Race 12: Coupe Oxygen open sprint race 30th July 2006 This race was held during the course of the Coupe Oxygen triathlon tour. Our team had travelled to the race site as Adam Beckworth was racing in one of the teams there. The location of the race was pretty much smack bang in the middle of France, about 60kms South of Bourge. We arrived to find a paddock filled with tents and camping cars, belonging to other teams in the O2 tour. While setting up our double room, 8 person tent it rained. After a few hours of raining and confusing tent construction, we were wet and the paddock was muddy. We needed a push from about 10 helpful athletes to get the van out of the paddock and into town for dinner. The whole weekend was a lot of fun for all of us, except maybe Adam who was required to do about three races a day over the three days we were there. I lined up for the sprint race with Cesson team ring in Tim Prowse, another Australian who was not actually racing for the fluorescent squad, but was travelling with us on our journey to the Alps and high altitude training. I had the race up Le Alp d’Huez in three days time so did not want a hard race. We both thought that given the out of the way race location and with the O2 series on at the same time, few athletes would race. Well about 250 lined up for the start, more than expected. Tim and I started far left for the 750m swim. It was a deepwater start and I didn’t want to get caught in the fight in the middle of the start line, regardless of how much further we had to swim. I got a fairly clean start and after about 70m had stoped hitting or being hit by other swimmers. At the far turn buoy I found myself in second right behind the lead swimmer, so settled onto his feet. He was surging a fair bit and I found it hard to hang on towards the end of the swim. When we stood up and started running to our bikes I noticed he didn’t have a top on and also had a bright pair of swim training shorts on. I was thinking he can’t possibly ride and run in those, they are just used for pool swimming, and then looked up to see his team rider waiting. Big relief. I exited transition for the bike leg about 10 seconds behind the team rider, passed him after a few minutes and spent the remainder of the bike leg on my own. With Le Alp d’Huez foremost in my thoughts I eased off a bit on the last of the three bike laps and jogged in to the transition area eased on my running shoes and jogged off for the final five km run. I turned back to see if I was still alone and noticed another rider had entered transition. This made my panic a bit as I had been a little complacent at the end of the bike leg and through transition, and before the race I had noticed a few guys that can go quick. I didn’t want to waste energy with a hard run but I did want to win the race. I’m an Idiot! making life hard for yourself I thought. So I ran the first bit solid but not too hard. I figured that if this guy was running really quick he would get to me after about 2km and then he would be more tired than me. If he wasn’t running as quick he wouldn’t catch me and I wouldn’t have an unwanted super hard run. I was thinking it was a guy from Vendome tri team, who are a division one club, but when I finally got a chance to see who it was, I was quite surprised. It was Tim. He had come out of the water about 30seconds behind me and then ridden a similar time, gaining a lot through transition and was now 20 seconds behind. He and Cam had been doing some very hard ironman training in the days prior, so he was racing really well for someone who was meant to be tired. I yelled out and waved at him. He did the same back. This was pretty good for us, being one and two in the race. I crossed the line in first and then waited for Tim. And I waited, and waited. Had I run that well that he was now this far behind? My selfish hopes of grandness we soon dashed as I saw Tim heading out for his 4th lap of the 3 lap run course. He had been sent out for the extra lap by an over excited official. She had given me the same direction (away from the finish chute) however as I had the lead bike just in front of me I followed that to the finish line. Not so for Tim. By the time he had relised the mistake, made his way back and crossed the line (from behind) he was in sixth position. He was then disqualified for not finishing. The guy who was in third met the same fate. In what seems now to be an all too common theme in French races it is not just the other competitors you must beat. You must endure the hazards of the cryptic courses, stupid rules, and over zealous officials, to not just win but finish the race. Result from race 12: 1st and off to the Alps