Photo courtesy of the Ventura County Star
One of the last things I did in California was race in the Armed Forces Triathlon Championship. It was at Pt. Mugu near Oxnard. I wasn't on the official Air Force team, but was invited to race in the open division. I did okay...didn't drown, didn't wreck and finished. There were some fast folks there. I finished about 20 minutes after the overall winner. There is some some media coverage of the event here and here and some video coverage from YouTube. (I have a brief cameo on the bike at about 4:40 - I'm the AF guy coming around to take a pull.) The guy on the red bike with me in the video caught me on the run and pushed me hard to the finish line where we crossed at the exact same time - thanks Mike for not running right past me. He had only been back from Iraq for about two weeks and put up a great result.
The AF had the overall male and female winners and also had the best team result. I did absolutely nothing to contribute to that, but it's kind of like playing baseball on the farm team of an organization that wins the World Series...only I'll never get called up.
All in all it was a fun day, and reminded me I'll never be able to pay the bills by racing. I went home dog tired, packed (with extensive assistance from my wife), and started driving across the country the next day.*
*This is a poor way to recover from a race. Don't ever do it.
