Team 701: Musi­col­ogy Mayhem

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Veron­ica, our friend Patrick, and I par­tic­i­pated in the Devil’s Chal­lenge Triathlon at Devil’s Lake State Park, about an hour north­west of Madi­son. We entered as a relay team — I swam (1÷4 mile), Patrick biked (15 miles), and Veron­ica ran (3 miles). We decided ear­lier this sum­mer that we wanted to attempt a relay triathlon, and had been more or less train­ing since then. We took a trip to Devil’s Lake last week­end to scout out the course and to do a dry run. Still, hav­ing never done this sort of thing before, we weren’t quite sure what to expect on the actual day of the race. We left Madi­son at a quar­ter to 6 yes­ter­day morn­ing so that we’d have plenty of time to park, pickup our reg­is­tra­tion packet, and warm up before the 8 a.m. start. We got there with plenty of time to spare, and set about men­tally and phys­i­cally prepar­ing ourselves.

A Later Swim Start

At the race, indi­vid­ual triath­letes were orga­nized into start­ing waves, largely by age and sex divi­sions. A funny thing about relay teams like ours, though: we were put in the very first wave, which is oth­er­wise reserved for elite com­peti­tors. So, you have the fast, hard­core, expe­ri­enced peo­ple grouped with peo­ple who aren’t up to doing the whole triathlon them­selves. I sup­pose this makes a cer­tain amount of sense; relay­ers are free to expend all their energy on each leg of the race, whereas indi­vid­u­als have to pace themselves.

Swim­mers Exit­ing the Water

So, I lined up on the beach with the elite ath­letes and the other relay swim­mers. Since we were the first ones to go, all the other ath­letes and many spec­ta­tors were behind us, cheer­ing and mak­ing noise. When the starter horn went off, we all ran out into the water towards the first buoy. Not hav­ing had the chance to observe any starts, I just fol­lowed the peo­ple in front of me. The lake was very shal­low (I could have walked the whole swim course), so the deci­sion of when to switch from run­ning to swim­ming was an impor­tant one. There was a big crush get­ting around the first buoy, then the pack started to thin out some­what. Through most of the swim, I had plenty of room to maneu­ver. After round­ing the sec­ond buoy, I swam shore­wards until the water became too shal­low to get a good stroke. Once on shore, I had to run up a short flight of stairs and sprint a fair dis­tance to where Patrick was wait­ing with his bike.

Patrick Round­ing the Last Curve

I made pretty good time in the water, so much so that Patrick wasn’t quite ready when I arrived. While he threw on his hel­met, I trans­ferred the neo­prene tim­ing chip anklet from my leg to his and ducked out of the tran­si­tion area to find Veron­ica and my towel. After dry­ing off and chang­ing, I grabbed my cam­era, and started shoot­ing pic­tures of other com­peti­tors. When the first cyclist came roar­ing down the final hill into the park, I wished Veron­ica good luck and set off to catch Patrick. From the spot I picked, I couldn’t see very far up the last down­hill curve. But, a cou­ple of pro pho­tog­ra­phers were stand­ing far­ther up the hill, and I used them as an early warn­ing sys­tem; when they reached for their cam­eras, I knew a cyclist was approaching.

Veron­ica Running

After Patrick came tear­ing by, I went to try to catch Veron­ica at the start of her run. I didn’t get any good pics then, but I man­aged to catch her later at the fin­ish. Once she’d run across the line, we all hung out for awhile wait­ing for the results to be posted. We ended up doing pretty well for our first time out: 9^th out of 38 relay teams. We were 6^th in our divi­sion (co-ed relays). I beat my tar­get time (8:00) by more than a minute, Veron­ica beat her tar­get by nearly three min­utes, and Patrick came very close to his tar­get (he would’ve beaten it if his front derailleur hadn’t mal­func­tioned mid-race, leav­ing him with only his big chain ring for climb­ing hills). Our final time was 1:26:43. You can see all the results here (they put us under Veronica’s name, rather than that of our team: Musi­col­ogy May­hem). All in all, it was a lot of fun, even if we did have to wake up at 5 a.m.

Click here to see all of my pho­tos from the race. Soon, we should get a link to the pic­tures taken by the pro pho­tog­ra­phers. If there are any good ones, I’ll link to them as well.