Clif Bar Team Challenge Triathlon
Episode 2: The Return of Team "Got Linux?"
This morning was TBF Racing's annual "Clif Bar Team Challenge Triathlon." The premise of the race is simple -- gather a swim specialist, a bike specialist, and a run specialist and go head to head with all the other teams in this all-relay triathlon. Although advertised as a "fun" race, this often winds up being one of the most competitive races of the year since everyone is focusing on their triathlon specialty.
Last year Sinclair and I, along with CAT-3 cyclist Bryan Pro, formed a relay team ("Got Linux?") for this event. Although we went in with a great shot at winning it all, both Sinclair and I had problems following the proper race course and added significant distance and time to our relay legs, resulting in a heartbreaking finish. Sinclair and I both wrote race recaps from that race, which are available here and here.
Disappointed with our inability to swim and run in a straight line, Bryan decided to race for a different relay team this year, one with teammates who might actually pay attention to where they were going... Sinclair and I knew we had to go back and clear our names after last year's mishaps so we recruited blazing fast Cat-1 cyclist Carlos Casillas to be our new cyclist. Team "Got Linux?" was back, and we were on a mission.
[ It turns out that Bryan's runner bailed out at the last minute, so he wound up without a team in the end. I offered to run for his team after swimming for mine with the understanding that I'd stop and let Sinclair go by if his team was actually beating "Got Linux?" but he didn't go for it. :-) ]
Before the race start this morning it seemed like nothing was going my way. As I packed my bag in the morning, the goggle strap on my primary pair of goggles snapped. Annoying, but not a huge deal; I threw my secondary pair and an additional brand new pair in my bag and headed off to the race. As I was putting on my wetsuit before the swim start, my Body Glide completely fell apart as I was applying it. Okay, swimming 0.75 miles without Body Glide isn't a big deal so I'm just glad that happened today instead of next weekend. Once my wetsuit was on I headed down to the water and started warming up. As I finished my warmup I had another stroke of bad luck -- the strap on the secondary pair of goggles snapped! Race start was about three minutes away so I didn't think I had time to run back up to transition and get my final spare pair so I tied a quick knot in the broken strap and hoped that that would hold for most of the swim. However Sinclair saw what had happened and sprinted back to transition, grabbed my other pair of goggles, and sprinted them back down to me. Armed with a fresh pair of goggles I was finally ready to race.
Instead of starting from in the water like most triathlons, this race started on the beach so a minute before swim start everyone got out of the water and began jockeying for position at the edge of the water. The group of three guys to my right were obviously pure competitive swimmers -- they were wearing fastskin jammers and no wetsuits. Having been one of those kind of guys just a couple years ago I figured this would be a good place to position myself for the swim start; competitive swimmers probably have less experience with open water swimming (i.e., "full contact" swimming) than triathletes and are therefore less likely to play dirty in the brawl that always develops at swim start (just as long as they aren't water polo players too...).
The start horn sounded and the crowd of swimmers raced down and plunged into the water. As I'd hoped the swimmers to my right gave me space so I didn't get boxed in and cut off. An initial surge of speed for the first 50 meters or so allowed me to pull ahead of the thrashing mob and gain some clean water. At this point I settled into my normal long-distance stroke and started focusing on the first buoy. One other swimmer to my left had gained an initial lead with me, but a couple hundred meters into the race he fell back and disappeared giving me the lead into the first buoy. I rounded the first buoy and began heading for the next one. I took a quick glance behind me but couldn't see anyone. So far, so good. I pass the second buoy and then the third and turn back to shore. I still haven't seen any sign of other swimmers behind me, but since I don't have to bike or run after the swim I decide that this is the point where I should stop swimming like a triathlete and start swimming like a swimmer; I drop into full swimming race pace for the last 500 meters or so back to shore.
As I left the water the announcer called out that team "Got Linux?" was first out of the water and then made some remark about wondering what Linux was. Sinclair was waiting for me just beyond the swim finish arch as I came up the beach, so I tagged him and then he sprinted up to transition and tagged Carlos. The second swimmer came out of the water about a minute or so behind me and then the third about 30 or 45 seconds behind that.
I wandered back up to transition area, dried off, and got dressed. Sinclair kept saying how he needed about a three minute lead over the second place team since they had a really fast runner, but I've learned not to pay too much attention to Sinclair when he says stuff like that -- back in May when he ran on a relay at the Napa Half Ironman he said he didn't think he could hold 8:00/mile and then he turned around and ran 6:18 pace for the half marathon. I figured he'd have no problem holding off whoever the other team could throw at him. As the minutes rolled by, I could tell Sinclair was getting nervous: "Where the heck is Carlos? It's already been...16 minutes!" (the bike course was 14 miles, so if Carlos had actually shown up at 16 minutes he would have been holding close to 60 mph).
Finally Carlos came blazing back into transition...and the second place team was right on his wheel! He threw his bike onto the rack and tagged Sinclair. Sinclair flew out onto the run course just a few seconds ahead of the other team's runner. Carlos, still catching his breath, mentioned that he'd averaged about 28.5 mph for the course and had been going over 30 mph for parts of it. It turns out that the guy he was racing was Peter Allen, member of the Team Discovery Masters team and former masters cycling national champion. He was also a close friend of Carlos, so apparently both of them had gone into the friendly "no way in hell am I going to let this guy beat me" mindset when they saw each other at the race. Heck, I usually don't even hit 28.5 as my top speed in the Putah Creek time trials, so I can't fathom how anyone can hold that for a winding 14 mile course, let alone how you can make up a minute or two deficit on someone going that speed.
After Carlos recovered and packed up his gear, we headed down toward the path where the runners would emerge at the end of the race. After a bit of waiting we saw the first runner emerging from the trees. Nope, not Sinclair. Whoever this guy was, he was MOVING! As he went thundering by us he looked like he was running a 400m instead of 5 miles. After he went by we turned and waited for Sinclair. One minute went by. Then another. About two and a half minutes after the leader we see Sinclair's Mad Cow jersey appear out of the trees. Sinclair goes charging by us and crosses the finish line 2nd. After recovering he comes over and tells us that he ran the first mile with the guy at 5:45 pace and then the other guy just took off. Sinclair's an incredible runner so if that other guy could put two and a half minutes into Sinclair, he must be a superstar runner.
In the end all three of us were very happy with our race. I was happy with my swim split (results aren't up yet, but Sinclair says he thinks I was 12 or 13 minutes for the supposedly .75 mile swim course), Carlos held a blistering pace for the bike, and Sinclair absolutely flew on the run. The first place team had some real superstars, so we don't feel bad at all about losing to them. Both Sinclair and I have cleared our names of last year's embarrassment (Sinclair says some people actually recognized him today as "the guy that got lost last year"). All three of us from "Got Linux?" plan to return next year and take another shot at that first place team. The race was a blast; hopefully next year we can get some more UCDTri and MadCows out there to race with us.
(c) 2007 by the UC Davis Triathlon Team
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