IRONBRUIN 2021 BY LOGAN UNGER

This is Logan Unger and I am a first year.  This race was my first triathlon ever.  

On Saturday, the day before the race, we all gathered at the Recreation Center parking lot with our bikes and bags.  We had a pretty uneventful loading of the trailers and vehicles.  The drive was about two hours, which felt pretty reasonable.  I was excited to be in the car with all my best friends and nervous for the race the next day, which made me chatty.  My filter was turned off and I pretty much said whatever thought came to my head.  I made people laugh about 30% of the time with my dad-joke-esque puns and bizarre rants.  Everyone in the van was joking about how much they hated me.  Well, they told me they were joking.  All the vehicles stopped to get food at this little strip mall before we broke off to the various houses in which we were staying.  I was staying at Teresa’s house and it was amazing.  Teresa’s mom provided a few air mattresses and even some food in the morning.  I went to bed at about 9:00 knowing that my alarm was set for 4:15 the next morning.  

I woke up at 4:00 and I was completely juiced with adrenaline.  I lay in the air mattress just staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes and no hope of getting those last 15 minutes of sleep.  We had another blissfully uneventful trip to the race site.  

The site was nothing if not chaotic.  There were over 1300 athletes racing in 15 events.  Nobody really had a full understanding of what was going on.  We managed to get all the vans with people into a parking lot close to the transition, but the trailers with the bikes were forced to go in a parking lot about half a mile away.  My background is cross country and track, where the meets are extremely organized and the runners can focus solely on preparing for their race.  This was the complete opposite.  Announcements for the races blared over the public announcement system.  People asked each other questions every 30 seconds.  We had to find the bike trailers and unload them as quickly as possible.  All the while, the time until the race was set to begin was getting shorter and shorter.  Thankfully, Coach AB collected all of our race packets for us, so that part was centralized.  

After everyone prepared their transitions, we walked toward the race start.  I had never put on a wetsuit and my nerves made it difficult to do it properly.  When I finally got it on, I marveled at the ingenuity of putting the zipper in the front before realizing that I had put my wetsuit on backward.  Thank goodness that Rohan was there to calm me down and help me put it on the correct way.  I walked into the water, fully expecting myself to seize up from the coldness of the harbor water.  I was wrong.  Wetsuits work.  I felt comfortable, bordering on warm, in the water.  The race start was delayed for 20 minutes, which really iced us.  My race anxiety started to settle down at this point.  Matt Scurria was shivering quite a bit.  He looked like he had taken a dip in a frigid ocean wearing a thin layer of polyester and spandex and was being forced to stand in cold, windy weather, which made sense since that was exactly what happened to him.  I was iced in the sense that I started doubting my abilities in this endless 20 minutes.  I got some energy and confidence back with the team chant.  UCSB was by far the biggest college team at the race, so we looked imposing and inspiring during this chant.  

In a continuation of the organization of the race, I didn’t hear the race director start our race.  Luckily, it wasn’t that important for me to be near the front since I was expecting to be in the back of the pack in the water and the race would start when my chip crossed the starting line.  The swim felt like it was taking forever, even though it was only 400 meters.  My body felt exhausted and fully energized at the same time.  I didn’t feel like I could move any faster than I was going but I also didn’t feel like I was putting in much work.  The day before the race, Dixon and I had talked about how fast each of us wanted to go in the water.  I told him that I would be happy with 7:30 for 400 meters (laugh all you want, swimmers) since that is about 1:42 per 100 yards.  I was pleasantly shocked when I looked at my watch after the swim and I had hit 6:59.  My excitement was dampened when I realized that I didn’t know how to remove my wetsuit.  I knew that there should be a long zipper that I could pull to get it off, but I could only feel a really short zipper.  I was super embarrassed and I imagined myself racing the rest of the race in a wetsuit, completely boiling myself alive and being ridiculed by everyone in attendance.  This crisis was averted by asking Philippe to pull down on the zipper, who did so without hesitation.  I had a horrible transition because of this folly, my inability to find my bike, my inefficient manner of putting on my helmet and bike shoes, and the fact that my bike computer had turned itself off. 

Because of all this, I was unbelievably stoked to get on the bike and just pedal away from my problems.  The bike was so liberating.  I averaged 25 miles per hour for the first three miles and I felt incredible.  I flew by a few people and struggled past others.  When I passed Dori, I waved good-bye to her, which is a pretty arrogant move in hindsight.  About 3 miles into the bike, there was a punchy hill.  I thought about Primoz Roglic and his incredible ability to fly up hills like these but decided to save myself for the rest of the bike.  I was still winded and I knew that I wouldn’t gain much time by putting in a strong effort on that climb.  As I came down the hill, I saw the top athletes zooming past me on the other side of the road in the opposite direction.  In about fourth place was someone in a UCSB kit who was absolutely cooking it.  I thought it was a former UCSB triathlete wearing out kit who had gone pro because this dude had a beautiful black and white aero helmet, a sexy white TT bike, and a perfect aero tuck.  It took me until the beginning of the run to realize that this guy was Eddie.  He was definitely in his element.  A tiny bit farther down the hill, I saw a bullet go by on the race course.  Okay, I understand that this is a cliché, but there is no other way to describe Dixon Atkins when he is on his TT bike with a mission.  He was making the top triathletes in the race look like they were on cruisers going to class.  After that, I saw Henry, who was in a nice paceline, and- wait.  Paceline?  This is an INDIVIDUAL time trial!  I teased him about this after the race, and he claimed that it was fair for him to draft since he was on an aluminum bike.  Readers, make your own opinions about this controversial issue.  Anyway, this is where I entered the pain cave.  Every pedal stroke felt harder than the last one and my cadence was slowly dropping.  I pushed my body past what I thought was possible.  For the rest of the 8 mile bike, I was deep in the pain cave.  I naïvely thought that I would feel better when I started running, but this was definitely just wishful thinking.

When I got into T2, I was pretty wiped.  I followed Rohan, thinking he would be at the UCSB bike rack, but he was racing for Cal, so I went to the wrong rack.  Matt Scurria yelled to me that our rack was way back in the other direction, so I turned around to try and find it and went too far that way.  Needless to say, I was pretty flustered when I finally found my running shoes.  I took off for the run and that intense pain of being fully lactic consumed me.  It was brick time.  I moved my legs as fast as I felt possible, but it felt like I was a jockey and my body was a horse that wouldn’t listen to me.  The entire run was in the red and felt like it was in slow motion.  About one mile into the run, there was a steep hill.  I told myself to relax on the uphill, a tip from cross country in high school.  When I got to the top, I felt like I had recovered a bit.  I made the U-turn and sent it.  I passed about five people on this roughly 300 meter descent, bombing down the hill at 4:30 per mile pace.  One of those people was Emory, who looked very much like a shark out of water.  See, I could say that Emory was a fish out of water, but that wouldn’t do him justice.  When he’s in the water, he’s a shark: gigantic and powerful.  He placed third out of everyone in the swim, which is ridiculous.  However, on this downhill, he looked like he was trying not to fall, which is fair.  The rest of the run was a slog.  I was already so far back that there wasn’t anyone faster than me behind me, so I was able to spot people in the distance and track them down without being mentally devastated by someone blowing by me.  I basically held my position in the run, running a bit slower than I would have liked but still finishing strong.  I told Harry before the race that I wanted to finish on empty, and I can confidently say that I did that.  I almost collapsed at the line; it felt exactly like crossing the finish line at the end of a cross country race in high school.  

Everyone compared times after the race, which was fun.  People seemed, for the most part, happy with their races and excited to be competing either for the first time or again.  I did a little cool down jog with Matt Scurria and we then packed all of our stuff up and hit the road.  I packed my own lunch and our van stopped for burgers.  We talked a little bit and slept most of the way back.  I could definitely feel the 4 am wakeup time.  

Overall, it was a beautiful experience and I can’t wait to do it again!