Preparing for success

A few days ago I combined a sight-seeing trip along California's Highway 1

with a recon mission to Lake Lopez. The latter was so I could pre-ride the bike course for the offroad triathlon and see if I could manage the longer course (17 miles) and still have legs to run 6 miles.

Save it for next time, was the measured conclusion. This year, do the 11 mile bike course and then only have to run 3 miles.

Aside from evaluating the effort required, it was interesting to note that the lake levels have risen so much this year that it looked to me like part of a trail that you have to use to complete the loop had been washed away or submerged.

In this satellite image there is plenty of space between the trail and the water (you can see a blue car and a red car on the road near the bottom of the pic, which give you an idea of scale.) But now at the narrow point the water was within a few feet of the vegetation. Parts of the trail had been undermined and it didn't look safe to ride to me. Hike a bike territory.

Zooming out to show where this is:

And a bit more:

The first impression I had from the trip was not so positive and I was leaning towards skipping the event entirely. But the "a race is a race" mentality has been taking over and it really makes sense to do it for several reasons, not the least of which is that I'll no doubt have fun on race day.

Current plan is to try and get down there this Saturday early enough to ride the part of the course (used by the longer distance race) that I didn't ride last Saturday. Plus it will be a first to camp at a race venue. Getting more comfortable with camping as a means to an end will help me with a lot of things I want to do in the years to come.

My fitness seems pretty good right now. We'll see if I've learned anything from this year's triathlons.

Top of my list is get in the dang water before the race starts and get acclimated and ready to start out relaxed and confident.