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By Mike Clodfelter
Waking up to thunder on the morning of a triathlon never can mean well for the turn out. So it wasn’t too surprising that of the 140 who signed up to participate in the March club race, only about 30 ended up coming out to Fiesta Island for what looked like a dreadful morning. However, for those who did the day turned out to be a real treat. Though a little cold, the clouds opened up shortly before the starting speech, and set the stage for a nice race. Due to the rains and the amazing quality of Mission Bay water just after the rain, the March club race had to be turned into a duathlon, cutting the swim portion out and replacing it with a two mile run. This left the racers with a classic run-bike-run, now with a roughly 2 mile run, then 12 mile bike, and finally finishing off with a 4 mile run.
After the discussion of the new racing plans, it was time to get down to business and send off the competitors for their first run. Isaac Smead and Paul Todd came in together for with a quick time of 9:30. Following close behind was our women’s leader Eva Nystrom, coming in at just under 10 min.
That led the dedicated athletes to the bikes and five laps of the Fiesta Island’s small loop. With a cold morning breeze still out, this meant a freezing cold ride for the riders, as I overheard our women’s race leader discussing after the race. Through T2, Smead had created for himself a dominating overall lead that looked tough to bring down due to his strong running abilities.
Two laps of the northern loop of the island later, and we had our race champion, Isaac Smead, finishing with a time of 1:05:26, nearly a minute and a half ahead of second place Paul Todd. Winning in the women’s category was Eva Nystrom, who dominated from the start, remaining competitive with the overall leaders through the whole race and finishing with a fourth overall and a time of 1:08:13, a whole 17 minutes ahead of the next female competitor.
As the athletes finished, they were treated to a tasty breakfast with enough food for many more people than decided to come. Finally as the racing wrapped up, it was time for awards and prizes. Medals were given out to the top three male and female competitors and gift certificates to San Diego Running Institute were given out to people who were participating in their first race, as well as those who had already competed that weekend.
We’d like to thank all the volunteers, Jeffery Givens, John Hill, Ann Kelly, Shelby Madden, Bobbie Soloman, Matt Thatcher, Jaclyn Trusper, Zarah Lawson, Denise Pitre, and Cory Osth for putting on a great race, for the great food and coming out to cheer on the athletes on what ended up being a great morning. Until next time train safely out there and congratulations to all the finishers of the March club race!
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