Journey to Kona Day 172: Santa Rosa 70.3 Race Report Part 1

I’ve decided to start my Santa Rosa 70.3 race report the day before the race.  I arrived in Santa Rosa on Thursday, driving over seven hours to get there, check in and go to my hotel.  Once I got to my hotel, I just chilled the rest of the night.  On Friday, I got up, put my race gear together and dropped my run gear bag at the run transition in Santa Rosa.  I came back to my hotel, as I had a phone call to make, and then put my bike in my car to take to the bike transition at Lake Sonoma.  That’s when the fun began.  When I took my bike out of my car, I realized that my disc brake calipers were rubbing significantly on the disc of my front wheel.  It turns out that I must have hit the brake lever when I put my bike in my car.  I decided, at first, that I could fix the problem on race morning. I went back to my hotel, chilled for a couple of hours, and then decided that I probably wouldn’t sleep well if I was worrying about my bike, so I drove the half hour back to Lake Sonoma and tried to fix the problem myself, which I wasn’t successful doing  Fortunately, there was a mobile bike mechanic there who solved my problem.  I spent a little more time on my feet and in the sun than I normally would have, but I had gained peace of mind.  There was one other thing about Friday.  After I woke up, I had a couple of hard boiled eggs at the hotel.  I don’t know if it was coincidence, but about a half an hour later, I began a day spending a lot of time on the toilet.  This isn’t something we triathletes talk much about, but getting our bowels cleaned out prior to race day isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Whatever the cause, by the end of the day, I was pretty well cleaned out.  I made sure that I’d hydrated well, ate some yogurt, a yam, and rice crackers. As I went to bed, I was thinking about my race day plans, one of which was whether to bring my wetsuit despite the fact that we’d been told the swim would most likely be a non-wetsuit swim.  The water had been 76.9 degrees the day before, and the temperature at the lake had been over 90 in the subsequent days.  Besides, I was excited to race in my swimskin in preparation for Kona.  I was in bed at 8 pm.

I typically write my race report prior to my races, and then edit them after I finish.  That’s what I did for this race.  I thought it would be fun to not just edit it, but to highlight my edits and show how the actual race compared to my pre-race race report.  Tomorrow’s blog will be done this way.