Race Reports

Silverman: Macca vs. The Man

My daughter paid our share of triathlon “community rent” on Sunday by pulling a five-hour shift on the Silverman bike course. We were hoping to be on station in time to see a head-to-head battle between 34-year-old newly minted world champion Chris McCormack and 53-year-old, six-time world champion, Dave Scott in their well-publicized duel on the half-distance race ( 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, 13.1-mile run).

As luck would have it, we got posted about six miles from T2, near the last of the big-ass hills that the cyclists had to face (there was nearly 10,000 feet of climbing). Forty minutes into our shift, we saw the armada of support vehicles round the bend and lo and behold, it was Macca barreling toward us at a steady clip.

Ten minutes later, was number two, then three and four…all pretty well spread out. In the distance, I saw a bigger rider on a bike coming along a decent clip. As he drew closer, it could only be one man: Dave Scott.

As I later discovered, Scott was only four seconds back from Macca coming out of the water. Macca’s lead grew to 24 minutes by the time Scott passed us on the bike.

In the end, Macca finished in 4:22:50 and a smoking 25:52 swim. As I’m writing this, his other split times are not available.

Scott finished in 4:52:05.

Amanda and I also took an unofficial count of what bikes were being used in this year’s race. Very interesting results. More on that tomorrow.