I just wanted to give a shout out to MSE Racing who put on the inaugural US Army Reserve CAPEX Triathlons (70.3, Oly, & Sprint) at Carlyle, IL, this past weekend. The original plan was to work with the on-hand Army Reserve Bridge Engineer unit, with the athletes boarding a floating ribbon bridge section from the at the beach and being towed by an Army BEB (Bridge Erection Boat) to their respective starts for the point-to-point swim. Unfortunately, a late change in maintenance schedules meant the IRB bridge sections and BEB's were unavailable. The "easy button" fix would have been to change the swim to some sort of out-and-back. But MSE had pitched the unique swim start as a key event element, so they went above and beyond to fulfill the promise as best as possible. Long story short, they rented enough rotomolded floating dock sections to build a raft capable of holding roughly 130 competitors per load, as well as two pontoon boats to tow it. I'm told it took the better part of 3 days to assemble the raft, and cost them somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,000. No doubt, that was a huge financial hit for an event with ~400 entrants. But they delivered the experience everyone expected (I don't think anyone cared whether or not they went off a makeshift barge or an IRB section, really) and preserved the goodwill of their patrons. This was my first event with this company, but won't likely be my last.
"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"
"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"
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