What does it take to beat a top professional Xterra Triathlete? This past weekend, I attempted to find out the answer to this question by forming a relay team with 2 other Birmingham locals. Right now I’m focused on XC mountain bike racing, so I figured with two other single sport focused local athletes, we could easily shake up the professional podium.
Since I’ve recently spent more time on cycling podiums than in the pool, I decided to go with another former college swimmer for the swim leg. In addition to swimming in college, he still swims 2 -3 times per week and competes in road triathlons. The runner was a local distance runner who ran in college, and regularly runs 10k’s in the low 30 minutes range.
The 1500 meter swim started off with a mass start and the lead field of professionals quickly gapped all of the amateurs. At the end of the swim, we were about 4 minutes down on the top pros. With fresh legs and no equipment to fumble with in transition, I took off strong on the 20 mile bike and managed to pass a number of amateurs and a handful of pros. Unfortunately, the gap was too big to close, and the top 5 pros still managed to out split me by anywhere from one to six minutes! Our runner faired a little better, and managed to hang within a minute of the fastest pro run splits in the 5.5 mile trail run. At the end of the day we ended up behind the top five pro men in sixth place overall, and 9 minutes off the lead.
So what does it take to beat a top professional Xterra Triathlete? Maybe I’ll figure it out next year… One thing I did learn is that the top professional Xterra triathletes are phenomenal athletes who can outgun most single sport amateurs (and some professionals) at any of the three disciplines.
Omar
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