Wright Triathlon Club Race Report

Duathlon Provides Season Opener Test

Eleven club members participated in the Team USA, Duathlon National Championship held at Caesar Creek Ohio, 10 April 2004. In this effort our club member faced much of the national level talent as competitors vied for World Qualification slots. Leading our group was Chris Zingarelli, International Distance 2:13:25 (45th) and Kurt Jackson, Sprint Distance 1:18:11 (8th). Receiving age group honors Don Scarpero and Bradley Elstad finished 2nd and Sandra Trott finished 3rd (Sprint). Almost our entire group received bids to compete in the World Championships in Geel, Belgium. Complete club results Here

About the day, it started out in the cool mid 30's requiring racers to make several changes of their layers to be ready for the weather conditions at race start. These clothing changes added too many of our individual times as all during the race layers had to be taken off. At the end of the race however the temperatures reached the 60's.

The run course was a mix of terrain with some cross country segments. This portion was enjoyable.

The bike course was a different story. The race description said the course was fairly fast with one difficult hill to challenge. Reality was there were the one major hill and several other hills of note. This along with a brisk wind out of the east made the bike portion fairly difficult. Several of us had leg cramps during some of the hill climbs and I had my chain come off costing me a couple of minutes in overall time.

Regardless of the challenges of the day we all accomplished much by finishing this early season opener. Heidi McKenna said she was having a challenging day considering the event more as a training session. I too felt like I was not quite ready for this early season race. Others of us had similar stories. However, for most, our intrinsic efforts of the day paid off and we completed the journey the better for it. We will now be ready for the challenging triathlon season ahead.

DH

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