By Peter Borak 

So about a month ago, I signed up for the USC triathlon.  I knew the race was the week before finals, but seeing as its USC’s race, I figured it’ll be a quick 110 mile trip up to LA, do the race, and be home before the typical UCSD student is eating breakfast on Saturday (noonish).  Then at Tuesday’s practice, I’m informed the race is in OXNARD!  Where’s Oxnard you say?  Oxnard is about 190 miles north of my “on campus” (If you count having to cross Interstate 5 to get to a classroom “on campus”) apartment.  Holy smokes that’s a lot of driving!

School goes well the week leading up to the race and the last thing I have to do is go to my Corporate Finance review session for the final exam.  Professor Halov made us a nice presentation summarizing how one can use floating Debt levels to increase the value of your corporation, but I’m sure the dear reader already knew that.  The review finished up at 6pm and all I had to do was pack up my gear and be on my merry way.  An hour and a half later I still can’t find my Albuterol inhaler (it turns out it was on the floor in front of my dresser) and I know I have to hit the roads soon if I’m going to make the epic journey through the City of Angels.

Traffic on the 405?  Traffic on the 405… in LA?  Egads you might say, what has the world come to?  Traffic on the 405 freeway through Los Angeles is as common as IT band problems in triathletes, which is to say widespread and unchecked.  After watching brake lights explode like fireflies on a hot New Jersey summer’s night for what seemed like a lifetime, my car let me know it was running out of gas.  I pull off near the Getty Museum for the ritual gouging at a gas station to be informed by the station attendant that “Mr. Mojo Risin” is an anagram for Jim Morrison in the Doors song, “LA Woman.”

“You just blew my mind” was my response.

The next stop on this epic Journey was Ian’s (a new team member we are very fortunate to have) Mother’s house.  Most people, if you told them 20+ skinny, hungry, irritable, and nervous triathletes were going to be crashing on their floor would change the locks to their house and keep the lights off.  Not Kat.  Ian’s mother Kat cooked us all what was roundly declared “the best Pesto Pasta I’ve ever had.” Do you know why it was so amazing?  Because Mom made it, and we all know Mom’s food is always the best.  She then proceeded to break out everyone’s favorite charitable desert: Girl Scout Cookies.  Unreal.

With full bellies and big grins on our faces, we jostle for bed space.  We all brought our sleeping bags, pillows, bicycles, toothbrushes, and we’re somehow going to cram everyone into the living room.  What’s that? There’s an entire basement with couches?  This trip just keeps getting better.

4:00am comes before you know it.  Onto the stove goes the water and soon the French presses are making coffee.  Thankfully there was a sale on coffee in the supermarket so we could brew it strong and muddy.  The coffee drinkers have a demitasse and are fully wired for racing.  The cars are quickly packed and the team caravans down to Oxnard.  I’m not going to name names, but the leader of our caravan has a lead foot and we make it to the race sight in record time.  Thankfully my car’s four cylinders of fury were up to the task.

USC’s triathlon club deserves a lot of credit for getting this race set up right.  We showed up at 5:15am, and race day packet pickup looks like they’ve been ready for hours.  We all pick up our timing chips, t-shirts, complementary running socks(!), and sponsor shwag with plenty of time to get our tires pumped, bikes racked, transition areas set-up and a good warm-up in.

Did I mention the Ocean yet?  I don’t know who upset the ocean, but the ocean was mad.  I’m talking high tide, 6 foot shore break mad.  I’m talking super fit looking lifeguards getting pummeled by the surf and needing to rescue themselves, mad.  I’m talking fish are jumping out of the water onto the beach to get away from the rage, mad.  Ok, two of those things aren’t true.  Anyways it’s also cold.  I’m sure the dear reader has experienced cold before so I’ll spare the platitudes, but it was 55 degrees.  The team got into the water thinking we’d get a good warm-up in, and instead the ocean gave us ice cream headaches, took our lunch money, and bounced us off the sand a few times after we cried Uncle and were trying to swim back to shore.  However, we’re Tritons, and that has something to do with Poseidon I’m told, so we’re going to swim anyways!

UCSD athletes toeing the line and watching the poor folks who started first.

The first collegiate wave started, and mercifully there weren’t any UCSD swimmers in it, because they got thrashed.  The first turn buoy was allegedly 100 meters from shore, and the first wave hadn’t made it out that far by the time the second wave started 4 minutes later. 

The entire Tritons men’s squad is in the second wave, and when the starter abruptly said go we run down the beach like Lemmings into the abyss.  The tide is so high the sand bar drops below running depth in about 10 meters.  We all get to the first break just in time to be too deep to jump through and many swimmers get completely washed back to shore.  I get lucky and swim out through the first few breakers to see Marc Schommer skillfully power through many breakers and make it past the decisive outside wave that clobbered the rest of us.  Daniel Heineck was ten yards ahead of me when this wave crashed, and when we popped back up he was ten yards behind.  Fun!

I spent the swim assuming the race was going to get better once I got to the first turn buoy.  Well rounding that turn the ocean became vengeful of my progress and got so choppy I could hardly tell where to go next.  Our saving grace was the Oxnard lifeguards waving their floatation devices along the route so the swimmers could site.  Why can’t the ocean be more like the pool and have a big fat black line for me to follow to my destination?  Thankfully our Xterra wetsuits are super toasty and kept us all warm.

Rounding the final turn buoy I got to swim to shore looking over my shoulder the entire way, more than a little concerned that a Hawaii five-o sized wave was going to crash on top of me.  When our newest team member Ian finished the swim, he proclaimed “I’m alive” to the assembled crowd leading up to transition.  This crowd included the head lifeguard who was none too thrilled with Ian’s surprise and told him “Damn right you are.”  Hands down the hardest open water swim any competing Triton had done before.

Marc Schommer, looking refreshed

Out on the bike course, a flat, fast two loop course awaited us.  We got to ride around new housing developments and farms; it was like we were watching urban sprawl creeping over and swallowing the old California Oxnard is known for.  As I was riding my mind began to wonder how many of these houses were upside down on their mortgages, and what people were doing about it.  Then I’d get back to the farm area and have to wind my way through very dark and fertile looking dirt clods the tractors dragged into the street. 

Some competitors think that because this course was flat, it must have been easy.  That is far from the truth.  Flat courses require racers to put out as much power as they can while scrunched onto the aerobars, attempting to punch as small a hole through the air possible.  This is both mentally challenging and hard on the legs.  The bike course was broken up by one short hill that you could convince yourself was steep enough that you could sit up to get over, and four right hand turns.  By the time the second lap was completed all I wanted to do was get off my bike and stretch out a little on the run.

The volunteers did an excellent job of directing bicycle traffic, and I was back into transition in no time.  Off comes the helmet and on go our sweet Avia Avi Bolt II racing shoes.  I really like racing in these shoes, they go on easily, provide plenty of cushion, and are light enough to really fly. 

The run course was a nice out and back along a beach front jogging path, then through a beachfront neighborhood to the turnaround at 2 miles.  The run is always where races come together, people have a tendency to clump a bit on the run like they do driving on the freeway.  As I’m running out, the race leaders are coming back.  Not too long afterwards up gallop Mark Schommer, Tim Ray, and Chris Burnham.  They’re running like Goldman-Sachs Executives with their bonus checks headed to the bank, and looking really strong, albeit less greedy. 

When it’s my turn at the turnaround, I check to see who’s coming up behind me, and there’s a woman from UCSB’s squad closing fast!  Their wave started at least four minutes after the men’s, so I’m thinking I’m “getting chicked” (as the vernacular goes) in the worst way.  Not to be terribly chauvinistic, but as a man with a sizeable ego it’s terribly demoralizing to know I’m about to get passed by a girl who started 4 minutes behind me!  Then, because the world loves to kick you when you’re down, Lisa Fong and Sarah Kavaler come running past to provide cheers of “good job.” Oh well, I guess there’s no making up some elaborate story about how I lost to the girl from UCSB.

Sarah Kavaler, too fast for film.

Pretty soon, I’m coming up to the finish, and sure enough I’ve got four or five runners from other schools hot on my heels.  All I want to do at this point is phone it in and finish the race, but Will Pandori lets me know that I’ve got to pick it up!  I can’t pass up a challenge (remember the huge ego?), so I grit my teeth and sprint the last quarter mile to the finish.  “Sprinting” at the end of a triathlon is an ugly affair.  I go into full on stroke face mode, making ugly noises while mothers shield their young children away from me to preserve their innocence.

The Tritons had a great race.  Marc Schommer came in second, Timothy Ray third, your humble author finished fifth.  For the ladies, Lisa Fong finished second, Sarah Kavaler finished seventh, and Talina Kanotchick came in eighth. 

We’d like to thank all of our sponsors for helping us make it to the race and compete so well:  Avia, Clif Bar, Blue Competition Cycles, XTerra Wetsuits, and CycleOps.   Coach Mac Brown is getting us all super fit for conference championships, and assistant Coach Chris Burnham provides excellent moral support.

A huge thank you also goes out to Kat Seiple for hosting us!!

Women's Results

Men's Results

Full Results