Santa Cruz Triathlon Part I

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I really wanted to blog last night but Blogger mobile wasn't working and I had to give up. So my plan is to post all about Santa Cruz (leading up to the race) tonight, and then post a race report tomorrow. Otherwise, the post will be crazy long.

I got up on yesterday morning, packed my gear, kissed the kiddies goodbye and headed south to Santa Cruz.

More "carb loading" during the drive with a maple nut doughnut.

I arrived in the early afternoon to an absolutely gorgeous day! I knew if race weather was anything like that, we'd be a lucky group of triathletes! Speaking of triathletes, they were everywhere!! Like ants - riding, driving, walking - all over the place. It was my first somewhat "destination" race and the energy was so fun!

Before I go on, I'll back up a bit and tell you about Friday, though there's not much to tell really. I upped my food intake by about 200% and also went for a final taper run on the beach with a couple other tri folks. We ran at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, only about 20 minutes, to remind my body what running is, and it was amazing. I kept my heartrate low and felt like I could run for hours like that.

Sunset at Ocean Beach (post-run)

Of course I didn't, that wouldn't make for a good taper.

Back to Saturday...I met up with Amy and Lauren, the tri women I'd be bunking up with for the night. We had a nice little room at the Seaway Inn, with a front patio that overlooked the ocean.

View from our balcony. And look at that weather!!

Amy and Lauren chatting it up on the balcony. Cute place, right?

I unloaded my stuff and then spent a bit of time window shopping looking for a newspaper. I was lucky enough to be interviewed by the Santa Cruz Sentinel about my Olympic triathlon dreams. So of course I had to hunt down a copy of the paper!

The pictures on the print version

But the print version is tricky to try and show you the actual article so here's the online version, found here on their site.

Isn't that cool?!

Michelle Funez likes her slim chances - I love it! Very clever. They profiled three triathletes, one of whom is Eric Clarkson, a professional triathlete who's finished this event in 2nd place for 4 years in a row. More on him in my race report tomorrow. I want to thank Haven Livingston and Julie Jag at the Santa Cruz Sentinel for including these cool stories in their newspaper!

Paper in hand I was off to packet pick-up at Bike Dojo, a cool spin/training spot in town. I chatted up the manager a bit and it seems they work with all kinds of bodies to get them in top cycling form. They even have a "sofa to cycling" program! And a wedding package, LOL.

How cute is she?!

At pick-up I met Rich Larson, the race director and Jennifer Squires, the assistant race director. Rich was so happy to meet me after having read the article and he introduced me around, which was so fun! I met a woman, Annie Ware, who had just done Ironman Lake Tahoe. Oh wee, I saw pictures and heard stories about what a tough event that was. It was in the 20 degree range when they got out of the lake!

Jennifer, me, Annie and Rich.

So I chatted with all of them for a bit, got plenty of "good luck!" wishes and headed over to The Spokesman bike shop for a free bike check. Thanks Spokesman bike check guy!!

Tillie is all set for her big day!

And I'm all set!

#15, and check out the cool shirt!

Back at the room I inspected my stuff.

Timing chip, numbers, swim cap (love the pink!), and sticker (that will be on my car soon)

For dinner I met up with the other TriMore peeps doing the race. We appropriately chose Italian and as I told you, I've been eating like crazy and dinner was no different. I had a small salad, lasagna and a bunch of bread. Not to mention bites of other peoples' dinner. This is a really fun group of triathletes and dinner included lots of laughs.

Post-dinner: We're all carbed up and ready for the morning!

After dinner I wanted some chocolate so Amy and I went to Trader Joes. In the end I chose a little bucket of chocolate toffee. And proceeded to eat quite a bit of it while we packed our bags for the morning. Good stuff! While packing our gear we put on some TriMore tattoos for the big day!

Amy, Lauren and I representing TriMore!! Are you properly intimidated?

And earlier in the day Neil (coach) had posted on my Facebook page to sleep with my timing chip on, specifically on my left foot. I really thought he was messing me. Who sleeps with their timing chip on? So I asked Amy and she assured me it was his real tip. I remained suspicious but at the end of the day, I'm going to follow the coaches advice so I put my timing chip on and went to bed. Hoping they wouldn't be having a good laugh at me in the morning. It helped that Amy slept with hers on too.

And then...off to bed! 5:30am is early!

So that's it, Part I. Part II, the race report, will come tomorrow. Until then, I'm off to bed. It's midnight and I'm a wee bit tired.

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I am a licensed psychotherapist with a private practice offering Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for weight loss and maintenance. I have an office in Marin County, CA and I'm also available via Skype. To learn more please visit my professional website at www.michellefunez.com or email me at funez.michelle@gmail.com