Tritons take on Texas, Texas takes its toll.

Report by: Peter Borak
Photos by: Chris Burnham

Before I begin the story of our trip to Texas, a huge thank you has to go out to the entire UCSD Triathlon Club and especially our coaches Mac Brown and Chris Burnham for helping us prepare for this race. You all pushed us at training and races, and we could not have done this race without the support and encouragement of the entire team.

Tri Club of San Diego deserves a huge shout out for loaning all of the bike boxes, shipping a double box for the price of a single saves $$$!!!

Mr. and Mrs. Kavaler, and Mrs. Johnson were tremendously helpful in providing food, supplies, and mirth to help us through a tough weekend.

…and now, on with the show.

Thursday: Tritons get on an air-o-plane.

Thursday afternoon, the UCSD Tritons Nationals team took a trip to Texas. An event that was pretty much the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies leaving for California, in both scope and direction. We all showed up to the airport wearing our team polos, toting bike boxes, and carrying healthy snacks to keep up our energy stores for the long trip. First snag: TSA.

Apparently, Squirrel learned that trying to argue a full, unopened jar of peanut butter isn’t a liquid but an amorphous solid isn’t going to help you make any PB&J sandwiches on the plane. TSA confiscated several peanut butter jars and assorted snack foods.

They didn’t even say “thank you.”

Once stationed on the plane, the team sat together in one big group. Having waited a solid 45 minutes later than everyone else on the team to check into the flight, I was last to board the plane (arghhhh B26). There weren’t any seats available with the team, but an exit row seat directly in front of them was.

Fast forward through two and a half hours of listening to the gentleman sitting to my right tell me I look too old to be competing, that he’s finished ten marathons, his knees are shot, girls never beat him in anything, that global warming is a hoax put on by Al Gore who “coincidentally,” made billions selling carbon credits, and that Arizona is a very rich state because of interstate trade, he tried to set me up with his daughter.

“Are you single? My daughter is about your age and desperately looking for a guy. You seem normal enough.”

“I’m happily engaged” I replied.

“She used to be a beauty queen, seriously.”

I never thought I’d be happy to get off a plane in Dallas, but man I was stoked.

While waiting out our layover at Love field (Southwest Airlines’ home airport btw) The Tritons tried to scare up some dinner. While most of the team went to Chili’s to go for ultra healthy mushroom-swiss hamburgers, Robert Krohn and Bill “Indiana” Jones went to Pizza Hut for their pre-championship meal appropriate personal pizzas. While there, they befriended an incredibly disgruntled employee who did nothing but talk trash about his manager (who was directly behind him and not paying attention), and vent about how much he hated his job.

Tip: Lending your fellow man a sympathetic ear is good for the soul and makes you a better person (also a great way to meet beauty queens, apparently). Actuality: Lending a sympathetic ear to an upset food service employee at Love field gets your entire team more Cinnabons than the surgeon general recommends as part of a balanced, healthy diet. The Cinnabon was closing, and Indiana’s new bff from Pizza Hut scored the Tritons the entire stock of leftover cinnamon rolls. With ten minutes until boarding the Tritons powered through two-thirds of the buns and the team is starting to look a little weary of the volume of granulated sugar consumed.

“We’ve GOT to finish this,” said Indiana.

I can’t speak to the experiences of the reader, but every single time somebody told me I have to finish something in a hurry it has always ended badly (frat parties, donut shops, getting pulled over by the cops, surprise inspections at the Tijuana border, Las Vegas). Fortunately only Indiana kept at the Cinnamon rolls and the rest of the team got onto the plane without a “reversal of fortune” tragedy.

Before I left for Texas, it was a beautiful sunny day in San Diego, and the weather report in Lubbock called for 45-degree lows and possible thundershowers. “How bad can it be?” I foolishly thought, as I didn’t pack any rain gear or warm clothes.

We get off the plane, and it is pissing down rain, sideways. It’s cold, the airport is full of nervous collegiate triathletes, and our rental truck is parked at the office off site from the airport. Because the world needed to counter-balance the good karma from the cinnabons, it takes almost an hour to get the rental truck to haul all of our bicycles to the hotel.

Friday: Weather? I hardly know her!

As the alarm goes off at what seems like well before the sun should be up (because it wasn’t going to rise in San Diego for a long, long time), I groggily make my way to the continental breakfast at the hotel. The entire walk over, I keep hearing people talking about “Texas Waffles.” What on earth are Texas Waffles? Are they really big? Are they made of prairie grass? Do they have a weak central government and strong individual property rights?

No.

The hotel has waffle irons shaped like Texas. For reals.

Also, I learned a life lesson. Don’t ever read the ingredients on your syrup packets when you’re making waffles shaped like a state. The list read, “High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, artificial Maple flavoring” then went downhill from there.

After many strong waffles and weak cups of coffee, the Tritons assembled their bikes in the hotel conference room and went to race registration for packet pick-up. USA Triathlon puts together the coolest schwag at national level races, and this year they had a sweet transition bag/beverage cooler full of hats and goodies, and technical t-shirts that looked like “Ed Hardy” designed them.

Next up on the agenda, check out the bike course.

Did I mention it was raining? Holy smokes it rained hard. An ark would have been a much more appropriate choice to check out the bike course than the rental cars we had.

After getting lost three times on the way to the race venue (Lubbock has the most confusing freeway system I’ve ever been a part of, they might as well have had us drive on the left side of the road and signal for turns using dynamite) we get a phone call from Der Kaiser Sante Kotturi saying the official directions to the race venue don’t work because the roads are so flooded that SUVs are stranded in several feet of standing water and the State Troopers have closed off that entrance to the park.

This is what happens when the clouds open up over land this flat. The water has literally nowhere to go once the ground is saturated and the road floods like the Florida coast once it meets Al Gore’s Global Warming/Ponzi Scheme. After some creative “iPhoning” we found our way into Buffalo Springs to check out the race venue.

Except we couldn’t, because Buffalo Springs lake had flooded its banks and parts of the road to transition were under two feet of water. Further iPhoning discovered a road that even a local lady driving a lifted pickup truck didn’t know about that took us to the swim start. We did a little recon of the bike course in the rental car and there were multiple sections of roadway that were flooded at least 8 inches deep. Later, there was some discussion that we were going to have to dismount our bikes and do the Texas Two Step at each of these flooded roadways. This would have been a serious bummer after our season long focus on riverdance and Gina Horath and Marc Schommer’s incessant Macarana-ing.

Everyone on the team is getting a little antsy about the race coming up, and want to go for a little run to loosen up the legs after all of the travel. When the team run rendezvous came around, the true fury the skies had been holding back finally released. This was the kind of rain that you go from totally dry, to soaked to the bone in about 30 seconds.

Were we deterred?!? No! We splashed each other at every intersection/river we came to, and naively thought running across the nearest freeway pedestrian overpass (literally the highest point around we could find) would be a nice easy way to stretch our legs. As we climbed the clockwise sectional ramp to the “Summit of Lubbock” we noticed something amiss.

The wind, which up to this point had been persistent, became downright ferocious. The wind grew as powerful as citibank (You’re jacking the interest rate on my credit card to 30% because I was late returning a library book????) and twice as indifferent. I always wondered why pedestrian overpasses have chainlink fences all the way around them, and it turns out it’s because when the wind blows it’s like being in a tornado and you don’t want to lose Toto to the skies. To celebrate everyone making it across the overpass safely, Allison Johnson found a lawn in front of a TV station under 3 inches of water and did a most triumphant slip and slide dive.

Who’s hungry? USA Triathlon put together a pasta dinner for all the collegiate athletes at Texas Tech University’s Recreation center. After getting lost a few times trying to find the place (thanks Lubbock!) we make it to dinner just in time for the Caesar Salad to run out and no vegetarian dinners to be found. Robert Krohn asked the caterer if there was a meat free option and she responded with, “Honey, this is Texas. You haaaaaaaave to eat meat.”

Before lights out we had a team meeting in which Coach Chris Burnham discussed strategy, team strengths, falafel recipes (the secret ingredient is bay leaves), when we were going to leave for the race site, course etiquette, and how UCSD has performed in the past and our current race goals. Marc Schommer mentioned if you weren’t nervous you weren’t human, which is fine unless you have Asperger’s.

Then again, if you have Asperger’s you don’t know what feeling offended is like so no harm no foul.

Saturday: Race Day.

Saturday morning. The alarms went off exceptionally early and everyone sprang out of bed like it was Christmas morning, but you had to go to the Dentist before taking the SAT. Or at least that’s how I felt. Race morning of a big race is always exciting and scary; it is the culmination of an entire season’s worth of hard work, sacrifice, and as it turns out, eating Texas shaped waffles. Plus it’s probably going to hurt and you may bleed a little because you didn’t floss as often as you should. “Only floss the teeth you want to keep” my Dentist always says, but I digress.

The Tritons caravanned out to the race site and were pleasantly surprised by a lack of rain, but in its place were howling winds, cold temperatures and angry skies. Fortunately, much of the flooding had subsided at Buffalo Springs Lake so there were not going to be any dismounts on the bike course.

When we got to transition, it was reported that the air temperature was 48 degrees, the water temperature was 54 (“Wetsuit mandatory!” Cough *duh* cough) and the winds were blowing a sustained 20mph with gusts up to 40mph. It was so windy on the lake that the swim course buoys were being blown off their moorings. The swim had to be shortened to approximately 500 yards from the original 1500 meters. Needless to say, our better swimmers Lisa Fong, Robert Krohn, and “Buffalo” Bill Jones were a little bummed by the announcement. When two concrete cinderblocks per buoy aren’t enough to hold things in place, you gotta do what you gotta do.

OK, let’s get this fun over with.

At 9am the race started and our first wave Triton Marc Schommer had a blazing start. He said he was “totally going to win the race for the first 50 meters” until he got clobbered by the entire front pack of swimmers. Personally, I think it was all the athletes from Snow Belt states taking their jealousy of San Diego’s temperate climate out on Marc. Lisa Fong came out of the water with the lead pack of swimmers, and Robert Krohn had “the swim of my life.” He was in the front pack coming out of the water despite having come down with a 48-hour flu just in time for race day. “Buffalo” Bill Jones did us all proud by having the fastest swim split of the day, out swimming his nearest competitor by over 15 seconds. In the world of swimming, this is something like the equivalent distance between the Earth and Neptune (Did you catch the Triton tie-in?!? Triton was Neptune’s son! Too abstract? My bad).

Personally, when I swim I typically breathe to my right side, which was the direction the wind was howling from throughout most of the swim. The gale helped me swallow A LOT of Buffalo Springs water, but unfortunately I didn’t win the super prestigious title of “Greatest volume of water ingested during the swim,” that title goes to Rebecca Monte. Later, many athletes came down with a stomach bug (including two Tritons), which was something akin to Montezuma’s revenge, but with more of a southwest feel to it.

Once done with the swim, we all got to run through a very long and carpeted transition to the bike racks. You know you have low standards when coming out of the swim you see a hundred yards of Astroturf-ish office carpet laid out for you and you think you’re in an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (For our team members born in the 90s, cough *Gina* cough, LotRaF was an 80’s version of MTV Cribs starring a possibly drunk Robin Leach, not a Good Charlotte Song). Quickly slip out of the Xterra wetsuit, put on a pointy helmet, and off you go for a bike ride through the Texas countryside.

When I got onto my bike, there were the usually smattering of encouraging cheers and shouts of “go San Diego,” but after about 100 feet I heard the collective gasp of 300 people as an athlete lost his footing and fell flat on his side just after the mount line. This was akin to slipping on a banana peel and landing on a cheese grater that’s been rained on all week. Not pretty.

Out of transition was a nice climb lined with what looked like Eskimos bundled up for a whale hunt. Wearing a racing singlet in these conditions was truly a test of mind over matter, in that if you don’t mind freezing, it doesn’t matter you made poor clothing decisions back in San Diego.

The 40K bike course consisted of a climb out of transition, miles of straight roads, a few right hand turns, a giant halfpipe like downhill/uphill section, and a turnaround so you could do it all over again, but different. Not to be terribly hyperbolic, but never before have I, nor any Triton present, ridden in winds such as these. On the stretches of open road with crosswinds, cyclists as far as the eye could see fought a quixotic battle, leaning in exaggerated slants to the wind. We all looked like the new weatherman at the TV News station who’s been sent out to cover a Hurricane as it makes landfall. The winds were blowing so hard that my shoulders were getting tired trying to hold my bicycle to a straight path.

These conditions presented new and exciting challenges not normally present in Triathlon. Typically, racers stay to the right hand side of the road, and when making a pass, you simply pull around them on the left without a second thought. In these conditions, all the riders were scared to death of the right side of the road because a gust of wind could blow you off into a recently formed marsh if you strayed too close. Racers of all abilities were strewn across the road, making passing on the left all but impossible. Passing for the dually tired, crew cab, four door pickup trucks patiently trying to make their way through our race was like trying to throw a watermelon through a basketball hoop from half court, naked, in front of an entire hockey arena full of fans: Total nightmare. In a National Championship, dealing with traffic on open roads is a little annoying, but them’s the breaks.

At these races, you occasionally see things you don’t ordinarily see. My favorite was the guy from Stanford with the foamy shorts.

So I’m riding along, thinking I’m doing pretty well, when all of a sudden I get passed like I’m standing still by an athlete from Stanford. Then, to add insult to injury, all of this white foamy business starts flying off of his body and onto the road between us. I’m thinking this dude’s got health problems if he’s jettisoning party foam, and I need to avoid it pronto, so I uh, “let” him ride away from me quickly.

Then, approaching the turnaround, this same dude coming back continues to spew foam from his nether regions in a most unsportsmanlike manner. We later ran into the Stanford squad at the airport, where the story went that this guy fell victim to the old “exploding shampoo bottle in the checked luggage” trick. He thought he’d cleaned up after this calamity, but there was more to it than met the eye. Either way, all Tritons should think twice about getting friendly with members of Stanford’s triathlon club in the future. You can never be too careful. ;) On the way back to Transition, I came upon a member of our argyle armada on the side of the road. Robert Krohn had picked up a staple and it took him 15 minutes to fish out the metal and fix his tube. As Robert was our #2 dude on the course, this was not a good sign for our ranking in the overall.

It was a relief to cross the bike dismount line and finish up my time fighting the wind. I didn’t anticipate just how much slower the bike course was with all of that wind, the stopwatch indicated it took somewhere between seven and ten minutes longer than expected to ride the 40k. Coupled with the cold temperatures, the bike was very, very tiring. Maybe it can be made up on the run!

The aforementioned flooding of Buffalo Springs Lake forced USA Triathlon to make some changes to the run course. We were now rerouted to two laps of the Sprint Triathlon 5k run course. In transition I quickly put on some socks, Avia racing flats, and headed out onto the run.

The run course had some short rolling hills, but nothing particularly challenging. What made this run ridiculous was the fact it was long by about half a mile! On the out and back sections I started seeing my fellow Triton teammates, some of whom looked like they were on a nice Saturday morning jog, and others who were deep into the pain cave and looked like death warmed over (Sante).

One competitor, possibly from Vermont, in an attempt to stay warm, was wearing bright orange dishwashing gloves out on the run course. He looked like the most low-budget triathlon superhero you’ve ever seen. Very fashionable.

Here’s another lesson for Tritons in the future. The people at the aid stations are volunteers for the day. They don’t get paid for their services, and as such you can expect a few hiccups in the system. I spent the entire second half of the run trying to get some Gatorade. Then water. Then for people with water to even look at me. At the very last aid station, when I was desperate for something to drink, the guy running in front of me asked to get splashed to cool off for some reason (it was in the 40s, was he hot?), and every volunteer threw every last drop of water they had at the guy. Some days, you just can’t get a break.

In the end, there was the usual sprint for the finish to try to catch those two dudes that passed me in sight of the finish line (I’ve still got a monster ego, and uh, was doing it for team scoring). Before you know it the race is over, you’re handed a space blanket, and you overhear a much pithier competitor say “…there is nothing better than finishing something you were really stupid to start in the first place.”

As for results, UCSD’s women’s squad finished seventh overall, the Men’s squad finished 14th, and the team finished seventh in combined scoring. West Point won the Women’s competition, while CU Boulder won the Men’s competition, as well as the overall team classification. Nicole Kelleher won the individual crown for the women, while Chris Stehula won the men’s.

Although wishing they had faired a bit better, nobody from UCSD complained about his or her results or how they raced (even Robert, who rather than complaining kept showing me all the puncture wounds in his fingers he got from the staple in his tire). As a squad, the Tritons were happy to have had the opportunity to compete on a national level and were fortunate to have an experience not to be forgotten. The team left it all out on the course, and nobody finished with any regrets. I believe everyone recognized the best part of our trip to nationals was in the journey leading up to the race, the shared experiences of months training together, and the friendships developed along the way. For this, the Nationals team thanks the entire UCSD Triathlon Club, without you all (y’all?), the trip would not have been possible or worthwhile.

After the Sprint Triathlon that followed the collegiate race (another memorable experience, for an albeit different, frigid set of reasons) the Tritons packed up our gear, and headed back to the hotel for some well-deserved hot showers and naps.

An enormous thank you go out to Mr. and Mrs. Kavaler (Sarah’s parents) for buying us dinner after the race and bringing it back to the hotel. The Tritons were definitely more Zombie than Athlete towards the end of the day, and dinner restored us to a more animated state. Providing dinner was above and beyond what any of us expected.

With full bellies and sweet tie-dyed hippie costumes (again, thanks to Mrs. Kavaler, so awesome) the Tritons went off to the awards ceremony. A ZZ top-esque Southern Rock band (but with significantly less facial hair) hosted, and many of the schools present had truly awe-inspiring team costumes. Highlights included Colorado State dressed as cave-men, the entire UCSB Tri Club on roller skates and wearing roller derby outfits which left VERY little to the imagination, UC Berkeley wearing 80s lifeguard outfits with “Legalize Triathlon” emblazoned across the chest, and an unidentified school dressed as their favorite (legitimate) superheroes. The most remarkable element to the banquet was the level of energy present in the room. The Tritons were completely wiped out from their efforts earlier in the day, and could only stare off in glassy eyed astonishment as school after school sang their fight song and danced to the oddly beardless band. Talina Kanotchick was even kind enough to put up with Marc Schommer passing out, using her as a pillow, and possibly (probably) drooling all over her throughout the melee. Did these people compete at the same race as we did? How is having that much energy even possible?

After watching CU Boulder clean up at the awards ceremony (5-gallon hats off to them!) the team went out to the Arrogant Texan. If you’re like me, you thought the Arrogant Texan was going to be a line dancin’ honkey tonk kinda whiskey bar full of big hair, big hats, good ol’ boys and possibly livestock. Instead, it was just about the best ice cream parlor I’ve ever been to. It’s hard to say if this was some sort of post freedom fries, freedom toast, freedom kiss naming convention, but this place had the best Mexican Vanilla ice cream I’ve ever had. Ice cream after a big race=completely guilt free happiness.

Sunday: Head West, Triton!

On Sunday, our trip officially came to a close. Feeling like I’d gone five rounds with Mike Tyson and Jim Beam (no worries, it was a dry trip), I dragged my carcass out of bed and helped myself to an additional bellyful of Texas Waffles. Having a few days to come up with “syrup” substitutes, Michaela Danek channeled Julia Child and came up with the winning topping by combining cream cheese and honey. Our waffles were fully gourmet.

With the coming of my 29th birthday five days after nationals, according to USA Triathlon I am too old to compete at Nationals next year. I wondered why this was until, while loading the suitcases and bike boxes into our cargo van, I threw my back out.

Hobbled with a Mr. Burns-esque hunch, I dealt with traveling halfway across the Continental US, but at least I wasn’t as bad off as our man “Wild” Bill Jones. Reports from bystanders were that Wild Bill ran so hard his body was mimicking the scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest ran so fast he blew his mechanical legs apart, only instead of running for touchdowns in front of a packed University of Alabama Stadium, Wild Bill was hobbling through the airport in Lubbock, and later Albuquerque, New Mexico.

At this point in the trip, many Tritons were getting a little cranky and wanted to be home. Typically, when this happens people get snappy with each other and manners go out the window over simple disagreements. Not us. When a bunch of Triton Triathletes are tired of each other, a “nerd cold war” ensues.

This year’s combatants were soon to be Doctor (fake Ph.D. Doctor, not Doctor Doctor) Daniel Heineck, and (sooner than Daniel, but equally fake doctor) future Doctor Robert Krohn, both from the Engineering Department. This cold war was over who knew more obscure knowledge about the airline industry. For example, did you know that “American Airlines’ jets are finished in polished Aluminum to save weight for reduced fuel costs?” This was one of many bits of intellectual muscle that were flexed at the Albuquerque airport to determine who is truly the Nerd King of Triton Triathlon. Just like the real cold war, nobody won, but each side could claim they made important contributions to history.

In the end, our trip ended with a final landing in San Diego, most of our luggage showing up at the carousel, and all Tritons making it home safely. A final shout-out goes to Jennifer Stokes for shepherding us through the surprisingly bureaucratic process of getting the nationals team off the ground, and judicious application of the cattle prod to get this race report finished.

Thanks for reading.