a couple of cute spectators cheering me on. I ran by Sharon McCrary working the aid station at mile 3 and she was kind enough to lie to me and tell me Chris was “just up ahead” and “go get him”. If only my legs were still connected to some part of my conscious brain, I might have tried to close the gap, by every vital system including forward propulsion were on autopilot at that point. The race organizers believed hills were good for the soul, so they served up two rather meaty ones for us on the run. I truly believe they would have had us swim up a waterfall if they had had the choice.

By the end of the run, I had ramped up my pace to somewhere between Simon jogging barefoot over broken glass and Steve Chavez running backwards pulling Carrie in a bobsled. I crossed the finish line under the three hour mark, happy that I was still standing, had all of my skin intact and most of my pride, and a sense of satisfaction of finishing without taking a roundhouse to the head from Mr. UFC.