It's good to be GOLD!

I have a confession to make.

Yesterday morning, my friend and I got up at the butt crack of dawn and drove to Solana Beach to wait in line and see if we could get one of 50 remaining entries into the race this morning. I'm happy to report that we were #47 or 50, and thus "Team Smackdown" was born.....

We really didn't think about this until a few days ago, when we got jealous of all the other Divas doing the race. Since I'm a short-timer now and need to get as many CA race t-shirts as possible before I move, I just had to enter, but my body has not been feeling up to a full-fledged sprint a week after Pendleton. My crazy friend (code name "Cali Girl" -- hubby's nickname for her) got strangly excited about doing the swim leg of the relay, and of course, I would only bike.....so we went on a search for a runner. When everyone else rejected us, we ended up with our Assistant Coach. We'll call her "Uber Runner." You see, she's an Ironman many times over, but she just so happens to have a 21 minute 5K in her as well. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Cha-ching!

We hit the relay jackpot. This morning was awesome!!! Cali Girl got all ready for the swim and stood around in her wetsuit on the beach for over an hour and 20 minutes before her wave went off. Apparently, by that time, the tide was coming in but it was leaving quite a bit of shallow water to wade/dolphin dive through before making it past the break. When the first few relay swimmers came into transition, they said that there was a huge set that came in right as the relay went off and that quite a number of people got pummeled by the third wave. Crap! I was hoping Cali Girl just survived at this point....screw speed. Then I saw Uber Runner sprinting toward transition from the beach. She was going to stay with Cali Girl when she got out of the water and assist in the timing chip handoff.

"Where is Cali Girl?" I yelled. She said that she was coming, so I unracked my bike and watched as the other relay teams started heading up on the bike. Sure enough, she lived and made it to the top of the hill. She sprinted in across the mat and looked like she was in a world of hurt. Good times! Uber Runner grabbed the chip, put it on my leg, and then I took off out of transition like a bat out of hell. It's hard to run in LOOK cleats, especially on wet pavement, but I was sprinting and yelling at people to get out of my way.

The bike was a quick 9-mile course. 2 loops of relatively flat portions of the Pacific Coast Highway. (Pretty positive that was where we were) It was beautiful coming up out of Solana and down the big hill with the ocean coming right up to the road. I just felt so lucky to be out there. From the second I got on the bike, I was hurting. I didn't want to see anything in the teens on my speedometer, so whenever I dropped below 20, I geared up or stood up to pedal faster and harder. There was nothing pleasurable about the bike at this point, just a good old fashion grind. I passed EVERYONE. Seriously, I was never once passed out there on course and I took out everyone that ended up in front of me. Was I drafting??? Mmmmaybe. But not intentionally. Sometimes you had a huge group of slowpokes to pass and someone would swerve out in front of me and pass with me. But I'd pass them in the end. I didn't need to draft. I owned them! OK, just kidding...... But I really felt strong out there and gave it everything I had.

Coming into transition, I was pissed that there was no timing mat for the bike. That means my bike split contains both T1 and T2. So I looked down at my watch and had a split of 26:45 for the 8 miles. ROCKIN' good time for me on that course, I think. We'll see what the official split looks like and how much time we took in transition.

Cali Girl met me before I racked my bike, transferred the chip to Uber Runner, and then OFF she went to conquer the final 5K! I needed a moment to recuperate after my ride--- tummy can only handle redlining for so long. All the guys coming in off the relay were congratulating me on my riding and one of them said he was shocked when I passed him out there. Ha! Good way to stroke the ego.

When I was recovered enough, I grabbed my bottles and Cali Girl and I went to the finish line to cheer on our other, older Divas who were still out on course. Almost in a blink of an eye, I caught site of Uber Runner. She was pounding it!!! She looked totally miserable, of course, but she was flying. Reports on course from other relayers say that she was very strong and "impossible to catch." Fan-tastic!!!! We screamed and cheered her on, then ran to the beer garden and met her.

How exciting. 1:01:22. Still slower than some of the crazies in my age group, but the fastest of the all-women relay teams and quite frankly, a time I'm very proud of. We stuck around for the awards and got our well-deserved medals. It's not every day you can podium in triathlon, so we ate it up for sure.

So, without further adue, here's the victorious Team Smackdown!!! (We were supposed to be "Diva Smackdown," but who knows what happened to that)