While some of our staff was busy setting up our INDY40 Fest event this past Saturday at the Presidio, two of our staff members started their morning very differently. Two of our reporters, Christina McDermott and Elaine Sanders, started their day like many others with the Santa Barbara Triathlon and Beach Festival. More than just attending, they were competing in a relay triathlon race with McDermott’s friend Alisha Genetin and won! McDermott swam for three quarters of a mile, and Sanders followed that up with a bike ride that trekked more than 19.1 miles. Genetin closed out the relay with a five-mile run, bringing the team to first place in the sprint relay category.
“I asked Elaine at Ella’s [a former Indy staffer] goodbye lunch kind of on a whim, because I knew I would be swimming a lot of open-water races this summer as part of Reef and Run and wanted to try something team-related. At the time, Alisha had just completed her first marathon and I thought, ‘Yay! I know a runner.’ Elaine was biking with different groups around town and I was like, ‘Excellent, now I know a cyclist!’” McDermott explained about getting the team together. “We placed first in the relay sprint category (out of seven teams total). My swim time was 16:30 for a 0.75 swim off East Beach. Elaine’s bike ride was 1:10:17, and Alisha’s run time was 45:38. That’s a lot of numbers. Alisha said that one of the few running rules was that you could not crawl over the finish line (she did not!). One of my few rules was that I was not allowed to use a boat.”
And these rules were no different for Sanders. “A fun rule for biking: no hitting children. It was my first-ever bike race, and first experience with triathlons. We had a mad dash to sign up that night before the fee increased (I was submitting our paperwork at like 11:50-somthing when the deadline was 12 a.m.). It was such a cool experience being around so many people who are all passionate about being outside and being fit. The bikes were fun to look at, so many people with full carbon-fiber frames and wheels, alien-looking aero helmets, full Lycra suits. I did it in my converse, and on the course, I was passing the kitted-out Lycra dudes, including up the Toro Canyon climb. It was so much fun to watch Alisha pass the finish line, cheering her on all the way home. It is so rewarding to do it as a team; each one of us felt like we had to keep the momentum up and not let the team down,” Sanders said.
A big congratulations to Team Indy on their triathlon relay win!
