Radiant Lake Triathlon

Race Date:6/10/2012

The weather has been uncharacteristic over the week so I didn’t know what to expect for the race.  The day before I swam in Radiant Lake with Mike and Virginia so I was confident I could get in and swim in the 58F water.  Race day was cold so I was glad I brought a cap and a fleece jacket.  I won’t go much into detail about the preparations, but I did start both my bike and run GPSs before I went to the swim start.   I have forgotten to start these in past races.

I went into the water before the race started to wet my face and acclimate my body to the water.  I got out and waited for the start.  The swim had multiple wave starts, the first was M10-39 (white caps), the second wave start (mine, red caps) was M40-59 and so on.  I tried to position myself so I could draft off some of the faster swimmers.   After about 20 yards someone stopped in front of me so I had swerve to get around them.   My only thought was to keep going!  The buoys were on the left and since I breath to that size it was perfect.  We started catching some of the white swim caps about 300 yards in.  We caught and passed more of them shortly after the turnaround.  I was glad to be halfway done. I did a lot of drafting on the swim which I felt help my time.  Once out of the water I felt a little disoriented.  In addition to everything else I usually do, I put on my bike vest before heading out of transition.

Once on the bike I caught a few other racers and saw Jeremy ahead of me.  At about four miles in I passed him and waved.   He stayed on my tail the rest of the bike.  The bike route is like a big square so the wind would get you in different directions.  Because of the wave starts I didn't see many other racers on the course.  I got off my bike and transitioned to the run.  I started running and realized I still had my thermal bike vest on!  Oh no!!  I ran back to my transition area and threw the vest on my other stuff and I was off.  I caught a couple more runners including Jared.  There are two or three turnarounds so you can see the other races.  I saw Jared, Ron and Russ.  After the first half mile I don't remember passing anyone else.  I pushed on and finished.  I saw Derek Garcia at the finish and chatted with him and a few others.  Shortly after I saw Ron again and he said, "You got 1st in your age group!"  Wow, cool!  That was the first time I got first in my AG!  I was pretty excited! I called Rosi and let her know and posted a picture on Facebook announcing my result!
My goal was to beat my time from two years ago (1:19:22) which I did.
Swim: 15:54 Pace 01m 49s /100 yards
T1:  00:01:27
Bike: 37:36  Pace 22.98 Mi/hr
T2:  :52
Run: 21:44 Pace 07m 01s
Total Time:  1:17:33

 The Results 

This is where things get messy.  After the younger men age group awards they started announcing the 40-44 age group awards.."Third place Aaron Gwin" ....in "second place Rene Guerrero".  Huh?!  WTH?  " and in first place Russ Abrams".  I was puzzled and shocked at the same time.  What am I missing here?   I told the MC I thought I had 1st place and he said "You and Russ have to sort this out".  I ask Russ what is going on?  He said today he switched categories, he went from Clydesdale to 40-44 and he beat me by 12 seconds.  The problem I have with that is Russ didn't start in the second wave (which included 40-44) he started in the third wave which was Clydesdale's and others.   I saw him on the run and he was behind me so I didn't think much of it.  I spoke with the Race Director and she felt she made a mistake by letting him switch categories the day of the race.  She would like to make this right so we are emailing each other about it.

I couldn't enjoy my 1 second of triumph because I was shocked at the results and was trying to figure out what happened.

Overall I was happy with my race.  The result was stressful and overshadowed my race.