Buster Britton Triathlon 2009
It took me awhile to get written but here goes.
The Buster Britton Triathlon. What a mess.
Firstly it is a Team Magic event- an event put on by a professional race directing company.
I met Scot and Athena at their house in Southside and rode down to Birmingham with them. Scot was racing, Athena will bothering a nagging hip injury.
The race was a sprint distance tri- 400 yd swim / 13 mi bike / 3 mi run
Nothing too taxing but one of those races you had to push the pace the whole way- you can recover when you are dead/finished.
Really even eating wasn’t terribly necessary since finish times were so close to an hour.
Scot and I had been mentioning the weather to each other through the week, spotty storms but a whole lot more “not storm” than storm.
As we rode down the interstate we played the typical game or, “hey it looks like are going to the race too/ wow they have more money to spend on a bike than I would know what to do with.”
We got to the race in plenty of time- paid our three dollars (each!) to enter Oak Mountain state park. The course information suggested that the bike lanes would be cleared and swept before the race but it was not done. I was not planning on riding by racing clinchers on my race wheels while in aerobars putting out serious watts dodging that trash.
We pulled up to the parking area and went and signed in and got our packets, and went to find the bathrooms. The pre-race coffee was taking the short route south. I was surprised to find no port-a-potty clusters but just one set of locker rooms.
We set up our transitions and ran into a few Friends from the Anniston Runners Club.
We went down to the swim beach would looked great and did a warm up swim. The water felt nice, warm and fast.
As we go out of the swim for the meeting i ran to the showerhouse again to do what i needed to do and found a line 30 deep out the door.
I poked around and found a go ed bathroom- multi stalled- being used by a pile of girls. I had to man up and use it… awkward.
I stood with Athena on the pavilion waiting for Scot to finish his warm up and we noticed the scary storm clouds moving in fast- Scot soon found us. We began to see lightning arcing among the clouds. The clouds opened up and began to rain and we ran for the shelter of, well, shelter houses along the beach. I was sure they would post pone the race but as soon as the rain stopped the race announcer lined us up and assured us that it was lot lightning that we were seeing, merely camera flashes.
liar liar pants on fire.
Before the start one of the buoys floated away and they changed the course. I think it shortened up the course, but I won’t complain about that. (I’m too busy complaining about everything else)
The swim was pretty uneventful. I passed a few people, was passed by a few. i was kicked in the face, I kicked some people, I drank quite a bit of lake water. The swim did get a bit hairy as I rounded the last buoy, I’ll be the first one to tell you, in fact I already did a few sentences ago, I drink a lot of water during the open water swim. I don’t like it but it happens. The source of the water is usually the body in which I am swimming. As I rounded the last buoy the sky opened up and i began to take on water… from the sky. That was no fun. I finished the swim though and didn’t stub my toe on the concrete ledge. One leg done.
I ran through transition passing walkers.. what the frak? I made it to transition grabbed my trusty velocipede. I tried the flying mount after discussing technique and borrowing some rubber bands from Scot. As I got towards the mount line I saw bad news standing a few feet past the line. About a half dozen triathletes were trying to mount their bikes on the uphill out of transition. You may be thinking… “Eric, but you love uphills, you do well on the hills, how can you complain about the hills?” To this I must explain the magic of the flying bike mount. You see your shoes are already clipped in to the pedals and attached in an elastic and easily breakable method- read rubber bands so that they don’t drag on anything. You run along the bike and leap on board landing on the pedals rolling and then you begin pedaling breaking the bands, sliding your feet into your shoes and off you go. This works well on a flat bike course start- it works even better on a slight downhill. It gives you more rolling momentum and therefore more time to get your feet on the pedals and all. Well the uphill start has a reverse effect. You stall out very quickly meaning you need to put power to pedals PDQ.
It wasn’t super steep but the other folks struggling and stalled on the rise blocked my path. I was able to execute a decent mount at slow speed and avoid everyone else, I just wasn’t able to get the cleanest line and the fastest start.
Well as I noted before it rained before and during the race. This race was billed as a good one for beginners. There were a ton of people there and I saw a lot of Bs on legs beside ages, which denote a beginner racer. I was rather nervous riding around a bunch of beginner triathletes with aerobars on a hilly course on wet narrow roads. Triathletes are not known amongst cyclists as good bike handlers and the other factors accentuate that fact. To top it all off– the course was not closed to traffic.
The course profile was pretty hilly but a few short climbs. I saw quite a bit of drafting, but I managed to get past those bunches on the hills. I looked at the results and saw that several folks got busted.
I made it back to T2 without ever seeing Scot, and as I racked my bike I realized it had rained even more. IT took me a few extra seconds to toss on my water logged runners and hit the course.
As per usual I felt like a robot Frankenstein zombie trying to run. I was very stuff and very slow. It took me a mile or so into the course to really run and by that time it was almost too late. The course was wet and plenty of fallen leaves coated the ground making secure foot placement a little tricky. Oh I did I mention that the first half was ll up-hill- ugh it was a course custom built for slowness for me.
When I crossed the finish line I went to look for Athena. Since I never saw Scot on the course I assumed the interval in our start times had just put him significantly behind me. When I found Athena she was rather shaken. She hadn’t seen Scot come in for the bike. I was rather worried as well since he should have at least finished the bike by then. I walked up to the side of transition and looked for his bike- I couldn’t find it but finding it would have been like a needle in a haystack. We kept waiting, I checked the medical tents as I was fearing some sort of crash. I eventually made my may to their car and to my suprisee found Scot’s bike loaded on the car and his helmet and glasses sitting on the bumper.
I eventually found Scot and we changed clothes as it started to pour. He told us of having two flats in a row. We had to walk most of the way back to the start before a private car picked him up. There were no SAG vehicles!
It rained unmercifully as we gathered our gear out of transition and packed up the car.
. We went and got a bit of food in the food tent. The food was a disappointment as well. Small proportions and little to drink. We quickly drove on home in even more rain.
I survived and had a decent race, but the organizers were utterly irresponsible and I wonder where all of the money i paid for the race went. This was a poorly put on race. It was billed as an excellent beginner’s race, however the only part that was good for beginners was the distance. Overall I give it a solid thumbs down- but as they say- that which does not kill you only makes you stronger.
16/46 In the 25- 29 Age Group
229 Eric Wright Swim: 6:30 T1: 2:20 Bike: 40:20 T2: 1:17 Run: 26:12 Total: 1:16:36
rubecia
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