I know Sinclair already posted a race report for this race, but I'll go ahead and post one also.
Although there weren't any pure 'UCD Tri' relay teams at the race yesterday, we did have representatives on three different relay teams, each racing in a different division:
Team: Got Linux? (men's division)The race was held at Folsom Lake, which has a very, very low water level right now. The low water level was unfortunate since it left about a half mile of sharp, rocky beach between the edge of the water and the transition area. To save the swimmers a painful half-mile run up the beach, the race directors allowed the relay team's runner to be waiting at the edge of the water; when the swimmer emerged, the runner could tag him and then run up to the transition area and tag the cyclist.
About 15-20 minutes before the race, all the swimmers started heading down to the water. As I started putting on my cap and goggles, I found Zeb and Niki also preparing for the race. We splashed around a bit in the water (Zeb actually did some warmup, Niki and I were lazy and just floated around) and finally it was time for the race to start. The race directors pulled everyone out of the water and instructed us to ignore buoy #2 and swim directly from buoy #1 to buoy #3 since #2 had floated way off course. Then all 85 swimmers crowded beneath the Red Bull starting arch for the countdown and I lost track of Zeb and Niki as I tried to maneuver into a good spot for the start of the swim. Finally the horn sounded and we all raced, shoving and elbowing, down into the water and were off.
(Warning: boring swimming paragraph ahead; if you're not interested in swimming, skip this paragraph)
Everything started off well. I managed to get through the line of people that had entered the water in front of me without getting pummeled too badly and I had a nice straight shot to the first buoy. There was a swimmer to my right for a while, but after a couple hundred yards he started slipping back and I had smooth, open water. I reached the first buoy and went up to sight for buoy #3 (since #2 had floated off course) ... and saw nothing. The buoy was too far away or my goggles were too foggy or something, but I couldn't see it at all. I did see a kayak paddling ahead of me in the general direction I expected the buoy to be, so I just started following him. That worked for a while...until I lost track of the kayak. I'm not sure if he circled back to the back of the pack or if I made an abrupt shift off course or what, but when I looked up, the kayak was gone and I still couldn't find the buoy. There wasn't much else I could do except keep swimming in what I thought was the right direction and keep searching every couple strokes. A few minutes later I heard a "Hey! This way" and saw that a kayak had chased me down and was pointing way off to my right. I realized that I had swum way too far to the left and was *way* off course. I made a 90 degree right turn and headed back the way I had been directed. I finally saw buoy #3 straight ahead of me, but I also saw the second place swimmer approaching it perpendicular to me and saw him turn and go around it before I got there. &$*#@! Frustrated, I kicked up the pace a bit and started chasing him. I had caught up and was right behind him when we got to buoy #4 and was surprised when he veered off sharply to the right as we rounded the buoy. I could see buoy #5 ahead of me, but I realized that he had turned too sharply and was looking back at buoy #1. Thinking this was my chance to make up for lost time earlier, I picked up the pace a bit more and headed toward buoy #5. Unfortunately, every time I sighted for the buoy I found that I was drifting off to the left and had to keep re-correcting. My opponent was back on track and making a beeline for the buoy. We passed buoy #5 at about the same time, but I was about 25 yards to the left of him and the buoy, so he regained his lead as I angled back in for buoy #6 and the finish. I picked the pace up one last time as I passed the final buoy and headed for the finish arch, but the extra distance was starting to wear on me by this time so I wasn't really making up much ground anymore. He reached the finish first and got out of the water about 10-15 seconds ahead of me.
As I got out of the water, I saw Sinclair waiting for me to tag him under the finish arch. Sinclair took off like a rocket when I reached him; even though the lead team's runner was sprinting up the hill with a sizable lead, he looked like he was walking compared to Sinclair. Sinclair was eating up ground with every step and all the other runners had turned around to watch him go. The whole crowd was in awe: "look at that guy go; he's flying!" The third place swimmer was out about 45 seconds behind me, and then Zeb as the fourth or fifth swimmer, just a little bit later.
As Zeb emerged from the water, everyone backed up, expecting him to tag a runner at the end of the swim. But since I was the runner for Zeb's team and I'd just finished the swim too, there wasn't much of an advantage to having me run up the beach instead of him. When the crowd realized that Zeb was running up the beach himself, they all started cheering and clapping for him. That run was truly impressive; a .75 mile swim is hard enough, but Zeb followed it up immediately with a .5 mile uphill, barefoot run over a sharp, rocky beach while fresh, rested runners with shoes raced by him. Very impressive.
I waited at the swim finish and just a couple minutes later saw Niki come flying into the finish, effortlessly passing a couple of her competitors in the final stretch. She'd also had trouble staying on course in the swim and had added significant distance to her course, yet she still came out of the water in the top quarter of the competitors and 3rd in the "company" division.
We walked back up to the transition area (I still can't believe Zeb ran back the whole way; I had enough trouble walking up barefoot). We got there and found Sinclair who told me that he'd caught the other team on the run up to transition. So Bryan Pro, cycling for team "Got Linux?," had the lead going into the bike leg. A few minutes later, we heard an update from the announcer: the top cyclists had completed the first lap of the two-loop course and team "Got Linux?" had a minute and a half lead on the field! Sinclair started stretching and jogging around to warm up for his anchor leg on "Got Linux?" and I changed into my running gear in order to run the anchor for team "Moment's Notice."
As we waited in transition, the announcer kept talking about the great lead that team "Got Linux?" had. Finally we saw Bryan come blazing back into transition area. We later found out that he had the 2nd fastest bike split of the day; the only person that beat him was a Cat-1 professional cyclist that only managed to make up 43 seconds on Bryan over the 16 mile course. He racked his bike and then ran over and tagged Sinclair. As Sinclair went thundering out onto the run course, all the waiting runners groaned as they were reminded, once again, just how fast Sinclair is. They knew there was no way they were going to run him down. The next cyclist arrived at transition a full two and a half minutes later; a virtually insurmountable deficit.
Sinclair, without a doubt, ran the fastest 7 miles of the day. Unfortunately for us, the course was only supposed to be 5 miles... For some unknown reason, TBF had neglected to put any volunteers out on the course to make sure people stayed on track. The only volunteers were at the two water stops, and the rest of the course was just marked by arrows on the ground. Unfortunately, several of the arrows were not clear about where exactly the turns were supposed to be made. At one of these ambiguous turns, Sinclair was unsure whether the arrow was directing him down a side trail, or down the street just a few feet farther up. Sinclair tried the street and, when he saw more arrows on the ground, assumed he had made the right decision. Unfortunately, it turned out that he entered the bike course and was following the bike arrows instead of the run arrows. Eventually he realized his mistake and got back on the proper running course, but by that time he had added a couple miles to his run and several teams had got ahead of him. With true Ironman determination, Sinclair finished the course at a blistering pace and managed to regain several lost positions. Even after adding a couple miles to his course, his extended run split was still faster than about half the runners in the race! Team "Got Linux?" finished 16th overall, 3rd in the men's division, a respectable, but heartbreaking finish. Since I also ran the course (on team "Moment's Notice"), I can say with certainty that mistake was not Sinclair's fault; if I had not been chasing teams ahead of me, I think there are a couple places on the course that I might have gone astray also. At one point, a runner right ahead of me completely missed one of the arrows and would have gone off course if I hadn't yelled to him. So overall the course was very poorly marked/monitored.
My own run was much less eventful. I had the advantage of starting the run in 42nd place, so there were plenty of teams already on the course ahead of me which kept me from getting lost. The course itself was quite difficult; there were several pockets of dry, soft sand that we had to run across and about halfway into the run the course started to get fairly hilly. And of course, the famous "Korak Attack" hill was part of the course; although not as long as I had feared, it was as challenging as people had told me it would be. I started to run up it and fell flat on my face. Got up and tried again and fell after just two steps; it was just plain too steep. Finally I gave in and used my hands to half climb/half crawl up the hill. After I got to the top, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. As I neared the finish I went into a full-out sprint and managed to pick off one more team before the finish. According to my teammates, the announcer realized that I had already been the swimmer on a different relay team and said something about how I must be crazy, but I didn't even hear him. Team "Moment's Notice" finished in 32nd place overall, 12th in the coed division.
Niki's team (Fleet Feet Davis) finished 38th overall and 5th among the company teams, a great finish although it actually turns out that they would have placed higher (3rd) if they'd classified themselves as "Female" instead of "Company."
Team "Got Linux?" will be back next year; we have unfinished business. Now that we've experienced the course once, neither Sinclair or I will add extra distance to our run and swim legs next year.
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