The Wildflower Course

Some of you have asked for more information about the triathlon I'm doing. Here's what I've gathered from the web since I haven't done it before.

The Wildflower Triathlon is a whole weekend of events May 1-3, 2009. Some people describe it as the Woodstock of triathlons. People camp out for the weekend and watch the triathlons going on. Wildflower takes place in and around Lake San Antonio which is about a three hour drive South of Palo Alto on Hwy 101.

There are three triathlons going on that weekend. They are all in the same general area but vary in length. From shortest to longest, they are: Sprint, Olympic, and Long Course. I'm doing the Olympic distance. You can see the map on the right. The distances are: swim 1.5 km (1 mile), bike 40 km (25 miles), run 10 km (6 miles). The map has elevation profiles, so you can see that the bike is pretty hilly- compare it to the elevation of the Sand Hill Road ride I did last weekend.

The swim is in the lake, but I guess it is on the cold side as we will be wearing full wetsuits.

Last year there were about 1400 participants in the Olympic event. This year, there will be more than 20 waves starting at 5 minute intervals! That's a lot of people swimming on top of each other. Reminds me of this training video:


If you know any other details about the event, please add a comment!