Help me out folks - an 8yr old boy I know did his very first kids triathlon today and came in first overall (out of 255 kids) only to realize afterwards that he missed part of the bike loop. On his own accord (without parental prompting) he told the official and took the DQ but he is obviously devastated and is thinking of never doing another race for fear something like this will happen again. He was told that many a “big” triathlete has screwed up on a race course and he wanted to know specifics like how many people, how many times, etc.
So does anyone have any stories they can share about how they’ve messed up part of the race course? Even better if you can talk about how you worked past that and any ideas you may have to help him out.
(if you can do me a favor and try to keep it clean so I can just post this link for the 8yr old to read I’d appreciate it)
Hi, bummer on your kid’s mishap there. Happens to the best of us and if he was anywhere near the front of that race as it sounds like he was getting lost is pretty easy as there is no one to follow.
I’ve been lost on WAY to many bike courses and you just take it for what it is after a while, a fun event that you go out and do your best at and well if it doesn’t go as you planned you laugh it off and try not to do it again=) Best one was leading a race and following the lead motorcycle police officer and lead official motorcycle right off course for half a mile or so before realizing that we were off course… If you look at pro athletes (I’m by no means a pro) you see it pretty often too. Friend of mine followed an officer off course by FIFTY KILOMETERS at an Ironman race last year and he was in 2nd place at the time. Just ran w him tonight and we were actually laughing about getting lost on courses. I got lost at another race two weeks ago, 2nd-4th on the the bike got completely lost. Makes it more exciting;)
Hope your son doesn’t lost again, it’s no fun but also a good lesson in the fact that most of us do these races for fun and nothing more than that.
for my first open water swim tri last week i thought i didn’t have to spot the buoys because there were so many people! but tragically ended up very far away from the buoys and had to overswim by a lot and ended up placing last for swimming hahahahaha.
in my particular case, it’s like a sports game: just because you’re down by 1 touch down in the last quarter, it doesn’t mean the game is over yet! you just keep plowing along.
in your son’s case, i think it’s important to remember HAVE FUN doing the triathlons!!! live for the journey, not the destination. if you train a lot and end up placing first, that’s a bonus! but it’s more important to have fun and enjoy doing it, but that’s just me
The best advice I can give your boy is to LEARN and Visualize the course. In the days leading up to the race print a map from the website, ride one lap or drive it if you have to. Teach him to recognise landmarks and count how many corners he needs to take.
Listen at the briefing.
I travelled from Australia to New Zealand in January this year for Challenge Wanaka. I went to the briefing and took note about what they had to say about the course. On race day I approached a left hand turn that everyone was turning at. It felt strange to me, like I should have been riding further down the road. I looked at the marshall who was looking after the corner, he looked at me and directed me around the corner.
20km up the road I realised that I had been sent onto the wrong course, the half IM course, not the FULL IM course. I had ridden too far to turn back so continued on the half IM course and called it a day back at transition.
All age group winners get a free entry into Roth, that could have been mine…
I had a hire car so should have driven the course, or at least part of it.
We have lived with that problem for 15 years. I have come to the conclusion that if a race has a childrens’ competition it is the race managements’ responsibility to make sure that these little ones have a safe, fair race. Often I found that the course was not clear, as in people directing the kids, being attentive to problems, etc. Sometimes, the RD uses these races as added income without providing the proper oversight. I think it is totally disrespectful to these young athletes.
I remember several years ago in a swim – it was so foggy that a bunch of us were swimming in a pack and got so turned around, we ended up in the wrong direction and collided with the other swimmers. it was pretty funny actually. This was about 20 years ago – I don’t think RD would hold a swim in dense fog anymore.
Gulf coast a few years ago the water was super clear and you could se he sand to about 30 ft. I was looking down and saw a huge school of fish and was mesmerized. I just kept swiming and following the school. I swam about 500yds off course before a kayaker tapped my shoulder. Oops.
Rock and Roll half. The course wasn’t well marked and I just kept riding straight. Too bad I was supposed to turn left about 10k back. The only reason I knew something was wrong was I was near the 40 mile mark and knew the road I was on was supposed to be heading north and I was going east, right into the sun.
IM Wisconsin… Going down hill pretty fast when me and another guy realized the road makes a sharp right. We both went right into the farmers field. He flatted, I got lucky.
Cheer up, kid. When you are old and gray and look back on your life, this race won’t even make the top 100 of your “Things I Screwed up in my Life” list.
My compliments to the young man … there are too many examples of when someone cut the course, figured it out after the race, and still stood on the podium.
People get ‘lost’ on the course for many reasons … this can happen to the race leaders because there is no one else around or the spacing between racers is large enough that there is no one to follow.
It would be good to have a conversation with the race director at some point to let him/her know that next year they should do something different to help keep kids on the right course (e.g., more volunteers at key spots, different course, …).
It takes a lot of guts and a strong sense of right/wrong to do what the boy did.
At Coogan’s 5k in New York City, a group of 4 top-level athletes was off the front. Money went 3-deep in this race, so from my vantage point in the chase pack (VERY far away :), it was clear that one guy would be left out with a 14:3x time. With about 400m to go, one started pulling away effortlessly. The 500 bucks was definitely going to be his. Then, about 20 meters from the finish, the lead motorcycle pulls off the course, and this leader follows him down a side alley! He ends up losing out on the money due to a simple error on his part, while the other 3 pass before he can recover
I spoke to him after the race, and he was astonishingly content with the situation. He said something to the effect of this: “It sucks, but I’ll just go out there again next week.” It was really cool to see an awesome athlete at peace with such an egregious error
during my first triathlon, we were supposed to do 3 laps of a bike loop. different age groups had to do different numbers of laps, so there was obviously confusion. to this day, i swear that a race director told me to go in after 1 lap, so i did it without even questioning. later realized, after looking at the times online, that i had skipped 2/3 of the bike
Thanks so much everyone. The kid isn’t my son but since neither of his parents do triathlons he didn’t believe them when they told him it happens all the time and wanted proof. So I just sent him all your comments to help show him that ‘big’ triathletes make mistakes all the time. I’m hoping this helps him because his swim and run times show that he has some serious natural talent. Not to mention that any 8yr old who has the guts to stand up and admit the mistake and go from 1st place to DQ is definitely the type of kid we want in this sport going forward.
I did a tri in Jersey a few years back that I didn’t do a lot of recon on (obviously) I tried to listen to the pre race talk but the accoustics were bad and I couldn’t hear anything but Charlie Brown’s teacher. Turns out it was a multi-loop bike course. I asked three people during the bike how many laps we were supposed to do and got the answer ‘three’. After three laps I entered T2, did the run and ended up in 5th place overall. I was going to turn myself in but they had cash prizes that went 5 deep so I took the $100 and got out of Dodge. Just kidding of course, I went to the timers as soon as I realized what happened and DQed myself.
I know a woman who only did one loop of the Philly Tri bike course and ended up with a 35 mph bike split. She did the run, got her finisher’s medal, posed for the official photographer with her medal and never said a word, She claimed that nobody told her it was two loops. I went to the timers and turned her in, she got DQed. Some people have no shame.
