Endurance Turtle A journey through this turtles triathlon adventures

So my big surprise was that I was planning to do a 5k in my own backyard (G-Dale)…it just turned out to be crappy.

But nonetheless, here is my report. I did this race last year and wasn’t too impressed by the overall race organization. This year was a little better (they actually had my name on their list) and they had timing chips. I also feel as though I paid less for this one ($23 vs. $35 last year) but I can’t remember if I actually paid $35 last year… Anyway, I was planning on waking up at 7AM and almost screwed everything up by forgetting about daylight savings. Fortunately, we got a reminder e-mail from El Presidente of Pasadena Tri Club and I quickly reset my clock. Needless to say, I still overslept and ended up waking up at 7:40AM. I honestly don’t even remember hitting to snooze button, guess I was tired.

I am going to rewind a bit here…On Friday I did a run around the Rose Bowl and then rode twice around. Well, on my run I wore my Zoots sans socks and gave myself some little blisters in my arches. They didn’t hurt much, so when I got home I put one of those blister covers on and didn’t think much of it. Later that night I went to take the cover off and when I got to the part where the blister was the little cover was stuck to the blister! I tugged and tugged and that damn thing wasn’t going anywhere! I then decided to just cut around wound and leave the cover there. I figured it would fall off eventually and till then the cover would protect it. The next day (Saturday) I went on with my day, then that night I was pulling my sock off and not really paying attention, when all of a sudden I feel the cover rip off my skin and take the top part of the blister with it! It was very painful and I wasn’t expecting it to happen. The sticky part of the blister cover had stuck to the sock particles and that’s why it ripped off. So now I had this exposed blister and it was hurtin! I soaked my foot in Epsom Salt for 30 minutes then left the wound open to dry. It woke me up a couple times throughout the night and when I woke up it still hurt. Regardless, I decided to go ahead and go to the race. I put a new cover on (because there was no skin for it attach to now…) and put my socks and shoes on.

So now we are back to race morning. I get dressed and head out around 8AM, the race started at 8:40AM. I get down there and quickly find a parking spot a block away from the start and remembered this year where they block the streets off so I knew how to get around quickly. Once I parked, I headed over the registration and picked up my race bib and chip. No real solid goody bag, just a really crappy t-shirt. Got back to my car and put the bib and chip on, drank some water and headed back to the start. It was here when I started to feel “the urge”…I figured I could head back to the race start and find a porta potty. So I jogged over and my blister was feeling okay. I get to the start area and I didn’t see any porta potties… I think that I can manage and just line up to start. I stood there for a while, and they were doing the warm ups, I am not a huge fan of the warm ups…I have already stretched and I really don’t need to do all these various goofy things with my arms, so I just stood there and turned on my music. Here is a picture of the start:

The gun went off and everyone started….walking :-/ I guess I was too far back because everyone was moving in slow motion. I finally figured out that the best place to be was on the side and started passing people instead of wasting my energy zig zagging. I get about a half mile in and can start to feel the pain of my blister,  I think to myself that if the pain stays there I will be okay. Well, a little over a mile into the race I could feel myself compensating for the blister and running on the side of my foot. Between that and having to poop (yes I said it…get over it), I was done. I knew that if I kept running cadywhompus that I would hurt myself and be all screwed up for the Pasadena Triathlon. This is me and my sad face when I finally called it quits:

I proceeded to walk over to the timing people and told the guy that he could take my chip First race I have ever DQ’d….thankfully it was just a 5k…

After that, I grabbed a bottle of water…got sucked in to talking to a nutritionist that told me to eat healthy and take my vitamins (thank you for the obvious) then I headed to the car and went home (where I finally got to “take care of business”). I then got ready for church and that was it for the morning. Later that afternoon, George and I made a cake for our friends Andy’s birthday:

Merlot Chocolate cake with a blackberry Merlot glaze and a chocolate glaze on top of that to seal it all in. I made a little mini bundt for George and I…just to make sure it tasted okay.

Then we headed over to the Rose Bowl and met up with our friend Amy. Pasadena Triathlon will be her first triathlon so we have been  jam packing her brain with WAY too much information! George ran the  loop with her (since I can’t really run at the moment) and then I did two laps with her on the bike. It was a really beautiful day for riding and I am glad we had the chance to get out. After that we went to the Pasadena Triathlon Club meeting, I didn’t win anything, but the pizza and company was good!

My overall race summary: They need to make sure they have porta potties and while the race is local…not really sure if it is worth it…going to really try to resist the urge to do it next year!