Santa Fe Triathlon RR

Race Report – Inaugural 2008 Santa Fe Triathlon

The city of Santa Fe decided to organize and host a triathlon this year. I found it to be a well run race, and they more or less hit the technical parts of race execution. I thought it definitely had the feel of a local triathlon, with a fair number of mountain bikes in the transition area and a lot of people acting not quite sure how to logistically tackle the day. The race order is the same as Jay Benson, a run, bike, swim. I thought the venue and the course were really quite nice, with about half the run along a paved fitness trail, and the remainder along Rodeo Road. The city had blocked off an entire lane of Rodeo Road for the race, so that along with the early 6:30 start made for a pleasant, albeit slightly long run. The bike course headed out Richard Avenue, past the community college and towards several small subdivisions sprouting out of the high plains desert. The roads were generally good pavement, and clear of traffic and the race did a great job of manning the numerous intersections along the bike course. I found the bike segment to be deceptively tough with a lot of long slow rollers that made it hard to get into a good rhythm, but the views were nice. The swim was in the Chavez Center pool – a really nice pool with wide lanes and very clear water. They had chip timing and did a great job of quickly posting results and getting the award ceremony underway. The post race spread was adequate, but nothing special. They had a lot of goodies in the race package and the shirts are nice looking cotton T’s.

Some aspects of the event were annoying to me, probably artifacts of first year working the wrinkles out. They closed race entrance a week before the race, and it was a fairly expensive 65 bucks, counting a 15 dollar late fee. I’m starting to wonder about the value of such steep late fee’s, especially in the age of Active where it is pretty easy to register an athlete to an event. They made everyone get down to SF on Friday for packet pick up and a mandatory pre-race meeting that was not very informative. The early start of the race is a bit heinous, but due to Santa Fe traffic and public access to the Chavez Center is probably unavoidable. They used the Triatomic/county bike racks, and unnecessarily cramped the transition area. They also had an asymmetric transition area that put some athletes at a pretty big disadvantage….close to 30 seconds I would guess for the worst case. The run was unnecessarily long, by 60 – 90 seconds I would venture, which was odd since as they had us run a little out and back loop-de-loop before heading out on the primary part of the run. I also thought the medals, while decorative, have the feel of a participant medal and contain no information concerning your performance. Oh, they were also making noise about mandatory swim caps for “health reasons”. The swim cap thing was really stupid for a pool swim, but they backed off brfore the race and announced that they were only "encouraged".

Triatomics, and friends of Triatomics, rocked today, especially the women. Both Kim Myers and Rachel Hundhausen were in the Top 10, and Liz Spangel who owns the Running Hub and has been very generous to the Atomicman Duathlon was second. Kim Katko was 5th. Taraka Dale, Shana Cooper, Kimberly Peterson who have been active in the S-n-D raced well, along with Los Alamos residents Liz Miller, who won her age group and Thayla Sullivan who was second in her age group.

For the guys, I saw Bill B and Rob A had medals, I think Dr. Goddard won his age group and I came in second overall. Nathan Romero won his age group, and Ben Davis was also there expressing satisfaction in his race.

My race went fairly well. I was surprised to find more competition on the run than I anticipated. The run field started off pretty fast. And I was a long, long way down right away. OK, no problem, this happens a lot these days and I usually settle in and try to pick off people the second half of the run. It actually kind of started that way for me. I came out of the loop-de-loop in 11th place, quickly passed two more dudes to move into 9th. On the gentle decent down Rodeo Road was catching the next two guys in front of me. Then we turned onto the fitness trail. I’ll tell you something. I’m not a very good uphill runner, I never have been. The worst kinds of hills for me are low angle grinders. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t get any mojo on those kinds of hills. Anyway, this was that kind of hill. It was almost flat enough to not be considered a hill, but it weighed me down. I didn’t pass anyone else, but at least I didn’t get passed either. I hit the transition timing pad, which was about 50 yards from the transition area in 20:00 flat. As I mentioned earlier, I think the run was a fair bit long. Being this far back put me in a bad spot for overall considerations, but I figured I would keep a positive outlook, try to scratch back what I could on the bike and see what happened on the swim.

I got through transition pretty fast and had passed two guys before Richards to move into 7th. I tend to have difficulty with the run to bike transitions, and at the start of the run my ass end didn’t have any get-up-and-go as I tried to power over the early rollers. The only thing I could do was downshift and try to spin the run out of my legs. I kept poking around trying to find a winning hand with my gearing, and about 4 miles into the bike I started feeling my bike legs and moved into 6th passing a guy on a road bike who really looked out of his element. I think he might have been the first runner. Before I figured out how to bike I used to get passed by lots of people during the bike leg. I felt a little bad for him as I blistered by, easily 5 mph faster than he was going. At the turn around I was about 75 seconds down on first place and figured I must be either holding my own, or moving up a touch. Right after the turn I moved into fifth and could see fourth down the road. I pressed the return as hard as I could and moved up on the next two guys in front of me, but I didn’t catch anyone else.

Because of the unfair transition, I had relocated my bike before the race to a better spot, actually moving someone else’s stuff who was taking up two bike slots. As it turned out I know the guy whose stuff it was, and he seemed cool about me moving his things and seems to acknowledge that he was indeed taking up two spots. As a result I ended up having one of the best transition spots which helped me get into the water right on the heals of #4. It took me about 150 meters to get into the swim, but once I did I started moving pretty good, passing three guys in the last 200 meters to move into second. The winner, a guy named Eric Lujan, put a good beat down on the entire field, including me, to win by about 75 seconds.

Results can be found here: http://www.cepmtnbike.com/results_misc.c