Day 11 - Clermont Draft Legal Challenge - Sprint Race (draft legal)

So yesterday was my first ever Sprint Triathlon which just happened to be draft legal. The guys headed down to the race at about 0900hr as the park was opening to traffic at 0940hrs. I rode to the park with Dave D, Alex, and Marc. The remainder of the guys drove down. Shortly after we arrived the girls race started. (The girls AG race was incorporated with the EDR 25 race.) So that enabled us to cheer on Leslie, Sarah, Stephanie, Lucie, and our unofficial team-mate Elvy (Martin's spouse). The girls all had a good race with Leslie finishing 1st in the AG race and Elvy 2nd.

After the girls had removed their equipment from transition we were able to enter and place all our stuff. The have two transitions setup so they can keep the races moving quicker - the EDR men's race followed after the girls race and before the AG men race.

Transition Setup - Dave L is on the right.

After tranistion was setup we headed down to the water for a quick warm-up swim, pre-race brief and huddle, and then we were off. I knew I was going to have to swim well to be able to catch any of the CF guys on the swim. Unfortunately with a 12:44 swim that put me about 45s behind John and 60s behind the group that I really needed to catch. I soloed on the bike for almost the first half of the bike before latching on to another guys wheel. We started to work together (I did most of the pulls) and by the half-way mark of the third loop we had reeled in John's pack.

Unfortunately for me, Marc Prudhomme was pulling the first pack with Alex and the remaining CF guys were all in the second pack. With the likes of Dave D, Dave S, Dave L, Eric, Martin, and Phil all in the same pack there was no way I was going to make up any ground in fact I was losing about 30s+ per lap. And the third pack which I was leading had very little firepower. Despite my best effort I couldn't get that pack to start pushing the pace. John realized that I was doing most of the pulling and so made sure to pull through near the end of the fourth lap to give me a little break prior to the run. Bike time was 32:33.

On the run (Photo Credit - Martin's daughter)

Coming off the bike I was about 4 minutes down to the first group and 3 minutes down to the second group. I just ran as fast as I could hoping to at least reel in a few straglers. My final run time was 19:24 which was slower than I wanted. However, given my effort on the bike and the fact that run was ~250m long that result is understandable.

Total time 1:06:38.


I was 9th Overall and 7th out of the CF Athletes.

I wish a speedly recovery to Dave D who crashed hard during the second lap on the bike course.