New people same Tri =)

Today I raced the bike portion of the Bonelli Olympic Distance ("BOD") Tri. A bunch of people from Claremont McKenna College (where Mike works) wanted to try their hands at doing this in relay fashion so I was immediately on board to participate if they wanted me.

They all did such a wonderful job. With all 2 previous races under my belt I was the "seasoned vet" of the group for this location so it was cool to be able to help out and answer questions when possible about how things went and such. My teammates were fantastic and everyone else was so supportive of each other. For a group of people that weren't there to compete but to just have fun, they sure surprised me come the finish of their relay legs.

I finished with my best time ever around Bonelli. It's not a flat or even easy course by comparison to the TTing I'm used to. Bonelli wears on you lap after lap and the 8% or so grades, while short, get to be a painful son's of guns come the third and final go around. I finished the 40k distance in 1:12:48 which is about a 20.5 mph average speed. I was beat for the top time in the relay division by .02 seconds...yes, that's 2 hundredths of a second! That equates to time lost braking for a suburban that was given permission by the volunteer police to pull right out in front of a riders and myself. Thankfully the driver was paying attention before too late and stopped otherwise I would have gone to the hospital with massive injuries. T-boning the side of a Suburban at 35 mph would have ruined my day and a lot of days to come if it didn't kill me. Even if I was able to lay the bike down to avoid the collision, I still would have been hospital bound to say the least. Effing idiot. (Sorry, I'm still a bit hot about the whole thing!) Oh well, you can't win them all! I placed 2nd, not 1st and it was such a slim margin it could have been anything that made the difference. Oh well, just will try harder next time. Nobody really to blame but myself.

Here's a link to some of the photos from the event...

share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaM2Llw0ZM2TjA