<:: Welcome to Slowtwitch.com ::>

The late, great author John Updike wrote of Fenway Park in Boston that it was “a lyric, little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of am old-fashioned peeping-type Easter Egg.” Triathlon cannot claim to own its sporting venues like major sports stadia. But once (sometimes twice) a year, the late-blooming sport of swim, bike and run can occupy and intertwine with places of uncommon beauty. Whether a glass and steel metropolis like Chicago, a dramatic tropical lava field like Kona, or a tiny elegant village like Pacific Grove, lines of colorful spandexed and neoprened triathletes become an iridescent ribbon of aerobic pilgrims who wrap the water, sky, shoreline, domiciles, roads and residents in a living, breathing impromptu homage to one of Christo’s famed environmental art installations.

Terry Davis and his Tri-California organization started holding events in this community, just a few blocks south of the famed Monterey Aquarium and Cannery Row, in 1996. This past weekend was the 15th Triathlon at Pacific Grove. Perhaps you’ve heard it was beautiful. But it’s one very lesser thing to read about it than to experience the heartbreaking beauty of this place live and in person. The turquoise waters decorated with wine dark kelp and framed by the jagged rocky shoreline, ringed in iceplant and cypress trees, dominates the swim of course. But it also provides a welcoming backdrop as the bike heads south toward Spanish Bay, and makes the run that heads north toward Monterey along the shore an equally perfect picture. All the action whizzes past beautiful 19th century Craftsmen wood shingled houses, Spanish-style stucco homes covered in passionate red bougainvillea and cactus, blending seamlessly with tasteful modern homes whose skylights and wide windows embrace the outdoors.

While Ethan Brown and Annie Warner won their first professional victories and $2,500 in the draft-legal elite race at noon on Saturday, even these competitive pros could not help but look around them to soak in the beauty. Pacific Grove is like that. No matter how fast or slow the competitors – whether they be elites racing for money or age groupers racing for a PR in the Olympic distance races on Saturday, or the armies of newcomers racing for pride in Sunday’s sprint race, Pacific Grove is a priceless experience.

All photographs © Timothy Carlson