With the Covid scare, the past two years have been relatively running free. I think I have trained just enough to maintain some sort of semblance of fitness. I did do a couple of races in 2021 with minimal training. One such race was the SAR Bigfoot Trail 10k. I did it, although I think I was about 10 minutes slower than my previous attempt. The other race I did was the Lake Evans Triathlon Relay.
Earlier in the year three of us decided to try the relay to relive some of our past glory from the '80s. The team was to be my wife Robin as the swimmer, my buddy Stan as the cyclist, and I would be the runner. The race was originally scheduled for early to mid April, and it was postponed to October 31st because of Covid issues. The delay gave my wife Robin the bright idea that she would do the relay and the whole international distance triathlon. All of us are over 60, thus the team name of Two Grandpas and a Grammy was born. We all trained a little all summer long, and we had help from some great friends.
Fast forward to Halloween 2021 and race day was here. We all met at Lake Evans near Taft, California in the dark on what would turn out to be a cold and cloudy day. Trevor and Andrea joined us and they signed up for the stand-alone 10k run. Robin, being the badass Canadian she is, decided to not wear a wetsuit for the swim. She was the only participant not in a wetsuit. The race was self-seeded at the start, but it just as easily could have been a mass start as the participant numbers were fairly low. Robin tended to wander a lot in the swim, but she did finish in 35 minutes, handing off to Stan and he was off on the bike. Robin then put on her cycling gear and hit the flat fast bike course. I was running around trying to stay warm and cheering Trevor and Andrea as they finished the 10k. Soon enough, Stan finished the bike in 1:20 and it was my turn to finally get to do something other than cheer. I took off on the run after passing a couple of people managed to finish in 53:28. The course was a quarter-mile long but my time was still slow, not too bad for no training though. While I was out running Robin finished the bike in 1:41 then took off on her run leg. While I was on my way back after the turnaround I got to see Robin heading out on her run. She was running and smiling, enjoying what is truly not her favorite event. She did finish, her run was a 1:35 so she walked a lot, but she did it. We all got finisher medals and awards. The people that put on the race were fantastic, they cooked food, aid stations were great, and outside of the weather, nothing went wrong.
