Well, I woke up this morning and had scheduled the Wente Road Race in Livermore. this is a 50 mile bike racee with a lot of climbing.  My legs are still pretty sore from Boston last Monday, so i opted for something more theraputic.  I had seen the Parkside Aquatic Mile in San mateo.  this race is part of the Pacific Masters Open Water swim series and is the first one of the season.  

The swim takes place in the sloughs next to the San Mateo Bridge.  The air tempurture when I arrived was 51 and the water temp. was in the mid 60's.   No wetsuit for me although i would speculate that 30 percent of the swimmers were wearing wetsuits. Approximatley 150 swimmers.  The course is laid out in an upside down backwards "L" shape with 2 turn buoy's at each end and 1 buoy at the 90 degree. We start at the 90 degree and head in a counter clockwise direction.   Sorry if that is a hard image to see.  

When I got into the water it felt warm.  Probably because the air temp. was over 10 degrees cooler than the water.  I lined up at the front and when we started, Some guy next to me took off so fast I couldn't stay on his heels to draft after the first 25 yards.  He was wearing a wetsuit so it didn't matter for placing, so he took off.  Another 3 or 4 swimmers passed me and I was able to draft off of one person for awhile.  After the first set of buoy's I was still in the top 10 and feeling comfortable.   

I got off course alittle between the 90 degree turn and the next buoy's,  this probably cost me about a minute overall.  I got back on course and sited the rest of the buoy's  really well.  It seemed that the last buoy before the turn to the finish really messed up some swimmers becuase I passed a couple of people who were off course at the finsih.

Final time was 24:04 for the mile.  Initial results indicated that I was 2nd place in my age group and 16th overall.  I stuck around for the awards and right before they announced my name another swimmer was speaking with the race director.  It turned out that this person whose birthday is in 2 weeks was in my age group and beat me by 10 seconds and ended up 2nd and I got third.  Still not bad for waking up in the morning and deciding to go for an open water swim.  First one of the season.  Last time I was in open water was last October.

Check out the San Mateo Marlins official website for results and a short blip about me and CAF

http://www.mastermarlins.org/#news0

Patriot's Day - this is a Massachusetts holiday and the Boston Marathon is a tradition.  the say over 1 million people come out to watch and after running today, I believe it.  The course was lined from start to finish with spectators.  In some area's the crowds were 3-4 people deep.  Grandstands, bands, cheering, an amazing event.  If you have ever run The Bay to Breakers, this is very much like it, except for the fact that you have to run 26.2 miles, not 7.5.

I had to be in downtown Boston to catch the buses out to Hopkinton by 6 am.  Moving 26,000 people is a huge undertaking but the race organizers have this down.  My wife Paula got me to the buses at exactly 6 am and I was on a bus within 10 minutes.  I heard later that some people waited 45 minutes to get on a bus.  The ride out to Opinion took about 45 minutes and sat next to a fellow runner Dan from New jersey.  We ended up hanging out together at the high school where we waited the 3 hours before the start.

temperature was in the high 30's while waiting.  Porta Pottie lines took 40 minutes.  I was in corral 13 in the first wave which meant I had 13,000 runners ahead of me.  It took almost 15 minutes to cross the start line.  It was really crowded running for the first 3 miles and the pace was dictated by the people in front.  No room for moving around but everyone was in great spirits.

the next 10 miles were fairly uneventful.  I ran my pace which slowly but surely picked with the additional room on the road.  My heart rate was low throughout these miles and I stayed on task of drinking water and Gatorade that was offered every mile as well as the gel and carbohydrate product I carried with me.

Right before the 1/2 marathon point we pass through Wellesley and pass right in front of Wellesley College which is an all women's Liberal Arts college.  This co-eds were lined up for almost a half mile and were screaming at the top of their lungs.  It was incredible!  You could hear them a mile away!

I passed the 1/2 marathon point exactly where i thought I should be 1:40:33!  things were going really well with the exception of a blister I felt coming on at mile 8 or so.  Blisters have never bothered my in the past, but this one felt like a dozy.  Maybe the socks I chose were too thick.

At mile 15 I finally saw my family.

So everything was going according to plan, and then.......... I started to cramp, a little.  My blister popped but it felt like I had stepped in a puddle.  Yikes.

The next few miles were difficult and I was reassessing my goal time, but I was still within the 10 minute finish time I had set for myself.

when you hit the town of Newton at mile 18 or so there is a series of 3 hills which for me should have been no big deal because of tall the trail races and training I had been doing, but these were really difficult.  My legs wouldn't move and I had to walk up each hill. the downhills were even worse.

I struggled through the last few miles and finish just under 4 hrs. It was painful but still satisfying to finish such a great race with so many people watching.

After finishing I limped to the area where my bag of clothes were and then went to find my family.  they were very close to the finish line which was what seemed like 12 blocks from where I was.

After finding the group we slowly walked over to some sports bar pub and while waiting for the table , I assessed the damaged to my toes and just sat there!  Wow, that really hurt.  I am glad I finished and got to expirence the greatest marathon on the planet.

Arrived today in Boston.  Weather is cold but no rain.  Went to the expo - the biggest expo I've ever been too.  Thousands of people. Pickup up my number 13615.  I am in the first wave leaving at 10 am from Hoptinkon on Monday 4/20.  Patriots Day here in Mass.  They have 26000 registered for the race and expect over 1 million to be watching along the route. 

I have never been a strong climber but Copperopolis worked into my calender nicely, so I signed up. My goal was to try and stay with the group as long as possible and I made it half way up the first climb. I have the "Boston Marathon" next weekend and maybe shouldn't have run 9 miles on Friday before Copperopolis Oh well, its a long year.

When I got to the top of the climb, I started picking off riders in front of me.  I would see a rider in the distance and put my head down and work on getting up to them and see if they wanted to work to get to the next guy up the road.  Most did not want to work or couldn't.  So the first lap was spent passing many riders.  The downhill was crazy bumpy, but I passed a lot of people on that section also.  Came throught the start/finish area and thought about packing it it.  It is a hard course, but I decided that with my overall goal for my 50 races, quitting isn't really an option. 

So off I go and climb again for my 2nd and last lap.   Got passed by only 4 or 5 riders up the hill and then caught all but 1 on the top of the ridge.  then 2 guys who got shelled from another group come by and I hook on with them for most of the ridge section.  Then the lead group of the 55+ come by on their 3rd lap (I think) and the 3 of us hook on the back of this group.  Mac is in the group and I ride for a few miles with them watching this race unfold.  No one in that group was talking and the pace while managable was fast.  I was glad to sit in the back and get the draft for the last part of the ride, it was windy on top of the ridge and being out there solo was no fun.  When we got to the last hill before the downhill section the pace really picked up and I dropped off the back but only by about 50 yards. When we crested the top and started heading downhil, I pedaled hard to try and catch up to see the final sprint of this lead group ,but to no avail they were really fast going downhill too!   Anyway, I ended up passing a couple of riders from yet another group and they latched on to me.  In the last kilometer, I picked up the pace to try and beat these riders to the line, we dropped the third guy and I tried to sprint to beat the other guy to the line but he gapped me by about 1 bike length.

It was fun and rewarding to challenge myself on a course like Copperopolis.  The best thing about all these different races I am doing is the varied terrain and the beauty of California. See results.