Catriona Takes the Win!
I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong.
Cat’s day in Lanzarote started well enough. She had a good swim, and was quickly away on the bike, moving towards what I imagined would be a crushing victory. Cat was extending her lead with every pedal stroke, and her training data indicated that she would almost certainly break Paula Newby-Fraser’s course record by a considerable margin…
…except it didn’t go down that way at all.
You see, there was the small matter of a broken chain and the lack of the proper tool to fix it.
We, of course, didn’t know this. Her husband Richard and I saw her drop off the race radar, and then word came over race radio that she was out of the running. We frantically exchanged text messages. Had she crashed? Had she gone off course?
The reality was far more surreal. One third of the way through the race, Cat was sitting under some trees having a drink and hoping that the neutral service car would show up soon. She would wait almost fifty minutes, according to her SRM bike computer.
We were much relieved to learn that she was ok, and was back on course. Word on the street was that she was going to drop out, however.
It’s a good thing text messages are slow going from Lanzarote, Spain to the People’s Republic of New Jersey. Richard sent me a message from T2: Should Cat run, or take a pass, save her legs, and race in a few weeks time. I called him immediately. “It’s too big a risk, Richard.” I said, “Tell her to bag it.”
“Yeah, Phil.” He said, “We’ll, here’s the thing. She’s already up the road. Said she’s just going to take a wee jog.”
I raced to the computer, brought up the splits online, and started plotting in Excel. What was it going to take for her to podium? I plotted her competitors speed, and how quickly they were slowing down. I plotted a best case scenario from Cat’s training data. Richard continually gave me updates from the road, and I worked on the model. By 10k, she’d already taken a few minutes out of the women up the road. “Tell her to keep going!” I said, “By my calculations, she can still podium!”
Cat Salutes The Crowd
Then, things started to get even more surreal. The splits kept coming. She made up 10 minutes. Then twelve. Then more. It was like watching a cheetah run down gazelles. I called Richard, “Look, mathematically, she can now win this. If trends continue as they are, she should catch the leader somewhere between 3k and 1k to go.”
Richard was quiet long enough that I thought the call had been dropped. “Let’s just hope for the podium, shall we?”
“When you see her next,” I said, “Tell her I said to haul ass!”
The rest is history. Cat took the lead with less than a mile to go, winning the race and setting a new benchmark for what we thought was possible in long course triathlon.
When I finally got Cat on the phone, she was beside herself with laughter, “So what do you think about that, then?”
I replied, “I think you need a new coach, Cat. I told Richard my advice was to bag it!”
“Har har!” she sad, “You know me better than that!”
