RACE REPORT: 21st annual Los Alamos Triathlon
Pat Brug
Saturday. It did have a different format (bike, swim, run) that I was
very skeptical about, but turned out to work extremely well. Hey SZAG,
has the ITU ever thought about putting the bike first so everyone has a
fair shot at drafting?
Yes, the bike was first, and drafting which was supposed to be illegal was
left to the honor system (i.e. no race marshalls). Also, the number of
competitors was up to 260. This was 100 more than the previous high and
is a very large race for NM. The race was broken into 3 waves (separated
5 minutes apart) and the elites, male relays and males 34 and under went
in the first wave. I had registered elite.
Approximately 70 of us lined up for the bike start and there was a lot of
snickering when they announced no drafting. The only flat part of the 20
km bike course was the transition area and the turnaround, which suited
me, and the minimum elevation on the course was 7000 ft. The gun sounded
and the pack started sprinting (this was not like bike racing where the
peleton warms up). I held back knowing within the mile we'd start
climbing. I fell to ~ 20th place within the first 0.5 mile. As soon as
we started climbing, I started slowly accelerating and by the 1.0 mile
mark was in the lead. At the mile mark we started a fairly long mile
climb with ~ 800 ft of elevation gain. This is where I made my move to
really break away. At the top, I'm estimating at least a 30 second lead.
Next a few miles of rollers, then a canyon descent, followed by a canyon
ascent then 1 mile of flats on the mesa top to the turnaround. At the
turnaround I was surprised I couldn't see anyone behind me. The race
official later told me I had about 1 minute lead at the turnaround. The
course was out and back so I just kept pressing hard until the transition
area.
My Kilo with the Hed CX wheels performed flawlessly. I was able to
outclimb the peloton and keep my lead with high 45+ mph descents. This is
definitely the best and fastest bike/wheel combination I've every ridden
(including softride from last year). So far I've PRed every course.
I had a good transition and headed for the pool. We did a "snake" swim
(down one lane, change lanes and up the next) for 425m (8x50m + 25m width
of the pool). Swimming after biking hard is a very different experience.
My arms felt like lead and I had a hard time keeping a good turnover. I
had done 150m before second place entered the water and by the time I was
done I had a 200m lead.
Last was a fairly flat 5 km run. It was nice to be wet at the start of
the run because it kept me fairly cool. Usually, I crater during the run,
but not today, I was able to keep up a good pace. I was fortunate to win
overall by almost 4 minutes in a time of :57.01. My time broke the course
record by over two minutes.
Some side notes: Governor Gary Johnson handily won his age-group, LANL
lab director, Sig Hecker participated, Rod Thurston did his 21st
consecutitve Los Alamos Triathlon and wore the original t-shirt from the
70's (this is a world record I believe), fellow RSTer Mike Randow had a
great race. We got a long sleeve t-shirt, a very good buffet style lunch,
free pool pass and a great race all for $25!!!
Good luck to everyone at Mrs T's :-)
Pat
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W.Patrick Brug, Ph.D. _- -_
Los Alamos National Lab -__ __-
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internet: br...@lanl.gov | |
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Pat Brug
Newsgroups: rec.sport.triathlon
Subject: RACE REPORT: 21st annual Los Alamos Triathlon
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 16:46:08 -0600
Message-ID: <brug-21089...@seminole3.lanl.gov>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Ray Plotecia, Image Control
> The 21st annual Los Alamos (NM) triathlon went off without a hitch last
> Saturday.
snip...
Am I missing something? Did I skip some info in this long post? Am I dyslexic?
"21st Annual" puts your first tri in 1974. Is this true. Do you pre date Tug's and everything else?
Or has Los Alamos finally figured out this relativity-time dilation thing?
>>>>
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
| Ray Plotecia |
| Image Control |
| imag...@clark.net |
|__________________________|
Mike Randow
Plotecia, Image Control) wrote:
> > br...@lanl.gov (Pat Brug) writes:
> > The 21st annual Los Alamos (NM) triathlon went off without a hitch last
> > Saturday.
>
> snip...
>
> Am I missing something? Did I skip some info in this long post? Am I
dyslexic?
>
> "21st Annual" puts your first tri in 1974. Is this true. Do you pre
date Tug's and everything else?
> Or has Los Alamos finally figured out this relativity-time dilation thing?
>
Yes , it is true. Los Alamos celebrated their biggest and best triathlon
to date! And yes it has been run for the last 21 years and we have several
old timers with the race T-shirts to prove it! Local resident's Bill
Hudson and Rod Thurston are just about the only two left who were there at
the beginning. For the first 19 years the triathlon or "triathalon" as it
was mispelled one year was run as three individual time trials where you
had to wait for the last guy to finish before they started the next
portion. I had the "pleasure" of doing several of these before the "old"
tradition finally gave way to the way triathlon is run today. As they say
old habits die hard. Two years ago we had around 75 people do the race,
last year just over one hundred. This year we had 260 registrants! I'm
happy to say this is one race that is growing in size and popularity. Now
if only we could get somebody to give Brug some competition. It really
would be a perfect world.
If anyone out there would like further details on the history of this
race, please email me or Pat.
Mike Randow
Internet: ran...@lanl.gov