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Ethan Brown's ITU Pan-American Champs Race Report
By Ethan Brown
5/20/2009 |
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I had a solid race this past weekend at the ITU PATCO Champs in Oklahoma City. It wasn’t great, but I earned a good amount of ITU points that brought my ranking into the top-50 in the world for the first time ever. It was a very competitive field with Olympians Hunter Kemper and Matt Reed racing. There were several other fast Americans along with some top athletes from Canada and South America. I was ranked 9th going into the race.
There were several fast swimmers in the field and a total of 60+ guys on the start line. We were lined up on the starting pontoon with the first turn buoy just 200 meters ahead. I knew that would be mayhem. The starting horn went off and we dove in. I immediately began jostling for position with those around me. Matt Reed was a few spots to the left of me, and I made an attempt to get over on his feet. However, before I knew it I had bodies on top of me. I was hitting someone with every stroke I took. As the first buoy approached the field began to bottleneck and the swim got rougher and rougher. I was hit in the face several times, and it seemed like I was wrestling more than swimming. A classic ITU-style swim! The violence continued for another couple hundred meters until things began to spread out a tiny bit. A lead pack began to pull away, and I sprinted hard to catch the tail end of it. I sat in the back of this comfortably for the remainder of the swim, completely boxed in with guys all around me. I couldn’t wait to get out of the water. I exited the river at the back of the pack and sprinted through t1.
With the first 18 guys coming out of the water within 20 seconds, it looked to me as if things would group up into one lead pack on the bike, but with Reed, Kemper, and Matt Chrabot up front, a brutal pace was set and a 7-man breakaway group formed. I rode hard out of t1 and grouped up with Americans Fleischman, Brandon, Collington, and Seymour. We rode hard, but didn’t organize ourselves into a paceline fast enough to catch that lead group. Eventually there were about 10-13 of us in a pack with a Canadian and a few South Americans joining us. After the first of 4 laps, we had lost 30 seconds to the breakaway. Nobody was really committing to working in our pack. I stayed near the front taking pulls when it was my turn, but there were a lot of inexperienced South Americans with us who either wouldn’t pull through or would let gaps open up. It was so frustrating. We started hemorrhaging time to the front pack. At times people would be screaming at each other – our disorganization was costing us close to about 50 seconds per lap for the final 3 laps. To make things worse, with 5k to go, our pack was caught by an even larger chase pack, and we became one massive 40 or so man pack. At this point the pace slowed to your Sunday coffee ride pace. I stayed near the front in order to keep out of trouble. I didn’t want anything to do with trying to navigate through 40 guys in t2, so with a few hundred meters to go I launched an attack and gained a small lead going into transition.
I ran out hard onto the first of four run-laps and led the string of 40 dudes. Someone yelled that we were 3:05 behind the lead pack of 6. I began to gradually pull away from my pack after the first kilometer. On the 3rd lap I was able to catch a Canadian from the breakaway and move into 6th place overall. By the last lap I had a 30 second lead over 7th place but was not closing in on 5th place fast enough. My legs were hurting pretty bad, but I ran hard into the finishing shoot. It wasn’t a great result, but it was solid and shows that I’m becoming more consistent. I’m going to spend the week training with Barrett Brandon, Kevin Collington, and Steve Sexton in Fort Worth, TX before heading down to Austin for the ITU Pan-American Cup this Monday.
I’d like to thank all my wonderful sponsors for hooking me up with the equipment I need to be in contention for a good result at every race – Blue Competition Cycles, the USAT Trade Team, FuelBelt, Team Psycho, PowerBar, and Saucony. Feel free to check out my web site at http://ebrownracing.com!
See you out at the races
ETHAN BROWN
Two-time U23 National Champion
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