Orange County Triathlon 2008

September 29, 2008 by  

This past Sunday we went to the Orange County Triathlon. This event happens to be a fairly short drive from our house. We left our house at about 5am, we were met with a very dense fog on the drive over. It was actually frighteningly dense, we couldn’t see 2 feet in front of our car. When we got to the course, which partially took place on beautiful Lake Mission Viejo, the fog was settled on the lake. It was amazing that the athletes were able to find their way through the fog while they did their swim. You could hardly see the buoys. Luckily, the fog started to burn off by the time the first few swimmers entered the transition.

 This was the inaugural event for this particular triathlon. I find it unbelievable that Orange County didn’t have an official triathlon before, the whole area is full of athletes and many other triathlons take place in various areas of the county. Mission Viejo has a rich history in endurance sports, most notably it is home to the finish line for the road race course at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. You can tell that the city is very proud of this piece of it’s history, as the finish line is permanently etched into the street, properly named Olympiad, with a plaque and other accents that let you know the Olympics were there.
 
This was one of those rare events where the conditions were great to photograph in. With the exception of the dense fog in the morning, the sun shined the rest of the day. It ended up being hot, which might not have been so fun for the athletes. After all this was an Olympic distance and there were lots of hills throughout the course. However, I think the sunshine provided us with some excellent shots, even if we had to underexpose just slightly. We hope this event comes back next year as it was definitely a highlight in our event portfolio.
For more race coverage check out Bryan’s race report at Amateur Endurance and check out some shots we took at the event in our gallery.

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