It was a hot and sunny day in Auburn this past weekend, but a great time for Stanford Tri! We headed up on Friday afternoon and wandered around looking for the "College Camping Village" before deciding to set up camp practically inside T2. We drove down to check out the Start/T1 (about 7 miles away) and filled up on garlic bread and pasta at Pasquale T's in town. We headed back to the campsite, ate more garlic bread, basked in the glow from the streetlights, and listened to the soothing sound of freight trains.
On race day most of us biked down to the start while Sean drove his awesome huge van with a lot of gear. Bryan and Sean racked their bikes, then John Dalz decided to rack next to them. Bryan, Sean, and Jocelyn took off on the World's Toughest Half while the rest of us waited a half hour for the Olympic. As the ladies were waiting to start Bryan came flying around the point for the swim finish, blowing away the rest of the half-ironman field.
The Olympic swim was in warm and calm Folsom lake, followed by a gorgeous, challenging bike ride. The first several miles were mostly climbing out from the lake, through scenic alpaca farms. There was one intersection where the cops were stopping bikers for several minutes to let the cars go through, which was rather frustrating. Dan finished the swim and ride despite a sprained ankle and reported numbers on the ride: 2467 feet of ascent over 22.64 miles. In the half-ironman, Sean blew out a tire at the top of Lemond-Walked Hill. He tried changing the tube, used at CO2 cartridge, but found a gash in the middle of the tire surface. After waiting in the sun for an hour he flagged down a PG&E truck to get a ride back to the finish. For the rest of us, the run started out pleasantly enough along a dirt track in the woods along a stream, but halfway through shifted to uphill shadeless heat. The heroes of the day were the sponge-wielding volunteers at the aid stations, and we all finished without medical mishaps.
In the final WCCTC championship results, Stanford did well in both men and women. Alexa Merz came in 1st for the women, blowing away the swim competition, with Megan Wachs in 5th. Noa Sakamoto came in 2nd for the men. When he got his award Brad Kearns had to check, "Is this swim time accurate?" Apparently he had the only "reasonable" 1500m time on a course that was actually much too long. Federico Felizzi also placed 5th for the men.
| Olympic WCCTC Results | ||
|---|---|---|
| WOMEN : Name | Place | Time |
| Alexa Merz | 1 | 2:47:17 |
| Megan Wachs | 5 | 3:13:40 |
| Kathleen O'Connor | 7 | 3:41:11 |
| Elaine Ou | 8 | 4:22:09 |
| MEN : Name | ||
| Noa Sakamoto | 2 | 2:13:37 |
| Federico Felizzi | 5 | 2:30:08 |
| Mark Burkhardt | 8 | 2:35:14 |
| Adam Saunders | 12 | 2:40:25 |
| Karl Twelker | 15 | 2:50:45 |
| Thomas Lee | 16 | 2:53:06 |
| Ronald Chen | 20 | 3:06:41 |
| Alex Robertson | 21 | 3:17:09 |
| Phil Esra | 23 | 3:35:46 |
| Olympic Age Group Results | ||
| Sarah Charlesworth | 4 | 3:02:55 |
| 1/2-Ironman Results | ||
| Jocelyn Wong | 1st in AG | 6:24:24 |
| Bryan Ellis | 2nd in AG | 5:51:07 |