Lanikai Triathlon

About a week ago I jogged ~20' super easy and since my calf didn't hurt I sent an email to Marilyn telling her that I thought I could likely get through Lanikai Triathlon without injuring myself... until then it was very much up in the air about whether or not I'd even attempt to start. So even though I had no options at this race but to simply jog the run course, I'm REALLY glad I was able to do it!

Lanikai is just a fun little local sprint race but it's done in the town next to mine and the course is good and many of our friends show up and it just feels like the kind of event I want to support going into my Golden Years of triathlon. (Ahem, my first race officially as a MASTER now that I am 40!!)

I haven't yet seen many pics of the swim show up on FB so I found this one from 2011. Fwiw, this is not at all what the water looked like for us this year! It was drizzling rain at the start and there was a high wind advisory so we had some legit chop and water that was moving to play in. Honestly, those were my preferred conditions and I was happy! The swim was fun. Short, but fun!

Anyway, I don't have a ton to say about this race other than I'm just really glad I got to do it! I swam, I biked, I jogged, and I enjoyed it. And I came out of it without hurting myself- that's the biggest reason for my giant smile at the finish line. :)

The bigger story is about my new little flock of local BSC athletes... all 3 racing on Sunday are new to me this year and across the board had great success! Sergio won the whole race OA(!!!), Kelly won her age group and Heidi finished right behind me in ours (We went 1-2!). I left there feeling super proud but also quite confident that we are once again on the right track for success this year. It's funny sometimes when I start with new athletes and they think maybe they know what to expect from me as their coach... But it's not always the same protocol, you know? Some athletes need to be pushed for sure... so I push them well outside of their comfort zone and teach them that they are stronger than they thought. With others, right away I see it's better to strap that HR monitor on and use it as a leash and their calendar is filled with words that I feel I need to scream like EASY, RELAXED, HR CAP, etc. Kelly has been one such athlete and I think she shocked the hell out of herself in actually still being able to race strong/fast yesterday even though a big majority of her training has been, in her view, uncomfortably slow. It's good though as time goes on and athletes see for themselves that the program is working for them then they resist less and that makes my life/job a ton easier. :)

After the race a group of us ignored the small craft advisory conditions and went out for a swim to the Mokes. We may or may not have brought along a cooler with some adult refreshments and hung out at the little island a mile off shore happily celebrating Sergio's win... The ocean was indeed as crazy as ever out there with bigger than normal waves crashing everywhere but for experienced ocean people it was absolutely awesome and really fun. I think the key there though is experienced ocean people. Unfortunately not everyone has the experience to be out there on days like that and Sergio and Vicky ended up spending an hour or so sidestroking some stranded kayakers/kids back to shore. I won't go into the whole story here, but suffice to say they saved the lives of 4 family members before the fire department was able to arrive and I am super happy to call them both friends. They are heroes.