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.
