Race Report: Escape from Alcatraz

Triathlon: Escape from Alcatraz
Date: 7.30am, 3rd March
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Winners: Female – Heather Jackson, Male – Javier Gomez

Why:
This triathlon is the reason that I have been doing triathlons for the last 10 years. By accident I saw the Escape on TV one day and thought that it looked like “an excellent thing to do”. Normally when I have that thought It seems to get me into trouble.
I paid so much money for this triathlon that I decided that I was just going to chill out and enjoy it. That’s exactly what I did. Also cause I’m still not anywhere near full fitness and still carrying a bit of fatboylardarse from last year I wasn’t physically able to push it.
This must be one of the best locations for an Olympic triathlon in the world, there’s always something going on or something to see the whole time. Just fantastic. Its kinda more like an assault course than a triathlon though.

Entry:
There are qualifying races but they are all in the States so the lottery is the main way in. I had entered this for the last 5 years and was called up this year along with 7 other Irish folks. The race was three months earlier than usual 3rd March because the Americas Cup Yacht race in San Francisco Bay taking place at the normal time in May.

Logistics:
Borrowing a bike saves money and hassle. I had access to a few different bikes from triathlete friends living in San Francisco so I set one of these up to my specs. This is not a TT bike course. Majority of the pros used a normal drop handlebar road bike setup. Registration is on Saturday. Transition 1 involves a 1K run so there is a mini transition at swim exit where you take off wetsuit and put on runners to get you to your bike. On the Saturday you need to bring these runners with you and put them in your bag. On race morning you need to be at the course for 5am in the morning to set up transition. No bikes there overnight. Then you board a bus to take you to the Boat that leaves at 6.30am for a 7.30am race start. Most people seemed to get up at 4pm. Getting close accommodation makes the morning easy but driving to the venue is no problem with the streets empty of cars and easy parking around.

Morning:
Well organised and with 2000 people boarding busses and getting on a ferry all went smoothly. The vast majority of people were doing the Escape for the first time. I only met two people that had done it before. High demand, hard to gain entry and also expensive. Everyone was sitting on the ground in a ferry over two decks all dolled up in their gimp suits. Large queues for the toilet that moved quickly enough. People shitting themselves.

Swim:
Everybody jumps off the boat like lemmings and you start swimming immediately to get out of the way of the next jumper right behind you.
1 min vid of start here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&;v=PKqRayXD_VI&NR=1
2000 people exit an old paddle boat in 6 minutes. It’s quite a mad start altogether. They keep us geriatrics on the upper level and we get into the sea last. At this stage there is a large line of swimmers stretching out towards San Francisco skyline and fanning out in many directions like an oil slick. They told us at briefing that if you are in the middle of the swim slick with many people on your right and many on your left then you are good to keep doing what your doing and are on target for the swim exit. Safety rescue canoes and boat people will tell you if your too far right or too far left. Bollix to that. A good few hundred people (myself included) missed the exit by a long way. I told them not to follow me.
Conditions varied across the course. It is more akin to swimming across a very large river in flood, flowing fast. There was a serious wind going against the current that was also present for the run and bike outward routs.

Expect to swallow a litre or two of salt water. It is not as salty as Atlantic or Irish sea because there is lots of fresh water flowing into the bay from snow melt from the mountains. Everyone before and afterwards were complaining of the water temperature. I didn’t feel that it was that bad. If you do a few swims in the Irish sea beforehand it is no colder than that. It felt bout 2 or 3 degrees warmer. They say that the water in the bay is 10 degrees warmer 10 weeks later in May, but even then participants are still complaining of the cold.

Most of the swim was through quite turbulent water (not unusual for Irish sea swims) check out rescue canoe short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smX3YKyYvHw

We were told to swim across the current so that the 2.5K swim ends up being in an ‘L’ shape. Javier Gomez, who won the men’s race, did the swim in 32 min. This was about 10 minutes slower than usual due to the current and swim conditions. Loudly and clearly I was told to aim for this building, then a little later aim for that building, then sight off this other building and then look for the trees etc. I did exactly that. I and many others were swept out towards the golden gate bridge and exited the swim about 400M towards the pacific. There was a line of people running up along the beach edge through a rocky section to get back to the correct exit and over the timing mat. Madness altogether. Indeed there were folks surfing on a break at the bottom of the Golden gate bridge that you could see 3Km into the run and cycle. Looked like an excellent surf break as well. Unfortunately, we all found out afterwards, that a guy died of a heart attack in the swim. 46 year old male. Little close to the bone for me. Makes you think, Glad I’ve been checked out by Doc Holloway and all’s working well. Very sad.

T1:
The bikes are about 1Km from the swim exit (if you can find the swim exit). Whether you want to or not there are people ready to whip you on your ass and take your wetsuit off at the mini transition at swim exit. Then you go looking for your bag out of 2000 other white plastic bags to get your runners required to get to your bike about 800M away. The Pros don’t bother with this but there are stones and stuff on the path so pretty much everybody did this cause a cut foot is not nice to cycle with and run on. I had put marker all over my bag so it would stand out. Took about 2 min to find it. I just did a gentle jog to transition and looked around and enjoyed not being in the water. All in all transition took me 12+ min. They have an Escape from Alcatraz App where family and friends can follow athletes on their phones. You get messages re where the athlete is. There are many mats that you go over through out the course and it sends you a message saying Barry has just exited the swim or Barry is at the turnaround of the run etc. Very cool for folks at the race or at home. I didn’t know about it until afterwards but a few different groups of folks had downloaded the App and were using it in different parts of the world and at the event following my progress. After the finish when I first got my phone there was only one missed message on it. I saw that I got a text kinda giving out about my transition time for T1. I duly told them to Phuck off with themselves.

Bike Course:
This is a hilly technical course, shorter than a normal Olympic bike course. I think that it was about a 30K or so cycle. There are 24 corners on the course. It is flat for the first and last 3Km or so but after that it is lots of up hills and down hills, plenty of cornering at full pelt and also at no speed struggling in your granny gear. The most technical and dangerous part I thought was that there were lots of slow cyclists going down hills not so fast, with their hands on the breaks, suddenly going left and right and not necessarily going in a straight line. If you are going full pelt you are going past these folks very fast. On some of the steep sections they were breaking from 150 meters before the turn. Some of the hills are quite steep so the main technical part is if you are mainly passing others and you need to be careful. It’s the competitors and not the course that is the most technical thing. There are other situations where you are taking 90degree corners as speed with others coming against you going uphill struggling with the gradient. All makes for a bit of Formula 1 overtaking manoeuvres and last min adjustment of direction. The climbs can be quite steep but the views are amazing as I took plenty of time to look out the mouth of San Francisco harbour. Amazing altogether. These parts I just relaxed and took in the view. There was one stretch where I freewheeled downhill for 10 min. Spectacular altogether.

Run course:
The run course is also excellent. Out and back. It has about 6 sets of steps of varying madness. Some zigzagging, some larger meter deep steps with about 300 steps in them, some going up hill through a tunnel and at one stage you have to go up a place called a sand ladder which is 400 steps from the beach up to near the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge. Each step is a log of a tree with sand all around and ropes either side to haul your self up. This for me was for walking up. Was chatting with some other folks that were also lovin the whole thing. The sand ladder comes up from a beach where you run 1Km in deep soft sand and then turn back and run the 1K back on the edge of the water where the sand is a bit firmer. Good fun avoiding the water while staying on recently wetted sand. There are many different surfaces in the 12K run. Stony trail, tarmac, concrete, grass, dirt walkways, steps, yellow lines on the side of the road, sand pavements. There are also many parts of the run where there is only maybe 1 meter with and you have people running in the opposite direction. You often have to run sideways to avoid a collision. If you are going up steps slowly inline there are others bouncing and bounding down against you. Overtaking is tricky if not impossible in many places and you have to just stay at the speed of the people in front of you for10 to 20 secs sometimes. Again the views were spectacular an I was chatting to loads of people on the run and all were having a great time.

Afterwards:
You get your usuail medal and a nice shiny metallic thin blanket to wrap around you. There’s loads of grub and liquids for all and everyone is having a blast. Met up with some friends afterwards and had a rake of beers and tequila down the Mexican part of town (many memories of bottels of tequila came swirling back into my head. Memories that I had lost 20 years ago). Good memories.

Probably one of the most enjoyable triathlons I’ve done. Possibly cause it was in another country, probably cause I was just cruising around and not pushing myself, likely cause I was meeting friends, maybe cause I was fully jetlagged for the whole trip and in a spin, could have been the drink and drugs and rockanroll, maybe twas the course and the setting. Who knows.

One thing for sure it is a one off event. I’d recommend it to anyone who has the time, money and inclination.

Talk Talk

BarryMc