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Ethan Brown's ITU Austin Continental Cup Race Report
By Ethan Brown
5/29/2009 |
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My third ITU race of the year took place this past Monday in Austin, TX. I raced hard but did not have a great result. The field was stacked with good swimmers and cyclists, and I thought if it came down to the run I’d be guaranteed a podium spot. Here’s how it played out:
The swim was an in-water start, a rarity for an ITU race. In contrast to last week’s ultra-violent swim at the ITU Pan-Am Champs, I got off to a relatively clean start and found myself pulling away early with the leaders. An extremely high pace was set up front by super-swimmers Mark Van Akkeran and Cameran Dye. The field strung out quickly, and I found myself sitting in about 6-8th place on the feet of Ben Collins. After about 1000 meters I began to fade a bit and started to lose Collins’ feet. I still finished strong, however, and exited the water just 20-25 seconds down from the leaders and about 1 minute ahead of the main pack.
I had a quick t1 and got out onto the bike only to find myself in no man’s land riding by myself. A small group of 3-4 had gotten away followed by another group of 3 that I just couldn’t reel in alone. I solo’d the first 5k and then finally realized my attempt to catch anyone alone was futile, so I sat up and soft pedaled a bit. I was quickly joined by Russel, a strong Canadian cyclist, and together we alternated 20 second pulls and reeled in the 2nd pack. There was still the breakaway of 3 up ahead (Fleischman, Van Akkeren, and Dye). My new pack of 5 worked together okay, and we rode very hard in pursuit of the leaders. However, after about 2 laps (of 5) we were caught by a giant, 25 or so man pack, the same pack I had gapped out of the water by a minute; frustrating. Still wanting to catch the leaders, I stayed near the front of the pack riding aggressively, sometimes taking multiple turns in the paceline if gaps opened up. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was completely frying my legs. With the 90 degree heat as well as the humidity, I was hurting pretty bad towards the end of the bike. The one positive effect of my riding style was that there was a crash with about 3k to go. Being towards the front of the pack I was able to avoid it, just barely – about 10 guys behind me were taken out. My good friend and training partner Barrett Brandon had his new Specialized Tarmac completely destroyed in this crash. I made it to t2 safely and headed out onto the hot run.
I tried to go out hard but was hurting bad. A small group was forming ahead and I tried to go after them but just didn’t have it. I suffered bad on the first of 3 laps, running in 8th place. After just a mile I was able to pass Van Akkeran from the breakaway. After the first lap I began to feel a tiny bit better and picked up the pace. I passed Cameran Dye and moved into 7th. On the third lap I seemed to recover a little more and raised the pace once again. I passed a Brazilian, Fernandez, and moved into 6th. He stayed right on my shoulder for the next mile. There were a couple guys closing in on me during that last lap. With about a mile to go I dug deep and was able to surge a tiny bit and drop Fernandez. I held my distance on the guys that had been closing in, and I finished in 6th place, right behind Brian Fleischman who had faded from 1st to 5th. The top 3 guys to cross the line were from my bike pack. A Kiwi, Callum Milward, won. He outkicked my good friend and training partner Kevin Collington, who had an awesome race.
Although things didn’t seem to go my way in this race I feel like I gained some valuable experience. Distributing my energy efficiently throughout the race is something that I’ll definitely work on next time. That’s the allure of ITU racing – the unpredictability and the fact that you have to sometimes throw rankings and past results out the window. I still gained some decent ITU points for 6th place, and my ITU world ranking is now 36th! Next up for me is the ITU Dextro World Championship Series Race in Washington DC on June 21st followed by triathlon’s biggest money race, the ITU HyVee World Cup on June 27th.
As always I’d like to thank my wonderful sponsors for their support – the USAT Trade Team, Blue Competition Cycles, PowerBar, Team Psycho, Saucony, and FuelBelt. They provide me with the best equipment possible to race at the highest level. Thanks for reading! Feel free to check out my Web site at http://ebrownracing.com.
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