Havasu Triathlon

 

Havasu City, Arizona

 

I have never been to Havasu City, so it was fun to check it out. The drive up from Parker to Havasu City is really beautiful. We were actually there during Spring Break, and so my over-all impression of the place is that it is inhabited by two groups. College age kids there to party, and the elderly. It is a cool place. The hotel I selected was not the host hotel, but it was perfectly located. We could easily walk down to the race site. In fact on race morning I walked back from transition to use the bathroom.

 

 

The day we arrived it was beautiful. Race morning it was still beautiful, just very windy. They issued and extreme wind advisory. The wind was blowing towards shore and creating little white caps. Christian was going to get his first taste of rough water. All of his Sprint swim would take place in the lake. While I would swim the same portion of the lake, most of my Olympic swim would take place in the channel.

The wind got worse and my wave was last. Somehow in the confusion I missed the channel and I ended up having to swim back a ways and lost time on my swim. Below is a map of the swim course. The buoys are orange and the yellow line is the course I swam. How I messed that up I still don’t know.

 

 

Once I got in the channel headed towards the bridge I swam really fast, I realized why when I turned around and headed the other way. There was a current and heading back we were now swimming into the wind. That is actually good for me however

The bike course was miserable for me. One of the hardest I have ever faced. Even though this was an Olympic distance, I felt it was harder in some ways than a 56 mile half iron ride. For the first 15 miles we had a fierce headwind. The wind just seemed to get stronger and stronger. My legs however went the opposite direction. I remember climbing to top of a hill and looking forward to coasting down a bit, but I actually had to pedal down the hill the wind was so strong. The first 15 miles were not fun at all and took a lot of time. With about 10 miles to go, the course turns around and heads the other direction. Hell quickly became heaven as I hammered this10 miles straight with the wind to my back. Reports have the wind about 30 mph which in retrospect makes sense to me. As I headed back, I was averaging 30-35 mph. What was weird about it was that there was no wind in my face and it was dead silent. All I could hear was the hum of my wheels. It is strange to be going 35 miles mph with no wind or sound of wind.

With or without the wind this course would have been difficult for me given the number of hills. I am usually not negative, but my biggest problem with this course is safety. As I mentioned earlier, Havasu City seemed to be populated by two groups this weekend: College age kids who are there to party and the elderly. Both groups scare a guy on a bike going 35 mph. The course goes through multiple residential neighborhoods with hundreds of driveways leading on to the course. There are hills in these neighborhoods where you are flying past driveways that anyone could back out of. Other parts of the course go by hotels (including ours) and many, many other places were cars can suddenly enter the course. Having suffered two serious crashes and one near miss in the recent past, this was heavy on my mind. This course has literally hundreds and hundreds of opportunities for someone to kill a cyclist.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet about this race that is unique, is that it is the Mountain Collegiate Triathlon Conference Championships. This became very evident to me as I started the run and realized that 75% of the athletes were college team athletes. It was a bit bizarre to see so many young triathletes out there. It was interesting to see all the schools and how the kids approached the run. There were a lot of athletes who faded in the second half of the run. The run starts in sand which is always a great start off the bike. Shortly after that you get to climb up some stairs to the London Bridge before you cross it and then it is a nice flat rolling run. I felt pretty good and enjoyed the run. The wind was still blowing and I almost lost my visor a couple times, but at least now it pretty much just kept me cool without causing too much slowing. It is a good race. I will have to think about the bike safety issue before signing up again however.