UCI Zot Trot by Gigi Mitchell
UCSB Triprez
The morning of Zot Trot, UCI’s triathlon, Liz and I left Ellie’s house and were 10 minutes down the road before we realized we left our timing chips on her counter. We ended up making it to transition with 20 minutes to spare, but were able to set up our stuff quickly, and luckily didn’t forget anything. For me, the less time I have to sit around before a race, the better. At UCLA’s Ironbruin I had an hour of nothing to do and I psyched myself out so bad. At this race, we had about 15 minutes before the gun went off, and the time was spent running around trying to make sure everything was in place, so I started the race fully head empty. No thoughts. Perfect.
Zot Trot is a reverse triathlon, beginning with a 6k run, then the standard 20k bike, and finishing with a 250m pool swim. To start the run, we lined up in two rows, cross-country style, the official yelled go, and we were on our way. I was running right behind the front girl for the first half mile until I looked at my watch and saw that my pace was 6:45, 15 seconds behind where I wanted to be running. So, I passed the leader and began to push the pace. I’ve never led a race before and was used to just mindlessly following the leader (sheeple behavior). The course was well-marked, but it was unusual for me to see no one ahead, and have to fight to keep people off instead of always trying to catch the athletes ahead of me. After another half-mile, Ava and I had dropped the rest of the girls and were just running together. I didn’t look at my watch for the rest of the run but could tell that I was pushing it by the lack of girls behind me, though I still felt good the whole time.
Ava was on my tail when I entered transition. I did my first ever flying mount in a race, so was out of transition in record time. I knew the bike was where I had to fight to hold onto my lead, as Ava is a slightly faster biker than me and a substantially faster swimmer. At the beginning of the bike, I was less than a quarter mile ahead of her. The course was four laps, and every time I went around one of the U-turns I saw her gain 10 meters on me. It didn’t help that on one of the first turns I had to slow almost to a stop because Paxton was clamping on his brakes. As I came up behind him, I shouted at him that there was no need to brake, which I think he really appreciated.
I was fighting as hard as I could to go fast on the bike, both in an effort to stay ahead of Ava and because I knew I didn’t have to save anything for the swim, as it was only 250 meters. I was holding steady until the last U-turn when I saw that Ava had gained significantly and was right on my tail. I booked it down the last hill and sprinted through transition. I had put my goggles in my suit pocket before the race, but as I saw Ava charging me down from behind I didn’t even think about them and just jumped in the pool.
This swim made me realize why the swim is usually at the beginning of the race. I could not breathe. Every lap I would see Ava approach behind me, but I absolutely could not go faster. Every time I leaned to the side to breathe it was just a weak gasp. My legs didn’t feel strong enough to push off the wall. The last lap finally came, and I heard my teammates cheering on the poolside. In a daze, I hoisted myself out of the water and ran as fast as my oxygen-deprived body could to the finish line.
The second I crossed the line I collapsed onto the grass, 9 seconds later Ava finished and collapsed next to me. We laid there on the ground breathless but smiling so wide, as we had just finished first and second, our best ever results in a triathlon. The photos we took afterward look like I’m crying from smiling so much. At the end of last year, I told Ava that this year would be our podium year. When we stood on that podium together, with our teammate Liz who came in third, we were absolutely beaming. We had a full UCSB girls sweep, and our president Paxton came in second in his race, with a lot of great finishes from all our athletes.
After the race, when Ava and I were finally able to stand up, we were handed bottles of what we thought were regular Gatorade. Only after Ava drank the whole bottle, however, did we discover that each bottle had 200mg of caffeine. Her face went white when she learned this, as she never drinks caffeine. However, many of our teammates saw an opportunity to save money on energy drinks, and started filling their bags will as many as they could. We had already accumulated over 100 bottles by the time we discovered that the UCI team had a shed filled with cases of the drink, and they would let us take 12-packs. The haul was incredible, and over a month after the race, I still have a shelf full of the stuff.
We drove back with heavier vans, one piloted by Paxton and the other by our team soccer dad, Casey. There was lots of arguing about when we could stop for bathroom breaks and lots of stoic pee holding by me. In the end, we reached Santa Barbara exhausted but happy and had the easiest trailer unloading ever. Zot Trot was obviously an excellent race for me, but I think it also was a wonderful, unique triathlon experience for all my teammates who came out and raced.