Ben Collins

I still haven’t written a race recap for the Portland ITU Pan-America Cup. I may just not do it. Here’s the short version, which is really the only version I have to tell:

I swam hard. I thought I was doing really well until I realized that the group I was leading on the right side was actually about 15 people behind the V that had emerged on the left. I tried to get into the mix with the lefties and (unlike Matt Chrabot who had a gutsy race) I never quite caught up to the leaders. I was around 10th or 11th out of the water. I ran though transition, mounted my bike, took about ten pedal strokes and pulled off to the side where i handed in my timing chip. As you probably know from reading the blog, my knee has been bugging me since the beginning of September. I told myself if there was any sign of pain I would drop out in hopes that extra recovery would allow me to do Scott Tinley’s Triathlon and Treasure Island. So when my knee was starting to bug me during warmup I realized that the day was likely to be short. I just wish I had a better swim.

Kevin Collington also had a great race, and his recap is worth reading. I decided not to do Tinley’s.

I found my cat this week as well. He is dead. I wrote a biography of Troy, but it’s more for me and I’m not planning to post it. I picked up Troy from the animal shelter in Harlem back in 2002 while I was a student at Columbia. He lived in a house with 14 swimmers and was the coolest cat I’ve ever had contact with. He was only 6 years old. I really loved my cat, and I miss him a lot. My family laid him to rest under the tree outside my bedroom. It was the first tree he ever climbed, though by that time he was well versed in climbing fire escapes and walking from brownstone to brownstone on ledges.

Courtenay Brown also has a cat. He’s named “Kitty” and hates Greg Remaly. Courtenay (on the right) was in Portland for Age Group Nationals and stayed in the room next to me with her friend Maija (on the left). Both are cool people. Greg retired from Triathlon is and is also not doing Tinley’s this year. Greg’s cool too.

Aaron Scheidies is staying here for the weekend. He’s a lot of fun to be around, and pretty funny. Yesterday he took a bus to University of Washington where a sorority girl (Aaron and I agree that we’ve never met a bad looking girl from Delta Gamma) read his text book aloud to help him study for the Physical Therapy Boards. He lost his wallet on the bus and was stranded in the University district with no money, no credit card, no ID and a dead cell battery.

When Aaron came home he woke me from a nap to tell me he was either going to punch me in the face or I was going to do 1 mile repeats with him on the track. I chose the track.

I heard it’s good luck to say “rabbit rabbit rabbit” as your first words of a new month. I’m not sure where that comes from, but will somebody wake me up when September ends?

Sunday I raced in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. It was unusually hot before the race, which had me a little nervous, but as a storm approached the heat dissipated a bit, so by the time we started it was below 90 degrees.

The swim was a beach start into Okanagan Lake. (as a geographic aside, Okanagan Lake is 60km long, and is home to the Ogopogo.) I stayed with the leaders for the first lap, but lost feet on the second lap, and fell back. I really like leading the swim, and this is the second time I’ve missed the front pack. Basically I either need to start swimming again, lose the ego, or – more likely – both.

So out of the water I was about 35 seconds behind the leaders, but still ahead of the chase pack by enough that I came out of T1 having to decide if I should sprint to the people in front or wait for the people behind. I started off strong, but realized there were only a few in front of me, and a lot behind. I let them catch up and we ended up catching the next group a lap later. The course was six laps with one big hill on each lap (8% for 600m), and not many technical corners. At the end of the 2nd lap we were in a group of about 10 guys, with three more 40 seconds ahead, including Daniel Wells and Brent McMahon. We finally closed the gap on the fifth lap, and the pace came to a halt. We had minutes on the rest of the chase packs, so there was really no incentive for anyone to ride hard.

  On to the run. 4 flat laps around the waterfront park. It was really nice not to run out and back like I have at almost every other ITU race I’ve done. I had frozen this water-holding neckerchief that my mom gave me, and put it inside my hat in T2. It was in case it was 100 degrees like the day before, but I figured that since it was there I might as well use it. I think I heard fans making fun of me for my red neckerchief, but it really did work to keep me comfortable.

I was a bit nervous about the run, since my training before the camp was a bit inconsistent, but I was able to hold a steady pace and beat almost half of the people in my bike pack. I ended up 8th overall, which earned me 116 ITU points, and will bump up my world ranking over 100 places. Hopefully that means better start position at the next race!

Here’s Dave Messenheimer and me. He always seems to have great advice for what I should have done better during the race, which makes me wonder why he was watching me instead of the three guys that beat him.

Pictures are worth way more than words.

Left: Greg Remaly, Me, and Chris Lieto in front of the Base Nutrition Green Machine after the Mt. Diablo Time Trial.

Right: Greg Remaly spends most of his time away from home talking to Courtenay Brown.

Left: I took the BART back to San Francisco after the race.

Right: Tracy Bucholski took me up to twin peaks to show me the view,  but it was so foggy we couldn’t see anything and so windy I was  almost blown off the hill (left).

Right: It turns out robots are allowed to stand in public without clothing. That is so not fair.

That’s all the good pictures from the weekend. Today I started playing with my Garmin Edge 705, but ended up with a flat tire five miles from home and no spare tube/bike pump. I called my dad, who came out with a spare wheel to hand me and a frame pump, but when I tried to fill the tire on the new wheel it actually lost air. My frame pump apparently doesn’t work, so after about five minutes of trying to figure it all out I had two flat tires and was lucky to have a ride home. My theory up to this point was that flat tires only happen when you expect them (and therefore bring repair tools). This was the first time I’ve had a flat that I was not prepared for (after many many many many miles of unprepared cycling.), and hopefully it’s my last. I also got a new pair of Rudy Sunglasses – the Zyons – and a new helmet – the Rudy Project Kontact+. I’m not sure yet if the helmet looks better than my old one, but it’s way lighter weight and more comfortable.

Sunday morning I awoke to the smell of fresh oatmeal. My host family, the Rosens, were up before me, and Anna (a wonderful cook) had boiled up a fresh batch of my prerace meal. After getting used to cold oatmeal before races, this was awesome, and it set my mood for the day. It would be my first Accenture Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon! I was excited.

At the race site I set up my transition area, then discovered I had 40 minutes before I needed to be on a bus to the ferry dock, and it was still more than two hours before the event. A warmup didn’t make a lot of sense, so I just watched everyone else and soaked in the scenery.

The next two hours went by quickly. I sat on the boat talking to James Cotter and Dave Messenheimer. Before we knew it I was back exactly where I had swam a couple days before, only this time I was armed with a new Blue Seventy Helix wetsuit, and the company of about 75 other professional triathletes.

I dove off the side of the boat, and found the water nice and cool. It felt good. Lengthened my stroke I found myself in the front of the group far more quickly than expected. I used the landmarks for spotting and tried to go straight. Before I knew it I was at the marina with the first pack. I was 6th across the timing mat, but probably 4th to the beach. It turns out cold water can make your legs cramp when you stand up!

The 1/2 mile transition run was enough to warm up my legs, but as Matt Chrabot and a few other people cruised by me I realized I was losing most of the advantage I had gained in the swim.

Onto the bike, I wasn’t sure how hard to push the hills. The run was looming in my mind as an unknown, and my pacing strategy was to stay on the conservative side. I finished the bike leg wishing I had laid it on a little harder. Still, I had fun. The descents are fairly safe on this course, though the corners look sketchy. The biggest problem I ran into was that the people in front of me would brake hard for corners when they didn’t need to. It was hard to get around other cyclists. I was unsure if I had picked the right bike by bringing my Beyond Fabrications Blink TT, but I ended up spending quite a bit of time in the aero bars, and had no problems with cornering. The STI levers would have been helpful, but I don’t think the TT bike really hindered me.

I started the run expecting it to take longer than normal to find my rhythm. Hills require a slow cadence, which makes it harder to transition to a high run cadence. I barely made it to the half mile marker, however, before I realized that some of the pain in this transition was non-muscular. Earlier in the week I had bruised my heel. I’m not sure how. It may have been a botched flip turn, or a misplaced foot on a fast downhill. Despite the cushy sole of the K-Swiss Ultra Natural Run shoes, by the time I started running down the dirt path in Crissy field I had shooting pain in my heel, and started thinking I should probably not push my luck. About the time I decided to drop out, I looked up and saw the Golden Gate Bridge ahead. It was beautiful. A perfect sunny day for the race. “I’ll just run to the first hill and see if it gets better” I told myself. The first hill was at mile two. My foot didn’t hurt less, but I was running slow to keep it from hurting more. “I’ll just see what if feels like going up this staircase” I egged myself on. It didn’t hurt going uphill (on my toes), so I kept going. Pretty soon I was at the top of Lincoln Rd, just after mile 3. Running uphill didn’t hurt, so I gradually started going faster. Then it flattened out and started going down. Fast. It hurt, so I started walking right as Kevin Collington caught me. He flew down the hill while I shuffled. I stopped at the Clif Bar tent, thinking damage control was the best option. I had seen the beautiful part of the course, and it wasn’t worth delaying my recovery. Unfortunately, the other half of my brain kept talking, “why are you such a wimp? You’re not even going to finish?” and the first voice chimed back, “you know you are pretty close to half way, and they’re not going to drive you back.”

Then I remembered the sand ladder and got back onto the road, shuffling down the steep path. On the beach I stayed in control, so when I hit the sand ladder I was ready to haul.

I crossed the timing mat and charged up the sandy incline. I passed three people going up. Climbing kept me off my heel, so it didn’t hurt at all. This was the only time in the entire race I really   let loose, and it felt great! My time up the clif bar sand ladder, 1 minute 38 seconds, was the fastest of the day by 13 seconds. Andy Potts was the 3rd fastest with a 1:52. After that I ran hard to the summit, finally feeling like I was racing, then quickly had to start my shuffle again as I descended back to Crissy field. I managed to have a great experience, but I’m looking forward to racing at my potential. It’s really frustrating to know I could have gone faster.

Andy Potts and Leanda Cave repeated their victories. That’s pretty impressive.

They may be the best at escaping prison, but I’m proclaiming myself the Super Clif Bar Sand Ladder King!

Our weekend in Seoul was great, and a large part of that was due to the mistakes we made. By we I’m referring to the American athletes, Steve Sexton, Dave Massenheimer Chris Tremonte and myself - though the mistakes can all be traced back to me alone.

After the race we headed off to a America Town. The actual name escapes me, but it was exactly like China town, only in Asia, and instead of selling Chinese trinkets they sold American trinkets that had been manufactured in Asia. There was a ton of American clothing, toys (probably containing lead), and US food chains like Subway, Outback, Starbucks, and McDonalds. The last of which made Sexton quite happy, as he had been hoping to find a McDeoux the entire weekend. We probably would have skipped the McDeoux, but I was in desperate need of a urinal. Going in was a mistake. There was a woman that looked like a character out of Saturday Night Live (huge granny sunglasses, frilly skirt and stockings, crazy hair that looked like a wig….), and she was staring straight at us. At first I thought she was just waiting for someone. Maybe she was surprised to see Americans in America town. Wrong. She left, we sat down to share some fries, she came back and found us and stood and stared. It was not even remotely subtle. When we left, he followed for a few blocks before Steve made our intentions quite clear by yelling "RUN!!!" and bolting into a crosswalk. She followed us onto the opposite sidewalk, but left us several minutes later. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet gotten over feeling bad about taking random pictures of people, so I have no photo to help my description. (read this as foreshadowing for later photos).

Later that night we found ourselves in a back alley in the northern part of Seoul. We were pretty hungry, and decided to try a small restaurant with a half dozen well-dressed people sitting outside looking and sounding merry. Ok, I may have made the initial suggestion, but the other guys did go along with it. We ordered whatever they were having, using the pointing method. It was a large wok with fire under it that sat right on the table. What we pointed to looked like a bunch of vegetables all stir fried with some kind of meat. What we got was some kind of meat that none of us could identify - at first. I took a bite and started chewing. It didn’t seem to work. This meat was like one of my dogs chew toys, no matter how hard I bit it would resume its original shape. I tried and tried, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Chris - also trying to chew - proposed an answer as to the type of meat: "I think it’s tripe" - more chewing - "What’s tripe?" - "it’s intestine." "oh…" Finally the taste of the meat in my mouth got to me and I gave up, lifted a napkin when the store owner wasn’t looking and spit it out.  Dave and Chris both swallowed theirs, Steve had gone looking for more American food - I was beginning to think Steve was smarter than the rest of us.

Monday morning the four of us agreed that finding a pool to swim in would be a great idea. I had talked to the Aussies earlier and found out that there was an indoor pool about 2km from the hotel. We decided to jog there, but it wasn’t until we were too far to turn back (across the street) that we all realized a) a pool asks for money, and b) "about 2km" is not a very specific set of direction. basically, we were jogging into the unknown with no intention of paying for our mistakes.

After several wrong turns asking twice for directions we ended up at the Worlds Gym, where there was no pool. Luckily, a man in the lobby knew where it was and offered to drive us there. He was an actor in what he described as Seoul’s version of Broadway. He seemed very excited to test out his English, and we were excited not to be lost. It was perfect. We exchanged emails, and he agreed to email us, which has yet to do. Hopefully he does, so I can have a Korean pen pal.

We showed up at the airport early and Steve, Chris and I had about 90 minutes to wait before boarding. Chris made a couple of comments about matching couples that I ignored, but the third time we saw a matching couple I couldn’t deny that this was in fact a strange trend. With 60 minutes left I started photographing all the matching-outfit couples, and there were TONS. I’ve had to set up a photo album online to show this. It’s amazing.

After getting in to Seoul Friday night and feasting at the "Broadway Diner" (right below the "Yankz and Mettz Grill") on imitation American food, consisting of butered Atlantic Salmon (quite far from the Atlantic), mussels, sushi, sashimi, kimchi, bread, meat balls, korean bbq ribs, rice, fried rice, azuki bean rice, rice rolled in bamboo shoots - in other words, not very American, but certainly not Korean.

Shortly thereafter, we hit our pillows at mach 6 and didn’t move for another 10 hours. We awoke to  breakfast that consisted of the above, minus the ribs, and with the addition of eggs and dumplings (out of 25 dishes, maybe 5 were different from dinner). Not real exciting, but maybe they had leftovers to get rid of.

Eager for adventure, we put our bikes together, and set off for the race course. about a mile away.

The river was buzzing with people. thousands of locals were playing games, dancing, riding bikes along the path, skating on a concrete speed-skate track, playing music, walking, talking, eating, and enjoying the haze of the warm and humid day. Within the last week spring had turned to Summer in Seoul, and as the rain quit, the temperature rose steadily.

What freaked me out was that a good portion of these people - enjoying the weather, the park, their friends.. - were wearing face masks to protect them from the thick smog hanging over the city. The race pamphlet told us that the river was known around the world for its "length and girth" (inevitably the source of a great deal of humor), but the only thing making it appear wide was the thick haze that grayed the opposite bank. I’m sure we were breathing more than most of the park-goers, yet we were the ignorant ones without respiratory guards.

At 1pm we met for the race briefing. I was amazed at how well the Korean Triathlon Union had organized the event. It seemed every detail was taken care of. Throughout the weekend, we would discover that this is typical of Korean culture. They don’t plan in an anal retentive way - they just think about who they are planning for, and the guest always seems to come first in priority.

Finally, we were allowed to swim in the river - though the Aussies and Kiwis chose to find a pool. The water was cool (~65 F or 18 C), but with the heat of the day it was a real struggle to slip on my old Blue Seventy Helix Wetsuit for the first time of the season (Greg already has the 2009 version, but I have yet to try it out). By the time we hopped in the water seemed far too hot for neoprene. Despite some floating garbage, and a little debris, the 27 month cleaning program the city had done with the river seemed to have been a success. It was far cleaner than my expectations.

The only strange part of the 2 lap swim course was that there would be a yellow lane line connecting the buoys. I figured this would make drafting easy, but the full effects were not realized until race day. As for Saturday, a nice but uneventful welcome dinner finished the nice, but uneventful day and sent us into another deep coma. (well, it was a great night’s rest for me anyway, Chris had a sinus infection blooming and spent much of the night spewing phlegm.)

If you really can’t wait for me to post about Sunday, check out the results. The swim was miserable, the bike was awesome, and the run was fun. The course was completely flat, but as much as I hate to admit that wasn’t a true 10k time, I don’t think Thompson ran a true 29:30 - the course must have been short.

Right now I’m curled up in bed (back in Seattle) with a stomach bug I got on the airplane. My fever is dropping, and is almost below 100, and I haven’t visited the porcelain gods in about two hours, so I’m hoping I’ll be better by tomorrow - certainly before I leave for San Francisco on Wednesday. Please forgive me for not having written more, I need sleep.

Here’s the big advantage of buying a bike from a small company that sells directly and keeps tabs on all the bikes it sells. Beyond Fabrications is awesome, and this story makes that obvious.

Last Thursday I proved that triathletes should never contest a sprint. Especially not at a Thursday night crit, when there’s nothing on the line. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I crashed hard and slid on my side across the finish line at the Seward Park Crit last week. I was making my pass for a hopeful win. The leader was to my right, and another guy on my wheel was trying to pass on my left. I’m not sure if the guy on my left got his bars under my bars, or if they hit my side, but my wheels didn’t stay under me. As I was sliding I looked back and curled into a ball hoping nobody would hit me. About five or six bikes swerved and made it safely around me, and then a guy sprinting (maybe with his head down?) ran square over the top of me and my bike. My poor Beyond Fabrications Radius Carbon frame took the full weight of the impact. Like a carbon secret service agent, my bike spared it’s life for my health. The frame is totaled. Done. Cracked in three places.

It’s pretty obvious where the other guy hit, just in front of the seat tube. That crack is the biggest, and caused two smaller cracks at the other end of the top tube and down near the bottom bracket. I must not have been thinking clearly because it took about four people insisting I not ride home for me to finally give in and call my buddy Peter to come pick me up. I’m pretty sure I would have a multi-piece bike had I hit a single bump on the 20 mile ride home.

While waiting for Peter I called up Jim at Beyond Fabrications and explained what happened. "Jim, I have bad news. I crashed my bike at a local Crit, and I’m leaving next week to go race in Korea."

"Ok, I can get you a crash replacement in the mail tomorrow," Jim’s response floored me. "You’ll have a bike no later than Monday."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you need a bike to race, so we’ll get you a bike. It’s bike racing, crashes happen, you’re not hurt, don’t worry about it."

Jim is my hero. My new Radius Carbon showed up Saturday morning! Jim paid the extra money for overnight shipping!

The results say I was DQed, Disqualified, and yet somehow went a 1:54. The time doesn’t make sense to me because I never actually finished.

Here’s the rundown.

8am - Wake up, eat breakfast, read my book, watch some CNN (only english channel.

9:30am - notice the surf is quite a bit larger than the past couple days, and the faces are probably 10ft on most sets.

9:45: check in my bike to transition, find out the race has been delayed 30minutes, which puts our start time at 12:20pm. I jog back to the hotel and look at the weather report to see that our race will be somewhere over 90 degrees - I start drinking the coldest water I can find.

11:10: i do a short swim warmup in the hotel pool, then a short bike warmup on the hotel stationary bike.

11:50: I jog to the race site, drink more cold water, do a short warmup and discover that 8-10ft faces are quite a bit of fun to swim through.

12:20: the gun goes off. I’m the third guy to make it through the set that’s coming in as we charge the water. Ahead of me is Matt Chrabot (he’s excellent at getting under waves, thanks to beach lifeguard experience) and next to me is someone else I didn’t recognize. We closed on Matt slowly, then the unknown guy disappeared in the last 500m. I came out of the water about 8 seconds behind Matt, and quite a bit ahead of the rest of the field.

Bike: Matt waited for me, and together we extended our small lead to 2.5 minutes over the 40k bike. The course was an out and back with hair pins at either end, completely flat, and entirely in the sun. I tried to conserve energy, but the heat started catching up to me, and heading into the run I could already feel my system shutting down.

Run: Matt took off with a vengeance, and my only hope was that if I poured enough water over myself then maybe I could cool down and get a second wind. After the first lap I was in pain, but hanging on. Then my stomach started revolting. I began to throw up almost continuously, and none of the water I tried to get in me would stay down. At the 5k a pack of six men passed me, putting me in eighth. Soon more runners started coming by, and though I tried, I wasn’t able to match their pace.

The third lap I hit a wall, then spent the next 3km trying to recover. That’s when things get a little blurry. I remember a guy coming by me on the last stretch. I tried to go by him as the finish shoot came into view.  The words, "Everyone’s hurting, just go," were repeating in my head.  Then my legs gave out. I was on the ground, and the words, "forward progress is only allowed on two feet" were repeating in my head. (the ITU rule is that you cannot crawl, summersault or otherwise make forward progress during the run.) I tried to stand up, but my legs betrayed me. I grabbed the fence and tried to prop myself up, but my legs wouldn’t extend below me.

By this time there were several people trying to help me up, trying to get me medical attention. I fought them off as best I could ("no outside assistance"), but then I must have passed out because I remember nothing else until I was being carried from the ambulance into a hospital with the Canadian Team Doctor standing over me directing a team of medics, Mexican doctors, nurses, and my Dad. I had no idea where I was. I couldn’t remember my name, let alone what city I was in (or country for that matter). Somehow I remembered that Matt had been winning, and though I couldn’t remember his last name, I asked if Matt, the American, had won. He had, which made me pretty happy. At least somebody gained from our cycling heroics.

I was in the hospital for a couple hours. the diagnosis was Heat Stroke, and if it weren’t for the Candian Doc, I would probably have been in much worse shape. I’m supposed to stay out of the sun for a few days and take it easy.

For the entire week leading up to the April 13th race the wind blew through Miami’s South Beach with just enough force to create white caps and choppy surf. I also felt really flat the whole week. Yet at some point during the eight hours I was sleeping Saturday night, all that changed. The water was glassy along the shore. The wind had gone, and so had the weight in my legs. I felt fresh, and excited (I was excited all week; you don’t have to feel great to race great, but it helps). Standing next to three of my personal heroes along the beach - Dara Torres, Chris Lieto, and Macca - I waited for the canon to start my 2008 season.

Bang! A quick sprint to the water and I found myself gliding ahead of the pack right next to Chris McCormack. I pulled ahead just slightly and at the first buoy I was able to gap the rest of the field. By the end of the 1/2 mile swim I was leading the race by 22 seconds.

I pushed hard on the bike right from the start, and maintaining my initial enthusiastic pace proved to be no small feat. On the second of four Causeway crossings in the 18 mile bike I saw a long shadow gliding over the pavement beside me. It was attached to Chris Lieto. I picked up the pace to stay with him as long as I could, but over the final ten miles I watched five bike lengths grow to ten, and then Chris’s silhouette continued to shrink. I came into T2 just over a minute behind the four-time Ironman Champion, and another two minutes ahead of Macca.

Off on the four mile run I wanted to be conservative. It was my first run race of the season, plus, having spent most of my training hours in Seattle, I wasn’t sure how the heat and humidity would play into my performance  At the first mile marker I looked at my watch to see I had run a 5:10, that felt like a 5:30. I held that same pace for the next three miles (though each one felt much worse than the previous), and finished the race just 45 seconds behind Chris Lieto, and two minutes ahead of Macca. Later I found out that my run was the fastest of the day! (Thanks in no small part, I’m sure, to the K-Swiss Ultra Natural Run shoes I wore).

It was a pretty awesome experience to race against two of the sports most seasoned competitors. I was confident in my swim and cycling abilities, but I’m most proud of the run. It’s no sub-30-minute 10k, but I’m getting to where I may soon call myself a runner without my nose growing ten inches.

For now, my focus is on the Mazatlan ITU Pan-American Championships on Saturday.

Tomorrow is my first race of the season, the First Annual Nautica South Beach Triathlon Presented by Toyota.

Tonight was a pasta dinner for all the athletes, hosted by Macca, which was the first I’ve had the opportunity to meet the champ. The pasta was unremarkable, but it was still fun to meet a bunch of athletes from all over the country. This race raised over $70,000 for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and I met some of the  big contributors to that.

K-Swiss had a booth set up and the new Ultra Natural Run shoes were selling like hotcakes (I dish out cliches like samples at Costco). I’ve been training in them the past six weeks, and I’m in love. Since I started running my feet have looked like Shrek’s: all blistered with black and blue. The K-Swiss shoes are the first running shoes I’ve been able to wear without having to grow calluses where the shoe rubs funny. Well, I liked my first pair so much I wore it out by running in it for six weeks. I had a newish pair of 2130’s (Asics), so I switched back for a couple runs. Black and Blue all over again! They just didn’t feel as smooth to run in as the K-Swiss.

Katya Meyers and I did a clinic at the race expo today where we talked about transitions. We stood on stage and asked for questions for the crowd of nervous looking racers, and did our best to calm their nerves.

From here on out, I’m going to nail all my transitions.