Tri party weekend

Ani and Doray on-stage during the program

Triathletes had a full weekend starting with Friday’s send off for Ani de Leon in mag.net in Bonifacio High Street, and yesterday’s Animo Sprint Tri in Ayala Alabang.

Ani’s send off was a nice gathering of triathletes. Highlights of the event were the raffle prizes (grand prize was a free trip to Hawaii, one-year membership at Fitness First, gift certificates from David’s Salon and Rudy Project) and rock numbers from triathletes, starting off with Jon-jon Rufino, punctuated by Edward Ifurong, and reaching decibel proportions with Ige Lopez. The program was hosted by Rey Agapay and Ria Vallesteros.

The Animo Tri turned out to be another tri-party as triathletes showed up in droves to join the events. It was a full morning starting with the Super Tri Kids, the Mini-Sprint and the Sprint Event.

 

Waiting for our wave to start, Jerome and myself

I was in the very last wave of the Sprint event, which was flagged off close to 8am already. I was feeling hunger pangs already having eaten my pre-race meal several hours ago. There was the usual chaotic start at the pool with a lot of kicking. Several laps into the swim, there was still a lot of bumping. This only meant that I was still in the main pack! However I sort of ran out of gas towards the end as the main pack went ahead. Time out of the water: 26min.

 

A familiar outcome for me: last wave, last swimmer out, all the bikes gone! Anyway I spent about 4 minutes in transition, before pedaling into the bike route. I had a vague idea about the bike route being an figure-of-8-loop circuit. I decided I would just follow the marshalls’ directions. 

It turns out that everyone else had the same idea, except that the marshalls weren’t prepared for this. In the end, each one had their own interpretation of the ocho-ocho loop. I did 3 small loops before doing  3 big loops. Some did 4 small and 2-and-a-half big. Another did 8 small, one big. In the end, everyone had different kilometer readings. Mine was 29.7, I know Marga did 36, still others had 26 or so. No wonder the organizers had to defer the awarding as they figure out this problem.

The run was pretty straight-forward: one 6.5 km loop around the Country Club. I still found it rather difficult as I struggled to a 45 minute finish. Overall time was about 2:20, just a little bit faster than J.Lo

The bike confusion notwithstanding, it was a fun event seeing all the triathletes, both beginners and veterans. I met several doing their first triathlon: Marga of course, Jamie “The Bullrunner”, and Mel Guerrero. Congrats to all of you!

Lots of photos here from Kingdelrosario