Race Report: 2026 Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon

Escape from Alcatraz is one of the oldest triathlons in the country—it’s celebrating its forty-fifth anniversary this year—and involves jumping from the San Francisco Belle near Alcatraz Island into the cold waters of San Francisco Bay for a 2.4 km swim, a 29 km hilly bike ride through the Presidio of San Francisco and Golden Gate Park, and a scenic 12.9 km run through national park land. It’s a bucket-list race—between 10,000 and 12,000 people entered the lottery for this year’s race, with 2,300 accepted. After signing up for the lottery late last year on a whim, I was surprised to find out I was one of them. I wasn’t quite sure what I had gotten myself into, but I was equal parts excited and terrified. I wasn’t worried about the bike or the run; I knew I could handle those distances easily, and with Ironman 70.3 Coeur d’Alene two weeks later, I wasn’t planning on racing hard. Instead I would simply treat this as a “racecation” and a hard training day. But the swim, man. The swim…