SEVENTEENTH ANNUALTIBURON TRIATHLON
Latest news (August 7, 2008).
Results for 2008 and prior years are available at www.buzzwordproductions.com.
Registration for 2009 Tiburon Triathlon: This year, we do not plan to do any registration ourselves and will only accept entries through www.active.com. Sign ups will begin in Dec.
Photographs: Evan Pilchik Photography took photos the Triathlon and will email you about purchasing your pictures.
http://www.backprint.com/view_event.asp?PID=bp%18%7EA&EVENTID=25611
BASIC STUFF:
The seventeenth annual Tiburon Triathlon will take place on 27 July 2008—as always, the last Sunday in July. (We are scheduled against one of the Vineman days.) Check-in begins at 6:30 a.m. The course is a half mile swim (not measured, so it varies from year to year), a nine mile bike, and a two mile run. After the swim, you need to run about two blocks from the swim area to the bike transition. We close the course at 9:30 a.m., or so.
We want you to have a safe and fun day. Because participants can shortcut the swim or receive assistance and still finish, it is not a race. It is just for fun.
Participants should arrive at 6:30 a.m. at Belvedere Community Park. Be sure to bring your helmet. When you arrive, rack your bike or lay it on the lawn to the north or far right end of the park. At check-in, we will give you a printed number and a color-coded swim cap. Have your limbs numbered. Present your number to pick up a goodie bag and T-shirt.
REGISTRATION AND FEES:
Registration will only be accepted through www.Active.com
Fees are $60per individual and $75 per relay until June 1. We do not give refunds. If you cancel before the event in time for us to reassign your number, you can ask us to transfer your entry; otherwise you can treat your payment to us (but not any Active.com service fee) as a charitable contribution to our organization that is eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions to the extent allowed by law. You will be asked to sign a release at check-in.
DRIVING AND PARKING DIRECTIONS:
From San Francisco or the Peninsula, take Hwy. 101 north from the Golden Gate Bridge about five miles to Tiburon Blvd. From the East Bay, take the first exit after the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge onto to Sir Francis Drake Blvd. which will lead you around scenic San Quentin Prison to Hwy. 101 south toward Mill Valley and Tiburon Blvd. Take Tiburon Blvd. east about three miles to downtown Tiburon. We have arranged for the parking lots in Tiburon to open early. There is some street parking.
Please do not park in Belvedere. We impose enough on them without clogging up their streets with a bunch of cars.
With your bike and other gear, walk about three blocks west on Beach Road to Belvedere Community Park. You can’t miss it.
COURSE DETAILS:
The swim is a loop course beginning and ending at the San Francisco Yacht Club in Belvedere. The Yacht Club is private property and we only have permission to enter on the morning of the Triathlon. We do not set up the swim course until that morning. The best place to view the course in advance is from the seawall on Beach Road. From there you can see Belvedere Cove in which much of the swim occurs.
We divide participants into five waves, color coded by swim cap. All the hot dogs go in the first wave, which will have at least 100 swimmers. Like bigger triathlons, you can expect to be treated roughly in the first wave with feet and elbows furiously flying. It’s not pretty. Some people live for that stuff. Participants seed themselves into the first wave by telling us why they should be there. Triathlon or open water swimming experience is preferred. “Because I am slow” is not a good reason to be in the first wave.
All 30 or so relays go in the second wave, along with anyone who requested but missed the first wave. You can request any wave or request to be in the same wave with someone else or a group of friends. Make it easy for us by mailing those applications in together. Beyond that, we assign people somewhat randomly to the waves. We try to concentrate less experienced swimmers and youths in the last wave, which has the fewest people. Our age cutoff is ten years old, but we may be able to accommodate younger swimmers and special needs people, provided you make satisfactory advance arrangements with us for someone to monitor the swimmer while not compromising the safety and comfort of others. Check with us first.
After you emerge from the water, you will run through a grassy chute where we will take your small number tag. Do not bury it under your wetsuit. From the Yacht Club, you run on pavement about two blocks to the Park. Bear left into the Park for the shortest run and the quickest return to grass. Jump on your bike and head out the other (i.e., north) end of the bike transition area. Please wear your helmet.
When riding stay right except when passing. Give a cheery “On your left” when passing. Obey the police and the California Vehicle Code. All intersections should be controlled by the police to enable you to proceed without stopping. The bike path will likely have some pedestrians to dodge. You will share the roads with traffic, although it should be light. Do not cross the centerline on Paradise Drive.
Leaving the bike transition area, you will ride briefly on Community and Leeward Roads before turning right on San Rafael Avenue to leave Belvedere. Just before Tiburon Blvd., you will make a sharp left onto the bike path. After the water treatment plant, the bike path takes a sharp, gravelly right turn where we regularly have road rash to treat. It is not a race, so do not take unnecessary risks just to meet our paramedics. The bike path stops at Tiburon Blvd. where you will cross onto Trestle Glen. The only climb on the course is a half-mile rise to Hacienda. From there you will turn right on Paradise Drive which will take you back to Tiburon Blvd., Beach Road, and Belvedere Community Park.
You can, and should, preview the bike course, particularly if you plan to push your pace. In addition to the sharp turns already noted, there are several tight corners on Paradise Drive that can be tricky. We do not monitor drafting, but strongly recommend against it here. On a road full of crazed strangers, the last thing you want is to be committed to somebody’s wheel. You will be required to fully dismount your bike before entering the transition area.
The run course begins in the same bike transition area. Follow the bike course out onto San Rafael Avenue, making sure to stay to right to avoid cars and any bikes that may still be on the course. Before Tiburon Blvd., turn right on Lagoon Road, which then becomes Cove Road. At Beach Road, turn right. Runners should duck through Teal Lane to avoid the bikes on the tight corner coming into the finish area.
After you finish, have some refreshments, pick up your goodie bag and T-shirt, and rest on your laurels. Many participants end up celebrating with brunch at one of the fine restaurants in downtown Tiburon.
We will post preliminary results at Sam’s Anchor Café on Main Street and Mike and Dave’s Restaurant on Tiburon Blvd. (across from the fire station) by 11:00 a.m. on the morning of the Triathlon. We will post final results at www.buzzwordproductons.com within a few days. We will not mail them unless we have a stamped self-addressed envelope. Calling or e-mailing us will not speed the posting of results, and might well distract us.
RELAYS:
Relays can have two or three people. The hand off between team members takes place in the bike transition area on the pavement. A person cannot do a relay and then continue as an individual participant. It messes up our timing. The relay fee includes two or three people. When you present the large number after the finish, we will give you three T-shirts and one goodie bag, unless we have extra goodie bags. We have had relay swimmers who could not run back to the Park. In that case, you can substitute a pinch runner. We put all relays in the second wave so that they can keep a wary eye on each other.
Although it is not a race, we have a friendly challenge between fire and police department relays. Tiburon Fire is ready to take on all challengers.
PREPARATION AND MATTERS OF FASHION:
It helps to train a little, but it is certainly not essential. It is a little beyond our scope to discuss training techniques, but a basic program should include all three disciplines under somewhat similar conditions. Pool swimmers should find some open water to wean themselves from the black line and learn to navigate. The two keys to open water swimming are to open up your stroke to recover your arms over, not through, waves and to look up from time to time to navigate. Preferences vary, but folks go anywhere from two to twelve strokes between looks, with eight being about right. Waves and tides are usually not factors in the Tiburon Triathlon, which takes place in sheltered waters.
Any type of bike can be used in our Triathlon. If you ride a mountain bike, it would make sense to spend some time on pavement, especially our course, to work on cornering technique and to become more comfortable with cars. We do not inspect bikes, so you must ensure yours is safe working condition. Our favorite local bike shops are Pacific Bicycle throughout Novato and San Francisco, Bicycle Odyssey in Sausalito, Sunshine in Fairfax, and City Cycle in San Francisco.
The run is flat pavement so the only issue would be for a trail runner who is not attuned to asphalt. We did have one guy stumble and fall on the run.
The one place where you can make a difference, without much effort or training, is the transition. A good transition is carefully choreographed in advance to change clothes and equipment as efficiently as possible. Many people forego gloves for the bike. Do not forego your helmet.
If you are new to multi-sports, you will probably take a while to find the right combination of nutrition and energy without feeling logy. Basically, for breakfast you can safely count on light carbohydrates, such as bagel, toast, or cereal. An energy bar might be perfect 15 to 30 minutes before starting. Coffee should be used only in moderation. In the hour to two that the Tiburon Triathlon takes, you should not require additional fueling if you have had a decent breakfast. (Gels work well for inflight refueling.)
Clothes are a tough call. As you may have seen from the Olympics, the individualists of triathlon have become strikingly conformist on matters of personal fashion. Women wear two piece workout swimsuits. (We are partial to Zoot Hawaii of Novato.) Men wear triathlon-cut, Speedo-type suits, adding a running singlet after the swim.
In our short event, the simplest combination is a Speedo-type suit for the swim, with running shorts and a singlet or T-shirt added for the bike and run. If you do not have cleated cycling shoes, you may want to wear your running shoes down to the swim area to wear running back to the bike transition area. You can leave shoes on the lawn where the swim ends.
Do you need a wetsuit? Not necessarily. We have not surveyed with any precision, but about three quarters of our participants wear wetsuits. Given the very short swim, only a person with an extreme aversion to cold water or a very thin person needs to be concerned about a wetsuit. Beyond the question of coldness, wetsuits provide added buoyancy to make swimmers swim faster. However, any such advantage may be negated by the extra time required to extricate yourself from the wetsuit. We do not check either the water temperature or the tide. We have been told that the water has been as cool as 58 degrees. There is negligible tidal flow in Belvedere Cove.
A word of caution about cold water swimming: If you intend to swim without a wetsuit, you will have an unpleasant shock if you have not prepared suitably. That would be equally true for other non-wetsuit events such as the Olympic Club’s Trans-Tahoe Relay race or the open division in the RCPTiburonMile race from Angel Island to Tiburon. To swim comfortably in cold water, you need to train in cold water. Good local open water practice venues are Paradise Park in Tiburon, China Camp in San Rafael, Stinson Beach, Crown Beach in Alameda, and Aquatic Park in San Francisco.
ABOUT US AND THE TIBURON TRIATHLON:
We are the Tiburon Volunteer Fire Department, operating in conjunction with the Tiburon Fire Protection District to provide emergency medical and fire services to Tiburon, Belvedere, and the other parts of the Tiburon Peninsula. Our volunteers, some of whom are firefighters elsewhere, and local off-duty paid firefighters staff reserve engines to supplement the response capability of the District. The District and the volunteer association work together to run various community programs, such as fire safety week in local schools and CPR classes for the public and community groups. Tiburon firefighters organize two community events that serve as our main fundraising activities—the Triathlon and the Fireman’s Ball. Check our general website for more information about the latter. http://www.tiburonfire.org. All proceeds from the Triathlon and other fundraising activities benefit the Tiburon Volunteer Fire Department, a California non-profit, tax-exempt organization.
The Triathlon began as one of a weekend full of events to celebrate our 50th Anniversary in 1991. Over the past fourteen years, it has served our purposes to bring out the sporting best within the community, to introduce newcomers to triathlon in a safe, low key atmosphere, and to focus on certain target audiences—young people, firefighters, and locals. To ensure it stays low pressure and fun, it is not a race, no prizes or awards are given, and we keep it small. It is just for fun.
Key members of the Tiburon Triathlon staff are Gary Morgan and Mark Angelich (logistics and supply), Steve Ardigo (registration), Jeff Bellinger (volunteer coordinator), Ed Lynch (water operations), Rick Racich (finance), and Peter Winkler (incident commander).
Finally, and most importantly, please remember and patronize our sponsors, whose continued generosity ensures the success of the Triathlon.
Thank you for your continued support. Let us know if you have any useful suggestions. You can contact us at tibtri@aol.com.
Piece o’ Cake. . . Tiburon Volunteer Fire Department.
Eighteenth Annual Tiburon Triathlon
Sunday, July 27, 2008, 7:30 a.m.
The Swim: 1/2 Mile in Belvedere Cove (San Francisco Bay)
The Bike: 9 Miles around the Tiburon Peninsula (rolling hills)
The Run: 2 Miles around the Belvedere Lagoon (flat road)
Make check payable to: Tiburon Volunteer Fire Department
Mail application (with check) to:
Tiburon Triathlon
1679 Tiburon Blvd.
Tiburon, CA 94920
Fees: $60 individual / $75 relay
Please note: No refunds. Your canceled check is your acceptance. Do not call or e-mail us about acceptance. Send SASE if you want more confirmation. Please read our website. http://www.tiburonfire.org You must also sign a release at check-in.