2012 Denver Triathlon

The Denver Triathlon 2012

After last year’s Denver Triathlon, I was excited to compete in this year’s event.  I enjoy the easy drive from the Platt Park neighborhood where I live to Mile High/Sloan’s Lake for the race.  Perhaps the best part of the race is the abundance of Roost racers and volunteers.  I felt like everyone there knew my name.  The race carried the same two-transition format as last year plus a change in the bike course.  Going into the race I didn’t think too much about the change in the bike course from a two-loop flat and straight course to a two and a half loop course full of quick corners.  I figured though that the times would be slower as a result.

This year I competed in my age group as opposed to the ‘amateur elite’ category.  Last year I got a nice draft in the swim behind the eventual second place finisher (David Bobka), but this year as a result of my classification change I had clear water until the last turn when I was passed going into the beach.  I would love to believe that swimming with the DU Varsity Swimming Team has gotten me to the point were I can swim a 16:55, but something tells me that the course was a bit short.  What’s 150 meters between friends anyway?  I was happy with my swim.  I had no problem seeing the sparse buoys thanks to my new eyes and my split was the same time as when I swam behind Bobka, but this year I was leading instead of drafting.  That’s improvement.

Unfortunately things weren’t as good on the bike.  I got out of the water just behind another guy in my wave (I’ll call him John) and I excited T1 first.  I biked the first lap with him behind me so that I always saw his shadow trailing me.  Normally this wouldn’t bug me, but for some reason it did (I think I was more frustrated that I was going so slowly).  A mile into the second lap I over took the slower triathletes and a draft marshal.  In my miffed state I moved out to the left and yelled that the guy behind had been drafting me for over a lap and then I slipped back to the right and continued back to swerving in and out of the other cyclists.  I immediately felt some remorse for being a “tattle tale” something I have never done before in a race.  The status quo continued until the second climb up the 8^th street overpass when Gregory passed me amid a dozen or so other racers.  I dropped back as safely as I could in the traffic and then tried to accelerate over the summit to the turn around.  We then tried to navigate through the crowd on the twists, turns and railroad tracks that link the lower Mile High part of the course to the upper Sloan’s Lake part of the course.  On the climb to Federal, John put 20 to 30 seconds on me which took me the next 4 plus miles to retake him on the same hill going down.  As I passed he yelled something that I couldn’t understand with my aero helmet on.  Again I navigated the turns and slower riders and finally arrived into T2 after what can only be described as a sub-par bike split. 

I quickly transitioned to the run and things didn’t get much better.  I just didn’t feel like I had any pop to my run.  The only saving grace for my run split was that the course was only 5.9 miles instead of 6.2 so the time was a solid 35 flat.  The only issue is that I know in my heart of hearts that the course was short.  I hoped that it was identical to last year, which I ran 50 seconds slower thereby making my run better then last year.

The interesting part of the race came after the finish line.  John finished later and when I came to congratulate him on a good race he started telling me that we should have worked together so we could have gone at least two minutes faster and that I shouldn’t drop back so far after getting passed so that we could take more equal pulls.  He is a good guy (we used to ride together about 10 years ago although I doubt he remembers) and I don’t begrudge him saying this, but I explained that there was a marshal behind us and I wasn’t going to work together as a result.  Obviously the correct answer would have – no, because it’s against the spirit of the rules, but it was after the race and it was obvious that he wanted to work together and I didn’t, besides he is someone I respect and I was in no mood to disagree.

I heard them announce that I was second overall so I was pretty happy with my race result.  While I was waiting for the award ceremony to begin, I had a ton of fun playing football with Campbell, cuddling with Anja, and chatting with Erin while eating cookies.  I was curious about my swim split so I got up to check the splits on the results sheet.   I was surprised to see that I was given an unspecified bike position penalty.  It must have been bad karma while I was biking on the left (blocking) to tell the race marshal that someone was drafting.  Anyway, the penalty pushed me back into third overall, and one of the C-Different blind athletes moved into second place.  He is a great guy so I was happy for him and I was glad that I was still in the top three overall.  This was my first penalty in nine years, so it was a good reminder to be even more vigilant about my positioning on the bike and, also, that no one likes a tattle tale or being told how to do their job.  

Matt Smith and Me at the finish