All I can say after racing in this past weekend’s PATCO Championship is thank goodness for ‘test’ events!! The race effectively served as a test for next year’s Pan Am Games (Guadalajara 2011). As major games go Pan Am Games is second only to the Olympics in terms of importance and prestige. As such, I expected a finely tuned, safe and fair course awaiting me in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This was not the case.
What did await us was a bike course featuring unpaved gravel sections, dangerous cobbles (so big and non-uniform that you couldn’t stay sitting or pedal while riding over them), small out and back sections with small, round metal speed bumps, all in addition to the normal poorly paved roads typical of Mexican races. Needless to say I was worried about the course but took solace in knowing that everyone had to deal with the same conditions. I was happy to learn later on that the ITU technical director Greg Peters was not going to allow this course to stand as-is. Thank goodness!
I stayed at an all inclusive resort called the Crown Paradise that will serve as the athlete’s village next year for triathlon, open water swimming, beach volleyball and a few other sports that can’t take place in Guadalajara. I’m not sure the staff at the hotel fully understood why all of us triathletes were there, or why we kept refusing their offers for tequila and margaritas in the days leading up to the race. We were certainly not the typical middle aged Americans they are used to waiting on. Confusing them even more was our sudden change of heart Sunday evening regarding their offers of tequila based beverages…
Anyways, race day finally arrived and the race organizers decided on which course we would be racing on. Option “A” was the final decision – this was the course that included a technical route through the transition area each lap. The ITU technical directors had been up literally all night filling in the dangerous cobbles with sand, helping the Mexican construction crews pave over the gravel sections and generally making the course ‘race ready.’ In the end the course was good, maybe even excellent compared to other Mexican races.
The race was hot. The water was approaching 87F, and the air was ~95F and humid when the race started at 2:15pm. A break happened on the swim that I missed and four of the original nine escapees stayed away on the bike – Matt Chrabot, Cam Dye, Luciano Farias (ARG), and Michel Gonzalez (CUB). I ended up in a large second pack that was completely disorganized and the 20 seconds we lost on the swim turned into 2:15 by the end of the bike. Matt Chrabot won from the breakaway. I ran third fastest on the day, catching everyone in the break except Matt to cross the line in fifth. It definitely stings a little to miss a swim breakaway but I’m very happy with my run effort and that nearly made up for missing the break. I scored a massive amount of both ITU and Olympic points so I ended the 2010 ITU season on a high note and set myself up well for next year. That’s what I set out to do in Puerto Vallarta so I’m happy!
So the ‘test’ event went off with only a few small shortcomings that the race organizers now have 365 days to fix! Of course this means the problems will remain problems for 362 more days and will be fixed in the three days leading up to Pan Am Games, but at least they will be fixed!
Next up Clearwater!!