The Hamburg World Cup is an awesome race. Run with German precision, the race is usually quite a spectacle for the people of Hamburg (Hamburgers!). Last year an estimated 300,000 people came out to watch the World Champs and it wasn’t much different at this year’s race where I managed to finish 18th. With that I am now world ranked! 77th! However, I won’t say I had the best race of my life. In fact, a little bit more attention to detail could have gone a long way.
As for the course, the swim is usually a wetsuit-legal 2 lap swim, the bike follows a very technical eight lap course through the city, and the run is a flat and fast four lap course. This year, however, the Binnenalster (where we swam) was a balmy 20.6 degrees so no wetsuits!
The race went off at 3:07 PM (as I said, German precision!) and I got out to a quick start. There were only 39 guys on the starting line mainly due to the Olympics being next month, but also because a lot of guys were racing the French Grand Prix taking place the next day. I had decent starting position and got out to a surprisingly quick start. I hit the first buoy in good position and this was when I made my first mistake: Somebody a few meters ahead of me let a gap open up and I didn’t notice. The gap widened and I didn’t see it until they were 30 seconds up! I went to the front of what was now the second swim pack and tried to close the gap with little success. After the first 1000 meter lap I exited the water and struggled up the pontoon before diving in for the second 500 meter lap. I thought I was done for until I finished the second lap and noticed I was out of the water with some very good guys! Brad Kahlefeldt bounded up the stairs next to me and I knew he might be my ticket to the front pack.
Then came mistake #2: I completely botched my first transition. I struggled to get my helmet on. Finally I got out onto the bike and the four athletes I exited the water with were about 10 seconds up. I knew I had to get on and I chased hard for about 5 minutes. I held even with them until I completely blew up. I fell back and eventually found some company (including Steve Sexton and Ethan Brown, my travel buddies for this Euro racing tour). As it turns out we eventually brought back Kahlefeldt’s group of four and our second pack became 18 strong. Then here is mistake #3: I lost track of what lap of the bike we were on. I think everyone in my pack did except Ethan, who attacked on what everyone thought was lap seven (but was actually lap eight, the final lap). He got a decent gap into T2 while I was one of the last into T2.
I salvaged my 18th position on the run by posting somewhere around 33 minutes for the 10k, which combined with a small field helped put me in the top 20 and thus score 3 points in the World Cup rankings! I don’t know my exact splits because I had no chip (although the ITU did fabricate some splits for me on the results).
After the race we had the pleasure of meeting ITU president Les McDonald – he had one question for us: What is the capital of Canada? The answer is Ottawa. But ask yourself seriously – did you know that? Fortunately Steve answered correctly on only his second guess. Apparently Les asks this to a lot of American athletes and our track record for correct answers isn’t very good…
Me, Ethan, and Steve after the race. Les stupides Américains!