Race Report: Donner Lake Half Aquabike

I once declared that I would never ever do this race! Lesson: never say never! As a scaredy cat when it comes to downhill, I have always been intimidated by the long, twisty descent on this course. As I've gained more descending skills over many years, I've decided to give this race a chance. Plus the Half Aquabike would be a good lead up to Lake Tahoe 70.3 as well as a good opportunity to see how I perform at high elevation.

Swim (0:46:27)
The 1.2-mile swim is a counter-clockwise, triangular course at Donner Lake. Donner Lake was named after the Donner Party, a group of pioneers who set out for California, but unfortunately became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall. After their food supplies were depleted, some of them resorted to cannibalism to survive. By the time rescuers reached the lake high in the mountains, there were only 48 survivors out of the 87 members of the party.

If the story didn't give you chills, you could safely assume that the lake was cold! Although many would tell you that Donner Lake is warmer than Lake Tahoe because the latter is much bigger and deeper. However, on this race day, the water was cold enough that many racers heeded the advice to wait until the absolute last minute before warming up in the water.

According to the Internet (because anything on the Internet must be true, right?), swimming at high elevation is actually tougher than running at altitude, so I started the swim super easy. After the first buoy, I tried to up my effort level without hyperventilating, but I was only able to increase my effort slightly from super easy to easy. Halfway through, I felt my body temperature dropped significantly and my arms got weaker and weaker. I couldn't even warm up by swimming faster as much as I tried. It was an impossible balance between pushing harder effort and fighting altitude symptoms.

T1 (0:03:55)
My love for excelling at transitions was dampened by the demoralizing swim. When I first started triathlon and didn't know how to swim, I used to claim that the silver lining is being able to easily spot my bike, coincidentally named the "Silver Lining". As my swimming improved over the years, it got harder and harder to find my bike. Coming out of this swim, I was demoralized to see that there was only one bike left on the rack. I sat down to compose myself and somehow still managed to do the transition in less than four minutes.

Bike (4:09:25)

The Aquabike bike course is the same 56-mile course as the Half. Out of transition, we turned left onto Donner Pass Road. This is the only turn on the whole course. We stayed on the Donner Pass Road / Old Highway 40 until the end. The car at the intersection seemed impatient, and for a split second, I thought it was going to disregard the traffic controller. Car vs bicycle: car always win, so I braked, losing at least half a second ;-)

I started the climb up to the top of Donner Pass. About 1,125 feet of elevation in the first 4 miles. This section of the course is closed to traffic, so it was nice and quiet. I played around with my effort level until I found one that seems to be the "right" one given the elevation. It was so much easier to push bigger watts at low cadence. This may be counter-intuitive, but that was how the body reacted to altitude. I caught a few people on the climb. As we passed Sugar Bowl and Donner Ski Ranch, the course flattened out from giant mountain to small rolling hills. We continued past Kingvale and towards Cisco Grove, turned around towards Sugar Bowl and Donner Ski Ranch, and then repeated this out-and-back section again before returning to the finish at Donner Lake.

The last 4 miles was the road that we came up in the first 4 miles. The athletes' guide described this section as "a curvy and speedy descent down Scenic Old Highway 40 where we remind you to use extreme caution." "You will be required to perform a foot down stop at the bottom of the descent... for a minimum of 3 seconds. The reason for the foot down stop is a safety issue. Should the foot down not be enforced, we would be cleaning up cyclists' carnage as they attempted (unsuccessfully) to make the 130 degree turn back into the transition are at 45 mph." Yes, you heard it here: Triathlon is an extreme sport requiring extreme caution!

This descent was the very reason that held me back from entering this race in the past. In hindsight, I loved the course and wished I had done this race earlier and every year! However, I don't think my descending skills would've been sufficient for this course before, and I wouldn't recommend it if you're not comfortable riding down steep, mountainous roads.

T2 (0:03:21)
Rolling into transition, I dropped off my bike back on the rack, thinking that I was done for the day. I wandered over to the water stop and casually asked where to return my timing chip. Unbeknownst to me, I had to run out the transition and into the finish chute for my time to count for the Aquabike.

Total (4:59:47) 

Thank goodness I didn't have to run a half marathon afterwards. I could barely stood upright while waiting for my 1st AG trophy. There was only one person in my AG, but that's minor detail! :-)