This weekend, I “finished� the Delavan Lake Olympic tri directed by Lake Geneva Extreme Sports. The best I can say was that the weather was nice. I’m an MOP racer at best, so I can put up with a lot that would bother me if I were more competitive, but I will not do another race directed by that outfit again.

To review previous issues I’ve had:

1. Pewaukee Olympic, 2005: Swim course was short, bike course poorly marked & unattended, lax (read zero) security in transition area, run course about ½ mile too long.

2. Lake Geneva Half Iron 2005: Swim course was way too short (probably .8 vs 1.2 miles), bike course was changed with little notice, A.M. registration was chaotic, poor security in transition area, especially later in the day.

I had a grin & bear it attitude for these earlier races, but this latest one really soured me on the race direction.

This year, it was more of the same, yet worse. Well over half of the people who started the Olympic race rode far off the course. Reportedly, the RD insisted that the course was properly marked. Maybe so, maybe not, but the course was not easy to follow. Anyway, here is my report:

The swim. For once, the 1500M swim seemed about the right distance, if my time was any indication. Sighting was somewhat of a challenge. The first marker buoy for the Oly distance was roughly 200-300 yards from the shore. The return trip was directly into the sun, and directly into the shorter distance racers as well. The lake was very weedy—I had to stop 2 or 3 times during the swim to pull weeds off that had wrapped around my face, arms and neck. The lake also smelled absolutely putrid—by far the foulest water I have ever swum in.

It was my first time into a wetsuit this year. Normally, it takes me a few swims in a wetsuit to get acclimated to the different feel so I was a bit nervous about the swim. Still, I finished in an average (for me) time of around 32 minutes. I probably would have done better by improving my sighting and relaxing a bit more, but these are things I can work on.

The bike. This is where it all went bad. I rode out with several Olympic and Sprint distance athletes. The 3rd turn on the course was either not marked or so badly marked that somehow very few athletes saw it. I know I didn’t. For Sprint distance people who missed the turn, this probably shaved about 1 mile off of the course. For Olympic distance racers, it was more like 9 miles. By continuing on the road after the missed turn, we met up with the course again at an intersection. At this intersection, volunteers guided us into separate turns for Sprint & Olympic, putting people back on the right course. They did not seem fazed at all that we were coming up to the intersection from the wrong direction! Although I had ridden the course a few weeks before, I did not realize at that point that any of us had gone off course b/c the roads still looked somewhat familiar.

Later on, a group of about 10 of us (spread out over about ½ mile, I was about 4th or 5th in the line) missed another turn. I don’t know if it was marked or not. If it was, it was not too visible, and there was certainly no course volunteer there. The 2 people in the front of this line finally realized that we were off course after a couple of miles and stopped. I was swearing a blue streak, realizing finally that something was very wrong. At this point, about 6 of us turned around and started heading back to try to find where we had gone wrong. We signaled to about 5-6 more people coming behind us that they too were off course.

We hunted around unsuccessfully for about 10 minutes for the course, at which point someone just asked a passerby how to get back to T2. We then found a road heading back and, about 1 mile out from T2, I got my bearings again. This was a “C� race for me and a training day anyway, so I asked the group if anyone wanted to start riding the course in reverse to at least get a 40k bike ride out of the day before running. 1 other guy joined me. Using my computer, we rode out about 4 miles, then turned around to do 5 more to get to T2.

Let me take a minute here to say something: I know that it is the athlete’s responsibility to ride the correct course. I missed 2 turns that I should not have missed if I had done a better job of remembering/memorizing the course. I did a training ride 6 weeks before this race, but that obviously was not enough. My only defense is that I was following a group of riders and made the wrong assumption that those in front of me were following the correct course. I also rationalized, mentally, the second missed turn by remembering that, in Lake Geneva last year, the race course changed between my training ride 1 month before the race and race day. (Click here to see my race report). So I didn't immediately think it was unusual to find myself on an unfamiliar road during this race. But I realize these are not valid excuses for what happened. So I am at fault, as are the 50+ other Oly riders (I have no idea how many Sprinters, but there were at least some) who missed the turn(s). On the other hand, a good race director should do as much as possible to make turns at unmanned intersections easily identifiable. I don’t think anyone who did the Oly course would say that all the turns were prominently marked or easy to see. If they were, 55 out of 84 racers would not have gone off course.

The run. The talk on the run course was all about the botched bike rides. People were not happy. The run itself was a 6 loop course on sidewalks, access roads, and grass. 6 loops gets a little boring, if you ask me. Anyway, I was cooked from the frantic search for the bike course earlier and had a poor 10k even by my standards. I “finished� the race in just over 3 hours.

The aftermath. Go to www.onlineraceresults.com and see for yourself. The RD decided to split the Olympic finishers into 2 groups--those who rode the official course and those who did not. I was listed with the official finishers. I emailed the race director to let him know that, although I rode 40k, it was not all on the official course.

Other comments. The transition area was completely unsecured. Friends and family of the racers wandered freely into the area while I was in T2, and nobody checked athletes in or out. Not a good feeling when you’re finally riding a decent bike and you have to leave it there while running for an hour.

Bottom line, I would not recommend doing this race, or any other race by this RD. If you choose to do so, scout the course the day before, have someone watch your stuff in transition, and be prepared for the unexpected.