My first triathlon was not even close to being easy. It was the Golden Gate Tri held on June 26th.

I set my alarm for 4am and the transition area opened at 5am. Me and my friend who accompanied me on this trip slept through the alarm and I woke up at 430. Wow its is good thing that we were staying close to the area since it only took about 10 min to get to the race spot. I get there thinking that it would be crowded but I see no one and it was dark out. I find a place to park (which was easy) and meet some people but the officials haven’t set anything up yet. So we hung around 15 min or so then we see them setting up. I go to drop my running stuff off at T2. As I take off my running shoes to leave in my area, I realized I forgot to bring an extra pair of shoes, so that I can walk over to T1. Dang it!

Oh well. I walk my bike over to T1 and set that area up first. Then I bike back over to drop off my running shoes. Next time I won’t forget to bring an extra pair of shoes to wear. I get my number 184 marked on my body and head over to the beach.

It’s about 6:00 now and we have a pre race meeting at 6:20. I’m stretching and putting on the wetsuit as I look out and don’t see any buoys out on the water. I find out that they aren’t even ready yet we have our meeting at about 6:25 and they announce that we will start about 5-10 min late since the ocean current is still really strong and they aren’t done setting up yet. I’m waiting around and talking to other people. Met this one guy who said it was his first time too and only decided to do the Olympic race instead of the sprint race because you run all the way across the golden gate bridge and in the sprint you turn around half way. This was the same reason why I did the Olympic race as well. If you are going to run on the golden gate bridge then u should go all the way!

My heat is finally up at around 7:00 rather than the supposed start time of 6:50. I run into the water and start swimming. Swimming wasn’t that hard. I quickly finished my swim in 30 min and was one of the first out of the water and feeling good. I hopped on my bike and begin my bike portion of the race. I start going up the first hill and I’m like holly crap it was hard! And it was only my first lap I had 5 more to go. One lap was roughly 4 miles the first mile was a 300 ft climb following that you go downhill then climb to the top of the 300ft hill again and finish by going downhill. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it 5 more times. By my 3rd lap I had cramp up in my calves so I had to hop off my bike and stretch for a while. Then I got back on and bike some more, this happened a couple more times. The guy I met at the beginning of the race finally caught up to me while I was walking my bike up one of the hills during the 5th lap since I had gotten cramps in my knees. 2.5 hours later I was finally done with biking.

Now I just need to finish a “quick” 6 mile run. The guy and I stayed together for a little bit longer. He took off when my cramps came back and I had to walk most of the run. I finally finished the run 1.5 hours later with an estimated time of 4 hours and 40 min.

Steven from California

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