Love City Triathlon
For Labor Day weekend, Dave and I went to St. John for the Love City Triathlon. Even though my knee wasn't up for doing the whole race myself, I found two guys from work who were willing to join me on a team. One of them, Jeff, was either very brave or not very smart, and he agreed to be the biker - borrowing my bike since he hadn't ridden in about ten years. Good thing he's in excellent shape! Paul agreed to run even though he had a cold all week. 
Mostly I think I convinced them because one of the perks to signing up for the race is a free night at Maho Bay camps. Because the race starts at 7am and the earliest ferry to St. John can't get racers there by then, Maho Bay gives a free night to competitors from other islands. (During the summer it's only $37 for Caribbean residents anyways.) They are a popular cheap place to stay on St. John as they have a nice location within the property of the National Park just a short 5 minute walk to the beach. Maho Bay camps are an eco-campground with tent-cottages - basically a slab of concrete with "translucent fabric on wood frames and screened windows". The campgrounds also had raised walkways that reminded us of the Ewok's home (the walkways are raised to prevent erosion). They have shared bathrooms and showers and no general lighting at night, so you have to carry your flashlight with you after dark. The hermit crabs were fairly impressive! Neither of us slept very well as the bugs and creatures were a lot louder than we are used to here on St. Thomas.
The pre-race meeting was at Maho Bay camps, and we got to see lots of familiar faces from the swim race in May, and I finally got to put a face to some of the names I'd seen in the newspaper from other races. Dave was convinced to sign up as a rogue participant doing the swim only but without a team. Races are loosely run here and the organizers are always trying to encourage more participants! There were a few other rogue swimmers, including his boss.
The organizers assigned each team a letter - our's was "F". We weren't sure what they were trying to tell us..... The morning of the race, I got an "F+" written on my arm instead of just an "F". And it turned out, the winning team was "Z" solely because they were the 6th team but refused to be "F" so they asked for "Z" instead!
The swim was a tough start for me as there were a lot more people compared to our previous swim races and I lost a little time due to one or two guys swimming diagonally across where I was trying to be. Importantly I didn't get kicked in the face though which is always good. (I like to start right next to Dave as I know I'll have extra room as soon as he sprints ahead.) I swam as hard as I could to the first buoy - we had three buoys we swam in a circle around, twice. But I hadn't swum enough lately to have any idea what pace to aim for. The only really good thing about the swim was that I caught up to this really awesome guy who runs all over the island up and down the hills - super, super fit, tall, lanky, strong-looking guy. He's someone that everyone knows and recognizes since not many people run around these hills that much. I ended up beating him by a little - it was my motivation for the second loop. Of course, swimming isn't his strong suit.....
Dave, on the other hand, was the second person out of the water after the half-mile swim! He said it was a little anticlimatic since he had no teammate to tag and the race was over for him now. He was just a hairlength behind the guy who ended up coming in sixth overall. Next time he should be the swimmer on the team! (We just might do one in 2 weeks on St. Croix with Dave as the swimmer, my brother Kevin as the biker, and me as the runner. Stay tuned!)
My team did fine overall - we were excited to finish as you can see by this picture! Jeff (the biker) finished in one piece
(so did my bike), though he fell a few times along the way. He says he passed someone while sliding down the hill holding the bike in his hands! A lot of the bikers fell actually as it rained just before the swim, so the steep hills were slippery. One biker ended up in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder. [Serious bummer for a race on St John as you have to catch a 15 minute ferry back to St Thomas for the trip to the hospital.] They had an ambulance at the bottom of the steepest hill too. Falls were expected...
After we finished the swim, we went to the bike-run transition to watch the rest of the race. There was a post-race party on the beach with free food, and free beer from one of the sponsors (Virgin Islands Pale Ale). More pictures from the race are on our Shutterfly account.
The pre-race meeting was at Maho Bay camps, and we got to see lots of familiar faces from the swim race in May, and I finally got to put a face to some of the names I'd seen in the newspaper from other races. Dave was convinced to sign up as a rogue participant doing the swim only but without a team. Races are loosely run here and the organizers are always trying to encourage more participants! There were a few other rogue swimmers, including his boss.
The organizers assigned each team a letter - our's was "F". We weren't sure what they were trying to tell us..... The morning of the race, I got an "F+" written on my arm instead of just an "F". And it turned out, the winning team was "Z" solely because they were the 6th team but refused to be "F" so they asked for "Z" instead!
The swim was a tough start for me as there were a lot more people compared to our previous swim races and I lost a little time due to one or two guys swimming diagonally across where I was trying to be. Importantly I didn't get kicked in the face though which is always good. (I like to start right next to Dave as I know I'll have extra room as soon as he sprints ahead.) I swam as hard as I could to the first buoy - we had three buoys we swam in a circle around, twice. But I hadn't swum enough lately to have any idea what pace to aim for. The only really good thing about the swim was that I caught up to this really awesome guy who runs all over the island up and down the hills - super, super fit, tall, lanky, strong-looking guy. He's someone that everyone knows and recognizes since not many people run around these hills that much. I ended up beating him by a little - it was my motivation for the second loop. Of course, swimming isn't his strong suit.....
Dave, on the other hand, was the second person out of the water after the half-mile swim! He said it was a little anticlimatic since he had no teammate to tag and the race was over for him now. He was just a hairlength behind the guy who ended up coming in sixth overall. Next time he should be the swimmer on the team! (We just might do one in 2 weeks on St. Croix with Dave as the swimmer, my brother Kevin as the biker, and me as the runner. Stay tuned!)
My team did fine overall - we were excited to finish as you can see by this picture! Jeff (the biker) finished in one piece
After we finished the swim, we went to the bike-run transition to watch the rest of the race. There was a post-race party on the beach with free food, and free beer from one of the sponsors (Virgin Islands Pale Ale). More pictures from the race are on our Shutterfly account.
posted by Kendra at 9:05 AM
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