Treasure Island Triathlon - November 4th, 2006

The idea for competing in a Triathlon came to me about 4 months ago. Following my dad's illness, I decided to join Team in Training and raise money to fight cancer. Originally I was going for a marathon but then decided to go for a full triathlon. Rafael, my friend and roomate, conviced me to join as well. I had been hearing about triathlons since I moved into his house. I used to think Raf and Timo were crazy for waking up so early in the morning and going on long bike rides!

The olympic triathlon distance is 1.5 km swim, 40 km bike and 10 km run - Or 0.93 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike and 6.2 mile run for those who don't know the metric system.

Now, let me get back to the swim part.....1.5 km!! That's a serious distance for someone who can only swim one length of the pool (25m). This was by far my biggest hurdle.

After countless hours of training in the pool, on the bike and on the track, I was now ready to face the challenge.

My overall goal was to finish the race under 3 hours.

It's Saturday November 4th, 4:23 am, Raf was already up! The guy was excited, and it's not easy to get sleep before such an event. We left the house at around 5:30 am, and drove to San Francisco. Traffic was not an issue, we got there at around 6:20am.

7:15 am, Raf's wave started their swim. The open water swim is not great for spectators, because all the swimmers have yellow caps with black wetsuits!

7:30, my wave started. I started with my age group instead of my TNT team. At Treasure Island, the swim consisted of 2 big loops - they looked huge to me! I thought I was in the water forever, it really seemed very long.

Offical swim time: 39:34s

I couldnt even swim 25 m, 2 months prior to the race, so I should be happy with this swim time---but I am not. My goal was to be under 40 min, I guess I would have liked to swim a little faster. Off the water to T1 (Transition 1), I have to use the tri jargon now---haha.

Official T1 time: 3:23s

The bike course was 6 loops with 174 turns!! It was a very technical and dangerous course. I knew right from the start that I would not be able to go very fast. I held 18.1 mph for 25 miles.



Official bike time: 1:21:51s
T2: 55s

I was really relieved to have finished the bike part of the triathlon without any incident (ie. flat or crash). After that, only the run was left to finish, a sport I am more familiar with. Even though I had done brick work-outs before, I could barely run the first couple of miles. At the end of the first loop my legs started to feel better. I saw Raf taking pictures, I wish I was the one taking the pictures! I had only one thing in mind, to beat 3 hours.


Official Run time: 47:52s

I had my watch on during the run, so according to my calculations I was close, but needed to keep the pace which I did and crossed the finish line in 2:53:35s.

Big Daddy and Raf were there at the finish line. Man, I really enjoyed being there.


Official Finish Time: 2:53:35s

Click on this video to see Erhan cross the finish line: