La Jolla 10 Mile Relay

[Updated with all PTC results, 9/28/15]

La Jolla 10 mile relay. Pasadena Triathlon Club teamed up with Volt with 30 swimmers in six teams. Each swimmer does 1 mile leg and then the team repeats again to swim the full 10 miles.

The morning started early with a van ride from Eagle Rock at 4 am. Some friends stayed down in SD the prior night.

We setup a couple pop up tents for the down time between your swim legs. The start was a mass start and then the swimmers spread out as paces and the morning progressed.

The course was a tight isosceles triangle.

The water was fairly warm. I heard it was 75F. Wetsuit was optional. I kept the wetsuit for the added buoyancy. Wetsuit use put us in a separate category.

The water was clear. You could see tons of fish in the kelp bed below the surface. Orange fish, blue fish, and sea lions played all around, even very close the to beach.

My team was PTC Salty Pistols. Gio, Lynda, Bryan, me and Gregg. We finished in 5:03.

My first leg went pretty good. I was so focused on the transition High Five from Bryan, I forgot to start my Garmin. Dang it. About 200 yds in, I started my time. I think I swam about 30 minutes. The official timer screwed up the our splits. While your waiting for your teammate to come it, you have keep looking into the water for the swim cap color and wetsuit/ swimsuit. There was high clouds that made sighting the buoys a bit hard. The first buoy seemed really far and the last couple yards before the buoy seemed like forever. On the way back, it went a lot faster. There must have been a current. There a few cold spots that felt pretty good.

After my leg, I watched our other teams going in and out. Then I went up to the bluff and cleaned off for an hour.

The second round, I felt really good and swam even better. 28:45 minutes. The clouds lifted and siting palms trees on the way out worked well. On the way back, i was following another swimmer girl and didn’t have to site hardly at all.

Our team finished in 5:03.

We hung out a little while and then went nearby to Cody’s for lunch. Yummy.

Traffic home was stopped at San Onofre for no good reason.

From Elizabeth,

PTC fishes and friends,

What a great day of swimming! There were some epic PTc swims out there, and more course PRS than I can count. The race was close with one exception (cough cough Moby Ducks, cough) and I could tell everyone left it all in the water. The race director personally thanked us for bringing down the most teams of ANY club down there. Go PTC!

Now for the results :

1. 4:17.20 Moby Ducks (no sandbagging penalty for Tyler, but we’ve got your number next year :-))

2. 4:49.34 Huma Huma

3. 4:57.15 Rough Draft

4. 5:03.27 Salt Pistols

5. 5:06.25 Swanky (or should i say wankay?) Shrimps

6. 5:10.3 Speedy Cove Seals

Shout out to everyone who did their first or longest open ocean race (holler if I miss anyone):

Lynda Neuman

Suzanne Shdo

Griff Hazen – plus a 20 minute time drop!

Joe Smith

Julie Mabry

Abel Burbouis – with a 10+ minute time drop!

On a personal note, it brings me so much joy to see so many of my fellow triathletes and friends really enjoying a swim race. Everyone out there yesterday should be proud of themselves for a tough coupleof miles and done great tracing. I have had a blast this summer working with the PTC Sunday Ocean swims that lead up to this event and I’m already looking forward to next summer’s