Endurance Turtle A journey through this turtles triathlon adventures

Every time I start a blog post that has a lot of information, I always ask myself… “where do I start???”  Often there is so much to say and report that the hardest part is starting. So here I go…

Friday night I had most of my things packed. When I brought my dog, Toto, in I noticed that he didn’t want to eat and was walking around a lot. I have seen this from him before and it is due to his liver shunt. Basically, he cannot break down heavy proteins, such as meat, in his liver and his liver treats it like a toxin. Sometimes these toxins go into his brain and he can’t stop moving his front legs. For the most part I have been able to control these “episodes” but it just so happened that Friday was a really hot day and he should have come in from outside but didn’t. Therefore, he was in one of his episodes and it carried through the night. I forced water in him on a regular basis using a small dropper but even on Saturday morning he was still not doing well. The original plan for Saturday was to wake up at 8, get gas, wash the car, go to EZ Lube to check the fluid levels on my car and then get going to Oxnard so that we could get in the water, do a quick ride, then check out the run course. The new plan became, call the vet, go to the vet, wait for the vet, talk to the vet and walk out with $60 less in my pocket. He honestly couldn’t do much, but he gave me some natural medication for Toto that would help his liver function better as well as clean out any toxins that were in there. Once that was all done, I finally was able to get all the car stuff done but we were WAY behind schedule and it didn’t look like we would be able to do anything in Oxnard other than pick up our registration packets. Toto eventually started to snap out of it and I left him with my parents for the night. He ended up sleeping for most of the time I was gone because he was still recovering from the 24+ hours of walking around the day before.

I can tell you now, that that was the worst part of the weekend and it all picked up from there!

We made it out to Oxnard and went to the expo. We got our packets and also picked up a couple of race belts and some nutrition. I already had a race belt…but didn’t like it (and forgot it). So I picked up this one:

It has these two snaps that you just push through the bib and it worked out SO much better than my other one…so look soon because that will be going on my Creature Comforts page!

While there we ran into almost all the fellow PTCers that would be racing with us,Eddy, Gail, Neil, Monica, Jamie, and Amy. We chatted a little bit and then we all went over to check into our hotel since we were all staying at the same place.

Once we unloaded at Casa Via Mar, we headed over to George’s grandparents house for dinner since they live in Oxnard. Since George is part Italian, we had a good home cooked Italian meal and it was delicious! Including his grandmothers FAMOUS meatballs! I also ended up meeting George’s uncle and his family since they stopped by while we were there. We had lots of fun and it was nice seeing George’s grandparents. We left there about 7pm and headed back to get settled for the night. For whatever reason our bodies were telling us that we were tired, I think they knew what they would be doing the next day

It was a bit of a struggle to finally fall asleep, Curious Case of Benjamin Button was on and I really like that movie, so I had to force myself to stop watching! The next morning George was up at 4am and I slept till about 4:45am. We got ready and we were out the door by 5:30am and we rode to the start which was 2 miles from the hotel. Gail snapped this photo of George and I as we were leaving, I can’t believe our smile is so big considering it is 530am!

So we were on our way! The ride over to transition was nice and only took us a few minutes. We also were able to pass all the people waiting to get into the parking lot, sweet! Once we got there, we set up in transition, got body marked, pre race potty, and then walked over to say hi to David over at the booth. David snapped this one before the race:

We quickly realized they were shutting transition down, which George still isn’t happy about, so we quickly ran in and got our stuff and headed to the beach. The water looked good, waves were okay and I cheered on as fellow PTCers entered the water. I was the one of the last waves and went off around 7:45.

So here is how it went!

SWIM – 1/4 of a mile

Ran in the water, dove under a few waves, popped up, started swimming, started to wheez and couldn’t catch my breath. That was basically the story for the whole swim. I was having a REALLY hard time getting any breath and I am not sure if it was because I went out too fast, or if the water was cold, or what…but it sucked but I just kept moving! I also took my asthma medicine before the race, but maybe I should have taken more…it sort of sucks not being able to take my inhaler in the water because I could have used it.

Overall swim time was 16:02

T1

Grabbed my bike, got dirt EVERYWHERE and headed off.

T1 time – 3:12 (best time ever)

BIKE – 12 Miles

Guess what? We rode through Strawberry Fields! Must be where they got their name from…in case you didn’t know. The bike was interesting this time around, I tucked down in areo and for the most part, held my own. Didn’t get passed too much (only by the insanely fast guys!) and did a lot of passing…so that was kind of cool. About 4 miles into it I grabbed my water bottle and hit the end of my handle bar and my plug flew off. I saw it go, said “oh, crap” but then kept moving because it just wasn’t worth it to stop. Now note this instance because it comes up again…

About half way through the bike I start to feel headachey…and a little nauseous. So I drank some more water and didn’t push too hard. At one point it was almost unbearable, so I sat up and took my gel that I had on me then gulped some water. George had told me he read somewhere that gulping the water is better than taking sips because if there is a large amount of water that goes down, your body treats it like food and digests it faster. This is good so that the water doesn’t slosh around in your stomach. Within minutes of doing this I felt TONS better and rode back into transition.

Overall bike time – 40:58

T2 – I come into T2, I see a couple of PTC cheerers and I pretend to fall…that was kind of funny and I am interested to see how that picture came out! I start running toward my area and there is a lady standing there that is with the crew and I am thinking…”get the hell out of my way!” Then she asks me if I am 712, I say that I am and she then asks me if I wanted to quit. They had gotten a report that 712 wanted to quit because her bike was falling apart. I said, “well, my plug came off…but it wasn’t THAT bad!” Anyway…that took some time and was a little annoying.

T2 time – 1:45

Run – 3.2 Miles

What can I say about the part that I hate the most. I am slow, I have to walk but I get through it…so there ya go! Running in the Zoot’s was nice and very easy to put on. We actually ran through a neighborhood of beach houses and some people were even outside spraying us with water. I ran under a couple and thanked them. About halfway into the run I noticed a commotion ahead of me and saw this guy being held up by people. I would assume he bonked because you could tell his body wouldn’t even support him anymore. I kept running by since it looked like he was being taken care of. That was the most exciting thing about the run. I then started to sprint to the finish, realized I had started too soon and had to slow down a bit when I got the the actual finish. But everyone who had finished before me was out cheering and that was a lot of fun.

Overall run time – 38:16

OVERALL TIME – 1:40:13

Once done we headed straight toward the PTC tent and I inhaled a bagel!

I was really hungry…

George did really well too! He did the whole thing in 1:28:29 and beat his goal of finishing below 1:30! yay George!

It was nice having a bunch of PTC people there, catching up on the race and discussing some things that occured. This was also our time for a group photo op!

Aren’t we sexy!?!?!?!

David and team (Thom & Bruce) were also SUPER wonderful, they had an amazing spread of food and goodies for us after the race-

It is this kind of support that makes it great to be part of a club that takes care of their team members! Thanks guys!

The organizers of the event had this really cool system of being able to look up your times on computers they had, instead of the papers posted to a wall that don’t make any sense. So we went over and I found out that I placed 2nd in Athena! I was really excited and we HAD to stick around so that I could get my medal, so we packed up our stuff and found a spot in the grass while we waited, and waited, and waited for my name to finally be called.

Here I am walking up to get my medal-

And here I am on the hay stack with my official silver medal-

I met the girl that got 1st place before the race. She actually works at Disney and is also on the Disney Tri Team with George! The triathlon world is very small…

David also got a closeup of me with my medal-

It was all really exciting and I thought it was a great race. They had 2010 sign ups there for $55 and I was very tempted…but decided not to sign up just yet.

Great race! Great results! Great people! Good times!