Malibu Olympic Distance Triathlon  
 
On Saturday the 13th of September I participated in the  Malibu  Olympic Distance  Triathlon. A few months ago the race organizer decided to put this race together in addition to the shorter Malibu Triathlon which was ran on Sunday the 14th. I was unable to get into the Sunday race as it sold out in about two days. Well as it turns out that was a good thing. I got in to the Olympic race and it was fantastic.

At the pre-race meeting the organizer said that they would evaluate if they would run this race again next year. I hope that they do choose to run it. It is a fantastic venue, well organized, and competitive. They capped the race at 1000 athletes. Having done the traditional Malibu race with about 2500+ this race was much less crowded. The course was basically an extension of the classic distance. Swim started farther down the beach, the bike went further up the beach, and the run had a few dog legs in it.

Here is how I did. Over all I was able to score an Olympic distance PR with this race by 11 minutes. I  finished in 2:33:30. My swim was  a 22:04. It was a tad slow as there was some surf to deal with at the start. I was 2nd out in my start wave. I had a good transition to the bike and did the running start with the shoes clipped in. All went well there. Now, I know nutrition was going to play a big part in my performance and I wanted to get it right because I had a horrible experience at the California Half back in March. I ran out of energy big time. So, on the bike I was able to intake about 700 calories and it was successful. I came off the bike with a 1:11 averaging 21 mph. This was my best bike ever. T2 went well except I had a problem getting a shoe on. On the run the first mile was good but then the race got diverted on to the sand because there was a helicopter taking away some injured person. My shoes filled up with sand and slowed me down! Wow, that sucked as I was doing the no sock thing. I knew this was going to be messy about a mile down the road I was able to get  my feet wet to move some of the sand around and made it like mud. This worked, and the fact that I used body glide on the inside of my shoes, and I had only one blister. My run averaged 8:56 per mile which was a bit slower than I wanted to go but I was happy none the less as I am running much faster this year.

I raced in the Clydesdale 200-224 division and finished 9th. It was a very competitive division to be in. I hope that they offer this race distance again next year. After the race I needed to get some immediate rest as for the next day I had a 3 mile swim race. See my next report for that one!