Training at Lake Del Valle

It's no secret that my next challenge after riding Gran Fondo in the past years was a sprint triathlon. Thanks to advices from my friend and this blog post (with pictures and routes), I've finally trained in open water.

Swim:
When I entered the Del Valle Park in Livermore, I just followed the sign for swimming. Turned out that's the West beach, which has a roped area watched by lifeguards yet deep enough that I wouldn't touch the ground. I swam for ~50 min there (basically did end-to-end 2 times. Not sure that's enough for the 0.5 mile that I'm preparing for) BTW, I bought a pair of TYR Special Ops Polarized goggles to replace the cheapo Speedo (which I bought for $10 at Sports Authority and used ~ a dozen time. The rim started to fall off after 5 times. Even before that it's leaking like crazy and fogged up in no time. The new goggle had no such problem)

Bike:
I visited this park before and always interested in riding that kinda-steep road in and out of the park (Mines Rd, Del Valle Rd, a Cat-3 and a Cat-4 climb out-and-back) I rode my 9-speed folder with some non-working gears (rather not leave my better bike unattended) from the West beach parking lot. It's tough as expected as I didn't have the largest gear available but I wasn't in a rush. It's fun to watch the folks flying their RC gliders near the summit. After the downhill and exit to the Mines Rd, I watched my GPS and realized I could turn back ~1 mile more so I did that and rode back up the hill again to go back to the parking lot to complete the 12 miles. I guess I'm prepared if the real route has climbs like this.

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Run:
My run started at the "pier" next to the West beach. First, I ran up "north" onto one of the trail along the lake shore. It was rough and steep but I figured I should go harder during training. This round-trip ate up ~1.2 mile and I went "south" from the pier, on paved road this time all the way to the campgrounds at the south tip of the lake and back to make up 3.11 miles. I was 30% slower than running on my usual flat route. Still, it's good training.

This was a really nice environment. I will definitely come back if I race again in the future. Maybe try out the East beach next time.