(Photo courtesy of Scott)
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” – Clark Gable
As we almost went with the wind, I thought I’d use that quote. I’ll get to the wind later…
One of the race series I found early on was the J-Hawk series (Early Bird / Late Bird). While I had wanted to do the early race for years, the timing hadn’t worked out prior to this year.
After a 2 – 2.5 hour drive, we got packets and set up the transition. One of the first things I noticed after leaving transition is that I should have invested in sandals. Let’s just leave it at the walk out of transition. It was very painful and several people said ‘yeah, I learned that the hard way after my first race too.’
The swim was a pool swim, set up with seeding (based on your swim timing), with people starting in that order as lanes freed up. While there were a couple of points that weren’t “fluid”, I was still out of the pool within a minute of where I intended to be.
After a reasonable T1, we headed out on the bike. And it was at this point where things got a little scary. We had a 30+ mph headwind for 9+ miles of the 20K bike, with gusts at times. As I told Scott a couple of times, I was really uncomfortable with it being that windy. Even with all those challenges, we did make it back safely.
After a normal T2, we headed out on a winding course through the neighborhoods, finishing at the gazebo area.
While it wasn’t an ideal race because of the weather, I would still do it again. Hopefully the timing works out for 2026!
Thanks to everyone who helped make the race possible, to Scott for guiding, and to both Scott and Nanci for all their support.
