Swim tags and the mystery penalties were major pain in the ass. I chased James (the winner) the whole way with Jeff Sanders (eventual 3rd than 1st) the whole way. Jeff and I were in a "pack" of around 5 riders for the first half of the bike about a minute back on James. Tinman has really strange drafting rules with a 6 foot draft zone. Our pack was close, USAT officials would probably handed out a penalty or two. But this wasn't USAT and although we weren't intentionally (hell I wanted out of that damn pack but couldn't get away) drafting it was pretty tight. We had a marshall riding just off of our shoulder the whole time were in a pack and he didn't seem to think anything was wrong.
Broke away with Jeff on the bike turnaround and came into T2 seconds apart. The run was the same way with my faster T2 leaving Jeff to chase me down as I chased James down. We closed it from 1:15 for me at T1, to 1:15 at T2 to 20+ seconds at the finish. I didn't outkick Jeff until the last 25m or so. The finish is a 3/4mile straight away and it was him surging, me surging, him surging back, back and forth, it was hell but it was the most exciting race I've ever done.
Than the results. The swim tag issue. This is the first year I've turned in my swim tag. This rule has been around forever, although it didn't used to merit a disqualification. If you've had swim tags every year and you often don't turn it in but face no penalty (James has done this race year after year) you don't expect to get DQ'd for doing it again. We all talked to the refs to get rid of his penalty but they refused. And then more penalties showed up. I have a 6 minute penalty and Jeff had a 3 minute. Why, we're assuming drafting but they WON"T tell us what they were for. It's crazy, they wouldn't even tell us if it was a drafting penalty, position foul, transition penalty... And the only way we knew we had a penalty was out times were off on the score sheet. At first we thought only I had a 3 min time penalty but than we looked at the time gap between my time and 4th after the penalty (20 sec or so) and the fact that we had over a 5 minute gap at the finish. Downloaded my Polar and it confirmed my suspicions, a 6 minute mystery penalty.
I love this race, but they either need chips or better officiating. And the swim starting in teh DARK, you couldn't even see the bouys. Again, I can't believe they DQ'd James!
Broke away with Jeff on the bike turnaround and came into T2 seconds apart. The run was the same way with my faster T2 leaving Jeff to chase me down as I chased James down. We closed it from 1:15 for me at T1, to 1:15 at T2 to 20+ seconds at the finish. I didn't outkick Jeff until the last 25m or so. The finish is a 3/4mile straight away and it was him surging, me surging, him surging back, back and forth, it was hell but it was the most exciting race I've ever done.
Than the results. The swim tag issue. This is the first year I've turned in my swim tag. This rule has been around forever, although it didn't used to merit a disqualification. If you've had swim tags every year and you often don't turn it in but face no penalty (James has done this race year after year) you don't expect to get DQ'd for doing it again. We all talked to the refs to get rid of his penalty but they refused. And then more penalties showed up. I have a 6 minute penalty and Jeff had a 3 minute. Why, we're assuming drafting but they WON"T tell us what they were for. It's crazy, they wouldn't even tell us if it was a drafting penalty, position foul, transition penalty... And the only way we knew we had a penalty was out times were off on the score sheet. At first we thought only I had a 3 min time penalty but than we looked at the time gap between my time and 4th after the penalty (20 sec or so) and the fact that we had over a 5 minute gap at the finish. Downloaded my Polar and it confirmed my suspicions, a 6 minute mystery penalty.
I love this race, but they either need chips or better officiating. And the swim starting in teh DARK, you couldn't even see the bouys. Again, I can't believe they DQ'd James!