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USAT Age Group Champs thread
So who from ST is going? Event and age group? Insights for newbies?

I'm doing the Olympic, 55-59. Never done a champ event before. Never flown to an event before. Never had to use a bike travel case before. Never had to go thru the thought process of "take only the tools and stuff you absolutely need" before.

I bought an Airport Ninja bike bag last month. I picked that one because it really does beat the over-size luggage criteria. To my surprise, they did it in camo for me. The beauty of it being camo is that I'm retired military so I'm only a decent haircut away from appearing "active duty" which often gets a person cut a little additional slack. I did a complete disassembly of the bike last weekend to do a test pack in the Ninja bag. Bike only BARELY fits in their "standard" size case tho. Had to take both rear dropouts off. That was a darn near thing. I'll be fabbing up some kind of brace to go between the rear triangles to ensure they don't get crushed.

I had to play some games re. air pumps since my old Zipp disc requires a crackpipe. My new, cheap "travel" bike pump has no gauge. I'm hoping that race morning I can borrow someone's "real" pump and stick the crackpipe in that.

The rules guidance make a big deal out of always riding to the far right, and never passing on the right. I'm not that strong of a swimmer tho, so historically I have to pass an awful lot of folks on the ride. The early stages of the ride can be chaos with all sorts of not-strong riders all over the place. So it doesn't always work to pass them on the left. Often there's groups of 2 or more so I just zoom by as best I can. Many a race there was an instance where the only safe thing to do was cross the center line because folks in front of me were doing oddball things and I had a rapid closure rate. Gonna have to be more careful about all this I guess.

Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart
Last edited by: RangerGress: Aug 6, 17 10:49

Edit Log:

  • Post edited by RangerGress (Dawson Saddle) on Aug 6, 17 10:49