›Black Diamond Olympic Distance Triathlon

Race date: September 25, 2005

By: Kevin Sivertson

The race went oddly to say the least. The swim was a bit ugly with a lot of newbies and nervous people at the start. It was hard to get through the people swimming at 90 degree angles to me. The sun was quite blinding also making it hard to spot bouys. I don't know what place I was out of the water but I am thinking top 5 or so. we will find out. the sun was blinding and horribly reflective on visibility while swimming. My watch said 23.47 for the swim. Get on the bike and at mile 5 a train comes down the track and we have to stop for 2 min and 20ish seconds with everyone I just passed and people coming up from the few minutes behind me caught up and we all just went on in a big group. the big group I saw drafted a most of the 20 miles or so we had left. Angering myself and a few others. Oh well thier race right? I went running and took a 1min and 29 second pee in a Honey bucket. (must subtract from run time) Geof and Tonya were standing right outside and I made some rude remark about the longest pee in triathlon history. The run started out pretty slow with a few stomach cramps from the new space where my bladder used to be. I got over that by mile 1.5 and ran over some gravel and river rock mess that was unstable. With my ankles, I slowed down again to a crawl hoping and running with crossed fingers that I would not mess up my ankle permenantly. Made it over with a slight tweak one time and then on to the smooth road. I figured a lot of people I would have caught were long gone by now and so I just cruised along knowing I had to go over the rocks again and run around a rocky trail on the lake. (the rocks weren't horrible but coming off a sprained ankle from 5 days before I was hesitant as to whether to even attempt the run) So I talked with some people, motivated racers, raced spectators to their mailboxes and gave the volunteers hi fives and such. Then once over the rocks again I decided to pick it up a little bit. My motivation was being a guy close to twice my age was running with me. So I kicked it up and ran the last 2 miles or so in under 14 minutes. For a finish instead of a hand spring or cartwheel over the finish line I did a summer sault and came up looking like I had just finished an ice scating routine. with my arms in the air smiling. (got a few laughs and congrats on a good stunt) I have no clue how I finished and that wasn't what I was racing for anyway. FUN was why I was racing. overall time on my watch was 2:29 and change but I haven't looked at the official results yet. The interesting story coming out of the race besides the train incident and huge drafting violations was that two riders were hit by a truck and then took off. Riders were ok just no one went down, but quite scary. Sherrif's office was interviewing and such. I don't know any more details.

Overall the trip was good. My father celebrated 64 years old and my grand father celebrated I think 94 years old. I could be off by a year, I got a quick chance to say hello to them and that was wonderful. lots of driving ok traffic but chad and I are safely home ready for a wonderful "transition season" into other activities.

Thanks for reading

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