Clermont draft legal triathlon: Part I

This is the post you've all been waiting for- a play by play of the race and an explanation of my experience. I've decided to break this into 2 parts:

PartI: race report

PartII: race drama

Race report

It's hard to write a race report on an event I only spent about 20 minutes in... HOWEVER, after having a difficult time shifting through last years' reports, I promised that I would write a meaningful report that would be helpful to future participants, so I will do my best to do just that.

Although I had a crap race, the experience as a whole was pretty awesome. I'm excited about all that this race has to offer and the opportunities it gives young and up-and-coming athletes. I was also excited to be among the few athletes with the opportunity to compete in the itu style format, since the U.S. is definitely lacking. Jared Shoemaker, professional athlete and founder of this race, definitely had a vision, and seeing it in real life (thanks to rd Bill Burnett) was totally awesome. I know of a few other draft legal races that have popped up around the country, and i hope to see more as the sport continues to grow and we continue to foster more young athletes towards international competition. 

Anyone who is anyone in tri's was at the Clermont challenge that weekend. I saw Olympians (Sarah Groff!) and other big name pros.

This was probably the best organized event I have been to thus far. RD Bill Burnett did a spectacular job communicating with athletes in the months, weeks, and days leading up to the race. There was a mandatory pre-race briefing at the national training center where we were presented specific rules of draft legal racing (in case anyone was too lazy to read the rules emailed...) and picked up our race packets (making the morning of run smooth). We were given specific details for the next morning, schedule of events, and specifics on the flow of things pre-race.

Athlete check-in started about 1.5 hrs prior to race start. I arrived promptly at that time to allow for any mishaps (No bike warmups fyi). Good thing... There was some drama with the check-in official about the length of my aerobars. I anticipated this, so quickly removed them. After they were off, I realized he was letting some women angle theirs upward so as not to extent past the brakes, so I asked him if that was ok and he said it was. Right as we were finishing up with putting them back on, the head official came over and instructed us to remove them. There was definitely some differing of opinions between the two, and it was extremely frustrating for me as my stress levels were quickly escalating.

The organization of the swim start was screwy and downright unfair, in my opinion. We started off the shore and athletes lined up between two posts. I didn't realize it at the time, but the lake bottom had varying depths from one side to the other. When we watched the men's race, you could see an obvious advantage for the men on the right, who began in ankle deep water, verses those on the left,who began in knee deep. The guys on the left were out of the race within the first 20seconds. Kind of really crappy. Also, swimming out was brutal- straight into the sun. I really struggled with that. 

The bike course was flat. We road out about 1.5 miles, made a 180 turn, and rode back to the race site making a loop through the transition area. 4 times through for a total of 12 miles. 

The run course consisted of part of the bike course and was a double loop. It was straight out and back two times. We saw A LOT of athletes miss the turn around to go back out and run thought the finish shoot only to realize they had to go back and try to make up ground. It happened with eVERY race- u25 AND pro races. The crappy part was that there was actually a volunteer there who was SUPPOSED to be directing people where to go, but instead of directing he just stood there looking confused. I  know if that were me, I would have been pissed... It just emphasized to me even more that you really have to be responsible for your own race and know the course before going into a race, rather than relying on others to give instructions.