1994 US Military (Europe) Triathlon Championships
What a total rat-fuck

The US Military Champs were being held inside of a major German triathlon, so it was a big race, but most of the competitors were Europeans. Olympic distance, so 1.5mile swim, 25mile ride, 10km run. For a person that is really fast, that's two hours.

My primary competition was buddy Mike Garcia. He had been a pro triathlete a couple years prior, but then for no reason I understood, he joined the Army. He ended up in some NATO Headquarters job in Belgium and was able to train hard. If you read the World Championships tale, an event that would occur several months later, it was Mike that got sick on race day so I lost my wing-man. I knew that Mike would crush me in the swim, but I'd make up time up in the ride--having smoked him in the time trial at the Cycling Championships the week prior. The run could go either way. He was fast, and I had a bad snowboarding crash seven months prior that cost me some training.  I figured that if I had a strong ride such that we started the run together, it would be anyone's race. So that was the plan. Don't go too hard in the swim because Mike was going to get a couple minutes on me anyway, then get on the bike and crush everyone. Pass him before the ride-run transition and get at least 30secs. Then kill myself to keep the lead through the run.  It didn’t quite work out that way.

There were thundershowers off and on all morning. The "Time Machine”, the dedicated time trial bike, was an unstable, flighty little beastie under good conditions, and positively treacherous in wind or rain. The Time Machine was so unstable that just a quick glance at my watch could throw me across to the other side of the street. I didn't normally train on the TIme Machine at all. It was not a pleasant bike to ride. The long, hard rides, every other day all year, were done on the much-loved Italian Tomassini road bike, a wonderful, stable, and predictable old friend. The Time Machine required a lot of focus to control every minute, but it's aero advantage made it slice effortlessly through the air. It was fast. Really fast.

1994 US Military Triathlon Championships, Europe. In the transition area with The Time Machine, before the storm hit.

The swim was uneventful. I kept the intensity dialed back and just tried to be efficient. No sense wasting reserves in my weak event. At the end of the swim, I was fourth out of the water in my start group, as good as I could possibly hope for, but I was four minutes behind Mike. Jesus Christ he was a fast swimmer. I ran for the transition area, got to my bike, put on helmet and glasses, threw my bike over my shoulder and ran towards the transition zone exit. This was going to be my time to put a hurting on everyone else. "Look out folks," I thought, "here I come."

The over-cast clouds were particularly dark. As I left the open field and ran under the trees towards the road, I found that I couldn't hardly see through my amber tinted cycling glasses. I snatched them off of my face and kept running.

I had been experimenting with a new technique for getting into my cycling shoes. Instead of putting the shoes on before I ran out of the transition zone, I instead had them already clipped on to the bike's pedals. That way I could mount the bike in a bare-foot running jump, and as I coasted, flip the shoes over with my toes and pop my feet in. Then I'd reach down and give each velcro strap a good tug. This idea had all sorts of charms. My cycling shoes had big cleats that were terrible to run in, and with the shoes were already clipped into the pedals, "clipping in" to my pedals was one less thing I had to do before powering away from the ride-start.

A rain shower burst upon us. All the sudden it was raining really hard. That was bad.

With the sunglasses in my teeth, I did a running jump on to the bike and put my feet down on top of my shoes. I spun the pedals revolution or two to get me rolling a bit more, then, with my right big-toe, I deftly flipped my shoe over and attempted to pop my foot into the shoe. And it didn't work at all. The shoe and pedal flipped over well enough, but the upper of the shoe had flattened down--preventing my toes from popping in. Somehow, the quick and elegant little toe-flip that I'd practiced 50x just wasn't working. I flipped the shoe & pedal over again, then again and again. Each time trying hard to pop my toes in, just like I'd practiced. Meanwhile the bike lost momentum on the gentle incline. Finally, I had to put a foot down or fall over. Now stopped, I got the damned foot into the shoe, tugged it's strap, and started off again. With one foot in a shoe I could keep the bike moving while I worked with the other shoe. I'm sure I lost 30secs. In a race where I as only barely going to be able to make up time lost in the swim, this was a bad start.

Both feet now tightly fastened into the shoes, I started accelerating. With two fingers I grabbed my glasses out of my teeth and firmly popped them where they belonged, the ear pieces going through the helmet straps. But something snagged on a strap or an ear and the expensive Oakley glasses, designed to be easily disassembled so parts could be mixed and matched, spontaneously disassembled into a debris field. That was bad. It meant no eye protection from the hard rain.

Although there were some trials, I was finally on the bike and heading out. I quickly passed a couple guys working their way up the first hill. This was my element. On the bike, few one could stand against me. I was RangerGress and I'd come to ride. I was not entirely screwed yet. I still might be able to pull this off.

Or maybe not. The thunderstorm was really pounding the course. I flew down a long gentle hill towards a small town and the rain was coming down in buckets. The gusts of wind were blowing me all over the place. I had to stay in the center of the road because the wind gusts were trying to throw me into the right ditch. I throttled the intensity back a bit because it was really damned unsafe. The heavy clouds made it dark. The heavy rain reduced visibility further, and my eyes were really taking a battering. I could barely see.

I was riding fast through the outskirts of a little town. I couldn't go full blast though, it was just too dicey. The road was narrow and the densely-packed buildings made the sight-lines short. The painted lines, down the center and the sides of the road, were especially slippery. At that speed, in order to set up for turns, I absolutely had to be able to see at least 50meters ahead, but I often couldn't see that far. The rain soaked brakes weren't worth a shit on my carbon wheels, the wind was blowing me all over hell, and the 140psi tires had about single square centimeter of contact patch for traction. It was really crazy dangerous.

I'd long accepted taking serious risks in races because, "Race. Can heal later." On the bike, in a time trial, I kind of lose my mind with the intensity level, and I boil over with a berserker battle rage of emotional frenzy that knows only "GO GO GO GO." In my four decades of racing, this was the one time where the thought "this is very dangerous" pierced the raging frenzy.

I got to what seemed to be the center of the dense little town. The descent became more steep, and in a sudden burst of better visibility, I could make out a T intersection ahead with a brightly garbed race volunteer standing in the road 100 meters down the hill. I would have to turn either left or right. As I hauled ass down the hill, determined to carry as much speed through the turn as possible, I studied the body language of the volunteer carefully for some clue as to which way I was to turn. Getting set up for this turn was going to be tricky. I had a lot of speed to shed, setting up was going to mean crossing two painted lines, and I was going to need every inch of road width to make it work. From the race volunteer, I desperately needed some gesture, a sign, anything that would tell me "left" or "right" soon enough to give me time to set up for the turn. The guy had an umbrella in one hand and a flag in the other. Then he lifted the flag and pointed left. "Ok,", I thought, "here we go."

I moved to the far side of the road, and at the last minute, given the conditions, I throttled down my speed, as rapidly as I dared. The brakes slipped  on the carbon fiber wheels and the tires slipped on the wet pavement. The bike got squirrely under braking and tried to slide out from under me. Somehow I stayed upright. Then, with eyes well ahead, I calculated the best line and speed for the turn, leaned in and swooped left past the volunteer. "That was a near thing," I thought, but I'd made it through with pretty good speed.

Legs fresh from the barely cautious downhill, I accelerated hard and continued the charge after Mike, somewhere up ahead. When I was about 50meters away and still accelerating, I suddenly, at some subliminal level, thought I heard a voice call out behind me. Like maybe that race volunteer had yelled something after my receding figure. That was bad. Simply the act of turning around to go see if he'd said something would probably cost me so much time I'd lose the race. And what if all he'd done was holler encouragement to someone else?  If I was on course and I turned around to go back to the volunteer, I was throwing away the race. If I was off course and turned around to go back, then the volunteer had screwed my race 20secs ago when he pointed left with that flag.

I was simultaneously in full berserker battle-rage, yet also horribly wracked with indecision. I decided to turn around, knowing full well that I was kissing goodbye any chance of a repeat of last year's Military Championships win. It took me another 50m to stop and then carefully turn around on the narrow slick street.

As I accelerated back towards the T intersection and the race volunteer, I observed him closely. I had hoped I'd see body language or hand-and-arm signals that would help me understand what was going on so I could either zoom by or turn around again and resume the direction I'd been heading. But he was not waving me towards or away, or making any other obvious gestures. He wasn’t even looking in my direction. I mortified that, in turning around, I'd probably just hugely screwed up. "That voice I thought I heard was probably just my imagination," I thought. But I had to know for sure. Not until I got all the way back to him and got his attention did he start gesturing beyond him. He was telling me that when I followed the direction his flag was pointing, I'd turned in the wrong direction.

A bad moment followed that I've long felt some regret for. Endurance oriented types tend to be mild-mannered and unassuming. But in a race, the effort to keep up the necessary intensity turns me into a raging lunatic. The hapless volunteer had apparently not given any thought as to how he was going to convey, to the cyclists charging down the hill through the rain, which direction they were to turn. Since I was not first out of the water, other cyclists had come through. Therefore one would imagine that he'd have worked though the basic idea of "clearly point right," and "do the pointing early enough that they can set up for the turn."  But apparently it was still a work in progress.

As a result of the race volunteer from hell, I was now fucked. All the maniacal intensity that fueled the effort to maintain the helacious pace for the whole race was now directed instead at the hapless race volunteer that had just made it all for nothing. The desire to dump my bike and beat him unconscious was over-powering. My fingers flexed and clamped into fists with the desire to hit him, and hit him, and keep hitting. By any measure, I was absolutely insane with rage at that moment. I don't remember what exactly I said, but he recoiled back, stumbling into a cringe. With every bit of self-control I could muster, I ferociously clenched my muscles tight and kept the bike rolling past him. Then, I took a deep breath and robotically started riding--my enthusiasm somewhat dampened by the knowledge that the race was fucked. After a couple seconds I resolved to let it go and at least finish it out with some effort. I accelerated away. Through the rain.

In the next town I came to “Y” intersection with another race volunteer standing in the middle of the turn.  From a couple hundred meters out it was clear that the volunteer wasn't pointing in any direction. From 100m out, the point where I needed to make decisions re. the turn, I could see that the race volunteer, a girl this time, wasn't even looking in my direction. "Is it possible that I was so off-course that I was coming down the road the wrong way? Could that be why she isn't facing me?" I wondered. I fucking had to ride up to her, come to almost a halt, and not politely ask "which fucking way do we go?" Then she came alive and pointed which way to turn. What a rat-fuck.

That was the end of me. I was frustrated, angry, and feeling sorry for myself. This was a really important race for me and it was clear that the race director had not given any kind of instructions to the race volunteers. They had no idea how to give guidance to folks charging towards them at high speeds, much less the riders going all out, in the rain, battling wind gusts, and with limited visibility. From then on, the best I would give was a 90% effort.

A couple miles later I came to a turn that had a race volunteer that had flags in both hands. Each flag was pointed horizontally, one left and one right.  I had no idea what he was trying to tell me. I guessed, turned left, and he didn't yell after me. Left turned out to be correct. Total luck. I was moving too fast to bother yelling at him. 

Finally, after riding not all-that-hard for another 10km I saw a rider up ahead.  After I passed him, I was second man in my swim-start group. When I finally got back to the transition area, there was my friend’s bike, parked next to mine. After my weak ride, it had probably been there for 15 minutes, I figured.

The run just seemed to drag out forever. I was very unhappy, very unmotivated, and pretty much just going through the motions. Mike Garcia, the ex-pro, was up ahead of me somewhere, and I hadn't seen anyone behind me since early in the bike. The heat of fury was spent. All I had left was despair, as I ran along the soaked forest trail through gentle rain. The run course was out and back so I knew that the turn-around would allow me to see where the competition was. Mike passed me heading back for the finish with about a four minute lead. It might as well been an hour for all the motivation that I had.

When I got to what I thought was the turn-around point, I found two older women manning a water station in a clearing with a big tree about 5-10 meters behind them.  As I ran the last 25 meters up the hill towards them, I tried to figure out just exactly how this turn-around was supposed to work.  Was I supposed to run around the tree beyond the water station?  Was I supposed to just run around the water station table? Maybe I'd run to the women and they'd mark me with a marker of some kind to prove that I was there?  I looked for arrows on the ground, signs, gestures from the women--anything.  There was no clues.  So I ran up to the women, took some water and turned around and started running back down the hill.

Had to happen.  I was 20 meters away when I thought that I heard something behind me again.  I stopped about 30m down the trail, looked back and they were looking at me expectantly. No gestures, no words, they were just looking at me--impervious to my deliberately questioning body language. Shaking my head with disgust, I ran back to them and around the tree, not bothering to mention that if they didn't fucking set up the water station differently, or gesture, or fucking say something, no one was going to understand that we needed to go around the goddamned tree behind them.

None of the chaos on the run or ride courses was really the fault of the race volunteers. They didn't compete, so they were out of their element. It's the race director, when he/she briefs the race course volunteers, that has to explain to the course volunteers how to provide guidance to approaching racers practicaly in hysterics from the effort level and exhaustion. The guidance has to be simple and visible to the racer as distant as possible. That gives the racer, with only a couple brain cells available for higher thought, time to figure out what they are supposed to do.

Some minutes later, I was a couple kilometers beyond the turn-around that I'd done twice. As I neared the lake and the transition area, I started looking for the turn from the trail that we'd used last year. That would mark about one more kilometer to the finish. Then this would all be over. I could see the lake, so I knew the transition area was just beyond. I had carefully checked the run course map that had been posted and it had clearly showed that the run course was the same as last year. THe trail that I was on was definitely on last year's course so in a couple minutes, I knew I should find the a place to turn off the trail and head for the transition area and the finish line. But I kept running and that turn didn't yet appear. I was getting worried. Then I could see the transition area and the crowd. But I still hadn't hit the turn off of the forest trail.

Because there were serious German competitors in the same race, some of the really fast guys were strangers to me. There weren't very many guys ahead of me though, and since I'd seen them go by me after their run turn-around, I knew what they looked like. I looked down the hill into the grassy transition area and I could see guys heading for the finish that had not been in front of me. What the fuck was going on? Was it possible that the turn off of the trail had not been clear and I'd missed it? Fuck me to tears. I was being so careful about navigation and I missed the fucking turn to the finish?

I spent the next several hundred meters trying to understand how guys behind me had just finished, and what I should do next. Then I got to a lonely little arrow that pointed me down and I turned in that direction. There was no one in the area, so I had no idea if I was doing the right thing or not. That led me back towards the transition area, but there was a tall cyclone fence that required I turn left or right. I guessed and ran for a ways along the fence. There was no sign that other runners had come this way, so I started looking for a hole in the fence. "Or maybe I should climb over," I thought. It seemed less like a triathlon and more like Orienteering. Finally I got around the fence and headed for the transition area.

I ran around the transition zone of bikes and gear and found the finish chute. Then I crossed the timing line.  Jesus christ, what a fucking disaster of a race. I then stumbled around a bit, had a hell of a time finding some water, and thought about how pissed off I was.

As it turned out I was on the right course. THE MOTHERFUCKING MAP WAS WRONG. The race director had changed the finish of the run course, and moved the turn-around to accommodate. But then he'd posted last year's map. The competitors hadn't paid attention to the map and had, therefore, turned off the trail prematurely. Only I'd stayed on the trail for another half mile and then made my way to the finish chute as we were supposed to. 

I talked to some of the other competitors and it seemed that the guys behind me did not have my troubles. Apparently once I passed a course volunteer, offering them some encouragement and suggestions as I went by, the volunteer figured out how to do their job. "Well", I thought, "you all are very welcome".

Winning the US Military Champs a second time had been very important to me. I'd been doing double and triple day workouts almost non-stop since the 1993 race. But that day, I'd really taken it up the ass. All because the race director was either incompetent, or a slug. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

As I packed up my gear and watched the race director from afar, I considered spending some time talking to him. But a) he was awfully busy and b) I was so furious that something regrettable might happen. So I thought maybe it was a bad time. I did not stick around for the awards ceremony. I had no interest in the 2nd place trophy. 

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