Nautica Malibu Triathlon Race Report

I did a triathlon!

Now the sad thing is that this shouldn't be news. But the reality is the last time I did a triathlon was Kona back in 2010. Three years ago. Yikes. But I just did the Nautica Malibu Triathlon once again.

The most important part of the race each year is setting up my car. It usually looks something like this:

Every year, I lose a few signs. Some blow away, I give some away, and some just get so nasty looking I have to throw them out. And this year, I was running short. So a few weeks ago I went to Tri Team Captain Robert and said "hey, you know what people really liked? Those signs we printed up many years ago. I bet the team would love to have signs again to show their support." And Robert said, "hey, that's a great idea!" and had Gabe design some new signs to match our new jerseys. I think the signs look GREAT and we have them because of my selfish needs. You're welcome.

Now if you look closely, you'll notice the signs aren't the only thing that's different. I got a new car this year. A smaller car. Which means I can't fit my bike and an inflated killer whale pool toy in the back at the same time. So I had to huff and puff and blow up the whale at 4:30 in the morning in the dark in a parking lot. Pain in the arse.

As for the race itself, it was horrible. Or at least my performance was. It was my slowest finish ever - by 10 minutes. I'm not making excuses, but I do have a few... "explanations." For starters, it was supposed to be a hot day. A very, very hot day. And we were warned over and over again about the heat and how important it was to hydrate and I was a hydrating fool. The problem is, it turned out NOT to be a hot day. In fact, it was kind of chilly. So if you've been hydrating all morning and wind up not sweating as much as you planned - you're gonna wanna pee. Really bad. Normally I should not be stopping for a potty break during a 2-hour race, but it had to happen.

I had to stop a second time on the run for something more important: when I got to my car on the return, I noticed that a few of the signs were starting to fall off the hood. So naturally I HAD to stop to re-tape and make sure they were back in position. I mean, what would happen if somebody were to run by and see my car? They'd think to themselves "Cool! Go Disn-... wait a minute...some of the signs are MISSING! I'm not motivated at all now." I thought it was time well spent.

This next part is going to upset a lot of you, but not more than it upsets me: turns out, my arch-nemesis Jon Cryer also had a terrible race, but he still beat me by 90 seconds. That's far less time than I spent in the bathroom and fixing my car. Go ahead Cryer, gloat for another year... But my car still looked cooler than yours.