Capital of Texas Triathlon
Capital of Texas Triathlon (or CapTexTri) is by far the biggest triathlon I ever competed on. Over 3500 athletes over two distances - sprint and olympic - with the course going thru down town of Austin, capital city of Texas. The olympic distance was non-draft, part of the Lifetime Fitness series and Toyota Cup. A stacked field of professional triathletes were in town including all american olympic stars - Potts, Kemper, Reed - along studs such as Cameron Dye, Ben Collins, David Thompson and so on. Not being a priority race and after a very solid week of training, I still wanted to go as hard as I could and get a good power file from on my powermeter for future reference. It was a great and final change for a good effort on the week leading to Rev 3 Quassy.
The pro wave started at 6:45am with about 30 male jumping from a moving dock. Dustin McLarty and Potts soon took charge. I had a good start off the pontoon was with the not-so-fast swimmers. Things got messy when most of the pro field went off course. The leading kayak took a wrong left and everything went off the roof. For a moment there everyone just stopped trying to figure out were to go. Eventually the lead kayak went back on course and everyone followed. From then on it was a pretty uneventufull swim, I guess most of the guys that were ahead of me out of the wet would still be if we had did the right route. What kinda pissed most of us was that the leading women that went off 4 minutes later were with us out of the water. I have nothing on them but it's kinda anoying to be riding on the bike course, seeing someone on the horizont and realising you are chasing women and having no idea where the men ahead were.
I came into T1 with David Thompson. Exaclty as it happened in Knoxville I was again stopped on the first lap for that f&# stagger rule. I need to get the rule straight cause either I don't get it right or I just place myself in the position to be doubt. And how about the referee that called the penalty and then instead of watching me clipping of both feet just drove ahead to stop whenever. So much for the 60 seconds. Anyways, back on the move and the rest of the ride felt slow. It was still pretty awesome to be riding thru huge buildings right on downtown. The wind was picking up on us and with sharp turns and tiny hills I couldn't quite get my target 300 watts average for the ride. 289 watts was the avg for the ride. After the BS swim and penalty, I was only able to catch-up with Sara Haskins on the final lap. She was having a great race and it felt awesome to be the leading female.. okay, maybe not. Everyone was screaming "GO SARAHH!!". Cool.
Anyways, 10K run and done. I got the chance to catch-up with Brandon Barret (on the run) that I hadn't seen since Font Romeu in 2010 and sprint to the line with Ryan.
All in all I can't conplain much. The fact that this was more of a fun race, kept me going. I would be really pissed if this was a race in which I wanted to do well. It was a messy race for pro athletes, with referees on a very off-day, chaos on the timming chips with results and times all off, not to mention the swim.. but whatever!
A big, big shout out to all the crew from T3 Austin, homestay and fellow pro athletes Matt Russell & Peter Mallet, female studs Leslie and Natasha, all the crew from Luke's Locker, Jack from Jack & Adams Bikeshop and of course AJ for driving me here. I had a great time in Austin, TX thanks to y'all!
