Riviera Golf and Country Club
August 16, 2015
After dropping my daughter at ADMU for her guidance counseling session I headed down to my teammate Reggie at BF Homes to get my team's tri kit, cycling kit, singlet, and tech shirt just in time for the Turbo Sprint Triathlon.
Nice quality shirt
As the sun started to set I said good bye and departed from the metro and on towards Silang, Cavite. I checked in at a hotel near the race venue for a stress free travel on race day.
It's been quite a while since I joined a small race, something unusual since I love small races with its simple procedures. What's not to like in it where race packet pick up, bike check in, transition set up were easy and most importantly there's always an available seat at the toilet :).
Race packet claiming, body marking, timing chip distribution
I wasn't too early but I was the first in line (no line yet) to get my race number. Riviera Country Club was a nice venue except for the road humps, four actually. Everything was happening in one place. Registration, body marking, transition, race briefing and later on finishing and awarding were all done inside a multi purpose building. You can see it from the photo below.
Everything under one roof
Talk about spectator friendly race course: 6 loops in a 25 meter pool, 4 loops of a technical course and a 1 loop run on the same bike route. The ladies went first and you wouldn't suspect that most of them were newbies what with those game faces on. I guess that's what racing give every aspiring athlete; a somewhat tenacious look and you know they're not there to just finish it but finish ahead of someone else.
As the first female was out of the water we were called to position ourselves for the start of our wave. This was the only time I couldn't remember how they got us started, there were no horns or guns that I've heard and guys behind me were still saying 'is it a go?, do we have to start swimming?', it was a time to laugh hard but you gotta swim when you gotta swim.
The swim course was the one thing I missed the most with this kind of race. The maneuvering and the jumping in and out of the pool reminded me of Ayala Alabang Days.
Transition Area
The bike course was a 5 kilometer loop made technical by the U turns, curves, inclines and humps. You'll definitely stop to check on your tires when you hit those humps... promise! And because I am the slowest biker in all of triathlon I got to enjoy the route a little bit more I guess.
Riviera's other swimming pool area
Since the run route was the same as the bike course with only one loop in it I already knew what to expect. At that point I was wondering how I missed badly on my goal time. Even the worst biker in me couldn't be that slow but of course we all know I was that slow ;(. Well we still have a run to tend to, do we?, and I started running quite good I might say up until a kilometer out where I couldn't hold my form and resorted to using smaller steps and hip movement (it's been happening quite a lot lately and this was the third race I abandoned my usual running form with those long strides).
Turbo Sprint was short and it was over in what seemed like a blink of an eye. Because of my earlier wave start than most triathletes I was the first one to cross the finish line. Gotta love small races!
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