Members of the UCSD Triathlon Team once again competed at the Wildflower Triathlon. Athletes from our team placed exceedingly well in both the Half Ironman (Long Course) and Olympic Distance events! Bravo to all who raced!

We thought we’d check out this “Woodstock of Triathlon”…

Tammy, her dad Martin Wildgoose, and I (Blair) got to Lake San Antonio on Friday May 5th for the Wildflower Triathlon in Atascadero. About 15 minutes after we arrived Chris and Darlene got there. They had left San Diego 3 hours later than we did… we picked up our race packets, stopping along the way to take pictures in front of the giant cyclist cut out, the 20 foot Powerbar Gel blow up, Canadian flags, and vast expanse of the transition area, a skeleton compared to what it would be 14 hours later.

Saturday started in the dark. We got to the lake, flashed our VIP pass, and literally had the sea of race officials part to make way for us as we were allowed to drive directly down to our campsite for the following night and transition, thanks to Tri-Zone. We headed down the hill in the middle of dozens of cyclists heading to the transition area with bags on their backs, fronts, aerobars…

Team members Daniel Derkacs and Derrick Watkins raced the half Ironman that morning. We also got to cheer for Tammy’s Dad. It was tough out there, windy on the bike and hot on the run. After a rough swim, Daniel’s bike leg was 22nd overall. At mile 7 ½ Daniel was given a contaminated drink at an aid station and I’ll leave it at that for now… He finished the race 34th overall and 11th in his age group despite adverse conditions to say the least. Derrick enjoyed the race, having a couple of his friends there competing with him. He was 781st overall, and 144th in his age group.

Tammy, Darlene and I decided to make it a little easier for us to PR in future races and were all doing Wildflower as our 2nd Olympic race. Chris joined us at the Olympic distance aswell. The four of us camped at the lake that night and were able to wake up 300 meters from transition. We probably could have utilized this better and done a better warm up… Chris started at 9:00am and the three of us started at 9:05 right after a pretty awesome national anthem and some fun announcing. It definitely felt like we were part of something special. After the race Tammy and I decided we should not start next to each other again because we definitely threw a few elbows at the start and should probably direct those at people other than each other.

Darlene was the first woman out of the water again! My family was at the base of Lynch Hill out of T1 cheering us on and snapping pictures as we headed out with 40k ahead of us. The three of us made it up the hill, passing people along the way. Special thanks to Martin Wildgoose for standing at the top and making us get out of our saddles! Despite being very tough, the course treated us all pretty well. We cannot say the same about the run course however. It was hot and hilly, and we wondered how everyone the day before had done over twice the length. There were a lot of people stationed out on the course cheering us on. I got a “stay classy San Diego!” and a “Hey UCSD, I thought that was a party school. You’re lookin’ pretty serious!” I wish I had had the breath to say “that’s State.” Tammy got a butt slap at mile 5.

Chris had the 17th fastest overall bike split of the day, and 14th fastest run, (out of 2701 people), finishing in 2:15:57 (finishing 6th.) Darlene finished in 2:42:30 (10th Collegiate), Blair in 2:49:42 (16th Collegiate), and Tammy in 2:57:48 (26th Collegiate.) Post race we enjoyed some real food, drink, family and reported our race results back to
San Diego.

Two more guys and one other girl (at least!) want to join us next year so we can score as a team? You in?