2018-19


Coveskipper 2018

Pre race:

I had planned to sleep in Sunday and take advantage of the late start time, but I should have known better — at 5:30 AM, I woke up filled with excitement at the prospect of both my first collegiate race in several years and a swim in the ocean! After a leisurely breakfast and coffee I met everyone at the ARC; Jesse, Isabelle, and I drove through the fog accompanied by Van Halen and Rush. We arrived at packet pickup early, with ample time to retrieve forgotten IDs, meet Drew’s dad, and wonder where Chris was. Eventually we grabbed our chips, staked out space in transition, and sang Happy Birthday for Drew, which I know he loved. On the warmup run, we dodged divers emerging from their class and leftover excavation from sand castle construction, which was a good preview of what was to come. Finally, (at last!) it was time to try the water and find the turn buoys. Turns out the water is a lot colder when you’re completely submerged than when it’s just your feet in. But I was wet now and fully committed to my no-wetsuit plan. Isabelle and I got back to transition just in time to put the finishing touches on our kit — the Avengers icon, to channel Black Widow’s precision and Hulk’s power. Victoria learned how to make an IG story and we all got to be in her first one!


Start:

After some initial confusion, we lined up on the beach and confirmed the course; in an attempt to not be in front of the tall men next to me I wound up at the back, which I regretted almost immediately as I worked my way through a flurry of elbows and feet. Once the pack spread out a little, I gave up trying to see the first tiny buoy and caught a draft until I could see the lifeguard sitting near the buoy. This swim was stacked with aggressive swimmers, and that was on full display at the turns. In almost no time we were at the next buoy and riding the waves back into shore. The water was so clear I found myself reaching for the bottom while it was still feet away. I stood up, didn’t fall over, ran up the beach and around the turn, still didn’t fall over, and then it was back into the water where I misjudged a wave and popped up from my dolphin dive right as it was breaking on my head. A minor setback, and aside from being blocked in behind some swimmers going slower than I wanted, the second lap was uneventful. I came in just under 1:30 pace, which I’m satisfied with given the conditions.


T1:

I ran up the beach, didn’t fall over, dropped my cap and goggles, congratulated myself for my no-wetsuit decision as I watched other racers struggling with theirs, and went looking for hard sand to run on.


Run:

One of the slow swimmers I’d finally gotten around at the end of the second lap passed me before my legs started working, so I decided to chase her. I found Isabelle and ran with her while we dodged surfers and hurdled over toddlers. At each turnaround, we had to leave the water’s edge and run through increasingly dry sand, which added a whole extra element to plotting our course. A USC girl wiped out right as I was coming into the first turn, so I took it easy. At the beginning of the second lap, I developed a sharp side stitch and hobbled along for a half mile or so trying in vain to make it stop, and when it eased up I had to go catch a bunch of people who had passed me while I was struggling to breathe and run at the same time. Making up time was my main focus for the rest of the run, although I did have to pay enough attention to avoid other racers coming the opposite way, kids hauling handfuls of dripping sand across the beach, and people out for walks on the racecourse. I had enough left for a kick, and even with the slowdown I was happy with my run, and satisfied with 8th in the collegiate division.


Post race:

Drew, Isabelle, Brody, Jesse, and I walked up the beach looking for Victoria and Taylor and Chris. They all thought we were cheering for them because they were near the end and laid down truly inspiring kicks. We all rinsed off and ate some burgers, stuck around for awards, and then headed home and I took a lovely nap.


-Aly Rogers, 1st Year PhD

Tritonman 2019

I went to bed early Saturday night, around 8pm – but not before double, triple, and quadruple checking my bag and double, triple, and quadruple checking to make sure all 15 of my alarms between 3 and 4:15am were on. Perhaps my restlessness could be explained by the fact that Tritonman was our first team race of the season and in my memory, one of the bigger and more competitive races of the season last year. It would be the first race of the season where most of the team (15 of us compared to the 8 of us who raced Coveskipper) would be competing (including many first-time racers) which is super exciting! On top of that, Tritonman brings together amazing collegiate, age-group, and pro athletes from all over (Arizona and Colorado are two places that immediately come to mind), who we normally don’t get to see. This opportunity to race amongst such a diverse and passionate field makes it that much more highly-anticipated. Personally, Tritonman also has a special place in my heart as the first real triathlon I ever raced in, last February. In fact, coming into this season, one of my biggest goals was to beat my times from last year, starting with Tritonman.


So right before bed, I’m doing a little bit of pre-race visualization, picturing myself executing the perfect race – sighting well so I don’t end up swimming in zig-zags, smooth transitions, featherweight legs on the run –  you know, the works. Because positive thoughts will give me that extra edge that practice couldn’t get me, right? Well my pre-race visualization is going buttery smoothly when I suddenly get an email saying that the swim leg tomorrow is cancelled due to questionable water quality as a result of the rain we’d been getting the past week. That changes things a little… Running is by far my weakest leg of the triathlon and now the race has been changed to a run-bike-run, with a 2.5km run replacing the swim, and the 21km and 5km run being kept the same. I do my best to keep the positive thoughts flowing and resigned to my fate, I go to bed.


The next morning, I am up by 3:00 and out the door by 4:00 to meet up with Matt, Drew, and Juhi for the drive down to San Diego. Brody and Jesse are already down there, having raced the Draft Legal race yesterday, and the rest of us are driving down the morning of. I get a little lost getting to Matt’s place, but by 4:25, we are on the road. We drive in the darkness of the early morning for about an hour, being fed multiple courses of snacks by Juhi from her backpack cornucopia, before we arrive just in time for packet pickup. Aside from the unfortunate news that Matt and Juhi won’t be able to race their relay because of registration complications, packet pickup and transition set-up go pretty smoothly. Everyone sets up their transition area and we start warming up for the race. Brody, Drew, Jesse, and Robby are in Wave 1, Chris and John are in Wave 2, Aly and I are in Wave 3, and the relays of Alexis and Fiona, and Isabelle, Brenna, and Taylor are in Wave 8. The guys’ waves go off first and soon after, the girls in Wave 3 are ushered onto the starting line. They have us line up by school which is a little awkward for Aly and I because we are the only two from UCI, so we end up just squeezing in at the back of group and before we know it, the race has started.


Everyone went out crazy fast and I found myself pushing harder than I would have liked. Coming into T1, I felt pretty good, though aware that the bulk of the race was still to come. We crossed over to Fiesta Island for our 3 laps and I pretty quickly realized that something was up. On the way out, the headwind was really strong, pushing against me as I struggled to pedal forward, and even blowing me to the side. I distinctly remember trying to convince myself that I was lucky to experience riding in a wind tunnel, though the novelty of it wore off pretty quickly. At times, I felt like I was barely moving as my thighs just got more and more fatigued. I’m super glad though that I had sunglasses because sand was being whipped up off the road and blown everywhere. Eventually, I finished my 3 laps on the island and raced back to transition, excited to get out of the headwind. Right out of T2, I immediately felt the onset of the bricks in my legs, but I was encouraged by Alexis, Brody, Jesse, Robby, Isabelle, Juhi, and Matt cheering me on as I rounded out the 3 laps of the run. As I got to the final straightaway leading up to the finish line, I hear Jesse yelling at me to “KICK! KICK! KICK!”. The energy and idea behind it was enough to push me to the finish, but as I crossed the line, I was really confused, thinking “I’m not swimming or even in the water…what do you mean kick?”. (Having now looked it up, I completely understand it and greatly appreciate the message, Jesse)


Even though I narrowly missed my goal time, I was still pretty happy with my results, having placed better than last year with improvement on my run (which I have been trying to focus on). The team as a whole performed extremely well, and I am super proud of the great work everyone put out, especially Alexis, Brenna, Taylor, and John for killing it in their first respective races! Unfortunately Drew hurt his achilles during the race and might have to take some time off to heal, but regardless, everyone seemed to be in good spirits post-race and I am excited for the upcoming races!


-Victoria

IronBruin 2019

This is the story of how I became a front pack swimmer.


The day started like usual, missing my 3:45 alarm, waking up in a panic, and eating breakfast at an indigestion inducing pace. Finally on the road with a banana in hand, and a backup in case of emergencies, we settled in for a fairly short drive up to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area.  As the driver I was lucky enough to have veto privileges on the music choices and imposed a soft ban on Ariana Grande. We arrived with plenty of time to set up our transition and help out one of our first time triathletes. This process is a lot like the the oxygen masks that drop from the airplane ceiling.  You must secure your own before assisting others. The next, and most important step of the race morning prep process is the bathroom stop (PRP for short.) This is a vital element of the process as it is very difficult to replicate on the fly during the race. We soon found that the bathroom by transition area had a traffic jam due to a stall shortage which led to a great warmup run over to the parks center headquarters where the very nice lady at the front desk let us use their bathrooms. Now properly warmed and lightened up, all we had to do was put our wetsuits on and race.  I was sporting my brand new Xterra long sleeve suit that really came in handy in the freezing water. You know what they say, always try out new gear on race day.


A short warm up in the water that doubled as a brain freeze acclimation session and it was go time.  The gun went off and everyone booked it towards the first buoy. I’m not sure if it was because this was the first full triathlon with a swim start of the year or if it was the slightly shorter swim that encouraged it, but the swim felt a little more aggressive than usual. A couple kicks to the noggin later and I was out of the water running into transition.  I had one of the easiest times ever getting my wetsuit off (confirming that you should always try new gear on race day) and was quickly out of transition and onto the bike. I caught one guy right off the bat on the quick hill coming out of transition and settled into my bars to lay down some watts. With some Hammer Nutrition HEED (shameless plug, their stuff is awesome) in my bottle, already chilled from the ambient temperature I was feeling good.  The layout of the course allowed for a unobstructed view of almost the entire bike leg, so naturally I used all of my looking muscles to see how much ground I had to make up after the swim. As a runner I suffer from a bad case of AOSS (Adult Onset Swimmer Syndrome) and rely on my legs to bring me back into the race after my utter lack of technique and underdeveloped shoulder muscles let me down. However, as much as I squinted I could only see one cyclist ahead of me. My first thought was that I actually had no idea where the bike course went and was either off course already, or about to be, but there were no other turns I could see and I had passed volunteers that didn’t yell at me so I put my head down and just kept sending. I kept waiting for more people to come into view or the guy in front of me to take a turn, but I made it all the way to the turnaround without seeing another rider.  That’s when it hit me, I had come out of the first transition in 3rd place.


The elation and adrenaline hit me all at once and I threw down on the bike.  My Trek TT bike I like to call Thor (because whenever we ride we hammer it) and I started pushing 27 mph, uphill, into a headwind (definitely not an exaggeration) with the leg freshness of a front pack swimmer in a desperate attempt to take the lead of the race early. I came into T2 just seconds behind the leader, confident I could outrun him.  However, I wasn’t the only person whose thunder thighs had aspirations of winning that morning and a UCSB athlete came into transition right with us. Out of T2 it was a dead heat between myself and the UCSB athlete who had joined up on the bike and we took the run out fast. I made the mistake of letting him get a few strides on me early in the first mile. I made this same mistake many times running the 800m in high school where I would rely on my kick to close it back down at the end of the race.  Unfortunately the 5k is longer than the 800m and the gap grew to a distance I just couldn’t close at the end. I’m going to blame the gap on the exhaustion from all the energy I expended earlier becoming a front pack swimmer, but in reality I was simply outraced. I ran a PR through 5k (the run was a little long) and took home second with a comfortable lead on third. I was very happy with my race and the complete line-to-line performance I was able to put together, but there is still a lot of work to be done in the next few weeks before nationals.  While I am ecstatic with my race I’m not satisfied because of the wise words of a wise man “If you’re not first you’re last.”


The rest of the team also did great despite the cold.  There were a few more PRs and Juhi took home 3rd in the 10k. To celebrate we went to get donuts and I put them down like only someone who was burning the calories of a front pack swimmer could.


-Brody “The Pace Arrow” Cormier

Stanford Treeathlon 2019

The race: Stanford Treeathlon has no huge trees. To be honest, I thought there were going to be a lot of trees to run through but the course was actually right by the bay. A really nice course, though. The event began with Victoria and I cheering on the guys and taking photos as they did their draft legal race. They did a remarkable job, despite Jesse wanting to vomit once he got out of the water and Brody having a cold.


This was my first Triathlon race EVER and I enjoyed every part of it. Except the gravel before/after the swim.


Walking to the swim portion barefoot on gravel was not pleasant but the cold water of the swim felt great. The water’s temperature was bearable and thankfully not bad with my wet suit. When it all began, the swimming portion was chaotic with everyone being so close to each other. I like my space swimming so I made sure to drift towards the back. This one chick slaps my face, and unfortunately  I didn’t get a good look at her so I can’t hold a grudge for next year. My swim form was bad but I tried as best I could and kept going. I did go a bit off course but swam back and from then on kept looking up more often to make sure I was getting close to the end of the swim.


Finally, I finish the swim leg. I was super happy about that. Sadly, my feet were not numb enough to be impervious to the gravel as I set upon the lengthy run back to transition. Made it to transition, took off my wetsuit, slipped my feet into my running shoes and ran my bike out of transition to the mount line. It was time to begin the bike leg.


I realized on the first loop that I had my bike on way too high of a gear because I felt it in my legs and I was like ‘why are my legs already feeling it?’ So I lowered it. It for sure made things better for the rest of the race. First U-Turn, I hit a cone and almost fell off…but after that everything was sorta smooth and even fun. Finished my fourth loop, went back  to transition to begin the run.


I started my run at a nice race pace and my legs felt great. The run was pretty enjoyable despite the pouring rain. When I crossed the finish line, we took team photos and started heading to the car for some post race IHOP™. It was a fun experience. I’m pretty sure on the drive back we saw ALPACAS.


-Alexis Valdez

UCSB Kendra's Race 2019

The UCI Triathlon Team after UCSB Kendra’s Race 2019

I woke up Saturday morning ready to make circus animal waffles. My phone buzzed. It was an email from the UCSB tri team announcing the swim portion of Kendra’s race would be canceled. The Triathlon would now become a duathlon. I originally signed up for just the 5k since I had learned how to swim the week before, and my current version of swimming was just frantically thrashing in the pool until I got tired. After reading the email, I briefly considered doing the duathlon since it would help our team’s conference ranking. I made the mistake of mentioning this to Jesse and he immediately suggested emailing the UCSB race director to see if they could switch my registration. I sent off a quick message and prayed to the Tri Gods that they wouldn’t be able to. As luck would have it, I received my duathlon registration confirmation before I even cracked the eggs for my waffles.


Sticking to my decision I packed copious amounts of snacks, the new helmet I’d yet to wear, and my t(rusty) bike. After Brody finished dismantling and making fun of my bike’s condition, we set off for Santa Barbara. I was graciously nominated by Syd to be DJ for the ride which was an honour I couldn’t refuse. The three hour ride went by fairly quickly with a nice view of the coast for most of the way. Around 5:00 pm, Zade mentioned he has to go to the bathroom, but was immediately shut down and told to hold it or pee in a bottle as were were trying to get to packet pickup by 6:00pm with a current ETA of 6:06pm. After abiding all traffic laws we made it right before 6, however, we were turned away as the registration booth packed up 15 minutes before our arrival. Although frustrated, we were mostly hungry. We met up with everyone at a really cute Mexican restaurant for dinner. I was extremely overconfident with how much cheese I could consume because halfway through my burrito, I had to rush back to the car to grab a Lactaid to save future me from my poor choices. We finally checked in to the Sandyland Inn which had a hot tub THAT NOBODY MENTIONED (definitely not upset), so I did not have a bathing suit with me. As karma would have it, everyone who did have a swimsuit got kicked out of the hot tub 2 minutes after jumping in since the pool had apparently closed hours prior. We tried to sleep, but giddiness and excitement for the race seemed to keep Brody up.


The next morning we woke up bright and early thanks to DST, quickly packed our things and headed to the UCSB campus. I picked up my race packet and racked up my bike in transition. The team began warming up when Gianna eloquently described this race as “a test we hadn’t studied for.” Before I knew it, I was at the start line. As we took off, I kept a solid pace for the first run. I came into transition with a small group and kept up with them on the bike for a whole 30 seconds. A very nice girl from USC slowed down long enough to shout, “You’re killin’ it girl!” before speeding right by. Halfway through my first lap, I realized I wasn’t mentally prepared for a 12 mile bike. The farthest I’d ridden before this was just to class and back home. Very quickly my race pace turned into a casual ride as I got distracted by the gorgeous view, sun on my face and perfect temperature in Santa Barbara. I had to keep reminding myself to pedal faster every time someone passed me. As you can tell, I’m a natural athlete. Victoria passed me towards the end of the first lap and her words of encouragement definitely helped me push to go harder. The second lap went by a lot faster, mostly because my butt was really starting to hurt and I was itching to be off the bike. I finished the second lap and half jogged, half wobbled into transition. The second run started off a little rough, but I had enough energy to get some spots back and pass people on the hills. The team’s cheers and the siren of the megaphone helped me and my noodle legs cross the finish line. The entire team did great overall: three of our male athletes finished in the top 20 with Brody taking 3rd place, and our women’s team had a stellar performance with 2 of our athletes making the top 10. Several other of our athletes including myself, Brenna, and Lucas also had great finishes especially since this was our first multisport race


The team grabbed some pizza and had a nice picnic on the beach. Although we all did great at the race, the real winners were Brody and Syd who became best friends with Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth at Goleta Pier. We finally started our trip home, snacking and singing the whole way back. Although my legs hated me for doing the race, I was glad I did it. I’m happy to be a part of this team that pushes me to do more than I think I’m capable of.  Once I practice my swimming and build up my thunder thighs, I’ll definitely be back for more.


-Juhi