Double start Saturday / Sunday

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Below is a report by Andi Dreitz, who brought Andreas Raelert to the brink of his first defeat since Hawaii 2010 at the Erdinger city triathlon up to 2km before the end
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ASC Kronach-Frankenwald, oleeeeloeeee

At the weekend there was a regional league competition in Trebgast. So far, and due to a lack of staff, our team for the second division is identical to that of the regional division. So this time we went to new shores again ... at least as far as the competition formats are concerned 😉

Saturday In the evening sprint triathlon was announced with slipstream clearance. Easy Peasy, I thought. Well trained the day before, I'll rock the child. Punctually at 5 p.m. the starting gun was fired at the Trebgast bathing pond. There I immediately experienced the biggest difference to the normal triathlon, swimming !! Because almost without exception these athletes are all good at it !! I'm by no means the best swimmer, to my displeasure there was of course still a Neo ban at 15 degrees outside temperature. Well, with a really terrible performance in the water, for which I should actually be ashamed, I came out of the water clearly in the back quarter. Maybe Chuck Norris has been beating me up the last few days, at least my arms felt like pudding.

Anyway, get out of the water and into your cycling shoes! After a 10-minute lactate shower under full load, I drove up to the first serious group and now, after a short break, tried to sprint to the next one. In the meantime, a huge group had formed right at the front, with almost 40 athletes who played more or less bike tourism.

Further back with me it took some persuasion to persuade the athletes on board to go to the Belgian roundabout. In the end we did quite well, and together with Bernd Hagen and others, I drove to the second transition area around 1:30 after the leading group, which also included my teammates Franky, Silvester, Stephan and Sebastian.

But the running went really well, I felt I overtook 30 people. Although I started as the last athlete in our team of five, I was able to cross the finish line with one of the fastest times of the day, but still as a 3-man ASCler. Overall, our result was ranked 5 out of 12. Here are the results: http://www.moenchshof-triathlon.de/tri_ergebnisse.htm

Sunday
The next day at 9:30 a.m., we plunged into the swimming pond again, but this time to do a super team sprint. If you should ever hear these words together in one sentence, beware if you are traveling the longer distances. This combination doesn't bode well 😉 A team competition over 400m swimming, 8km cycling and 2km running was on the program. The first of the respective teams first completes the route before handing over to his second teammate, who in turn completes the entire route, etc.

All in all, a fun competition format, albeit a bit too swim-heavy for my conception. As if the organizer had read my mind, the following happened: Five minutes before the start, the swimming distance was suddenly extended to 700m. Where can you get something like that or are there no rules against such arbitrariness? You can't change the routes as you please. Next time I do a time trial, I don't tell people at the beginning it would be 20km and secretly laugh into my sleeve when the turning mark comes after 30km!

So it was of course clear that this was not going to be a triathlon, but more of a swimming competition. Just make sure we don't get each other wrong, I have nothing against swimming, on the contrary, it is just right for triathletes to be good at swimming too. And I myself work hard to make sure it gets better and better. For us, the Kronach “racing horses” with the strong cyclist legs, that was of course rather suboptimal. Nonetheless, we gave everything, even swimming worked much better for me than the day before, on the contrary, hold on tight, I also overtook competitors in the water !! In the end we came in 6th place, see results above.
Not to forget, of course, the services of our girls from the ASC:

nice start to the week!
krelli