1 post tagged “santa cruz”

I don't know what I was so worried about. It was fantastic, incredibly fun. Especially because since I hadn't been training, I didn't feel any pressure to finish at a certain time. This was a gorgeous course: The swim (.5 miles) went out around a pier with an old concrete shipwreck at the end of it. The bike (15 miles) was up through the Aptos hills, through some fruit orchards. The run (4 miles) ran down the length of the beach, up a set of stairs through some campsites, and back along the beach again. Running, I counted five seals and saw a pod of dolphins with at least 11 individuals. The dolphins really got into it. Maybe inspired by all the other swimmers, they put on a hugely acrobatic show, repeatedly jumping high up into the air and turning flips like they were performing at Sea World. Simply amazing.

Meanwhile, Harper spent the previous day riding in the Santa Cruz Mountain Challenge, where she climbed 10,850 feet over the course of 100 miles. I was really proud of her, she worked so hard for this, espcially considering that two years ago at this time, she was suffering from a back injury so debilitating that she could hardly walk, to say nothing of ride, for more than a year. All-around, a pretty damn good weekend.