CB&I Triathlon Race review

The first triathlon of the season is in the bag and we have a lot to cover. Brand new bike with lots of features and plenty of memorable experiences.

Let me start out by saying once again, my new Cannondale Slice is amazing. I got the bike one week before the race and only had three casual rides on it before the race. This is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do when "training" for a race, but what else are you supposed to do when you don't have a bike? My previous PR at the CB&I was a 19 mph avg on the bike, but this year, on the new bike, I averaged 21 mph. I guess you really can buy speed when it comes to the bike.

The swim course is the story of the week. The CB&I triathlon has only been around for 7 years, but in that time it has grown to one of the most popular races in the state. The bike course is flat and fast, the run course is wide open and takes you through the beautiful upscale East Shore residential development, but the swim... oh the swim. The swim leg is the one aspect of this race that appears to have a limit to the amount of improvement it can sustain. The distance of the swim is constant with that of any other sprint... 500m. The course itself is a basic out and back that is more than manageable and provides great visibility of all participants to spectators on the shore. The water, however, is the one big question mark. What is in the water? Who knows? This is what I'm trying to find out. There are all sorts of rumors floating around, and you can't participate in the race without hearing chatter about the water quality. I've heard these conversations since 2006 when I started racing CB&I (coincidentally that year the race was turned into a USAT sanctioned 5K due to the rain and nobody swam that morning). The rumors about why the water quality is so poor are actually kinda funny. I've heard everything from excessive fish waste, duck waste, and community sewage draining into the lake. Who knows, maybe they're right... I doubt it, but how does the average triathlon fan know for sure that they're not literally wading into a toxic cesspool? If you have hesitations about wether or not you should expose yourself to a possible health hazard, how do you put your mind at ease? Information is the only way you can make a responsible decision concerning your own health and safety. I sign waivers for haunted houses every Halloween because they tell me "Somebody WILL jump out and scare me... and if I don't touch anyone they WON'T touch me" It makes me a bit nervous however, to sign a race waiver when I haven't even been informed about what's in the water. Willie Fowlkes is the race director for the CB&I triathlon and kindly responded to my initial response to this issue of water quality. He states that Lake Woodlands is, in fact, a "non-contact" body of water, but this is a result of a community association guideline, not necessarily a safety measure due to poor water-quality. He references the TECQ in his email and simply provides the following in regards to contents of the water, "The level of reading we have received for fecal matter and e-coli have been below the standard in which they measure if a body of water is deemed a safe body of contact." This aroused my curiosity even more, and I visited TECQ.net to see if they had any reports available for public viewing. What I found out was pretty interesting. TECQ only classifies two bodies of water in the entire state of Texas as "non-contact" the ship channel and a section of the Rio Grande in El Paso. The TECQ references these two bodies of water when it goes on to say this, "Contact recreation is assigned to all water bodies, except for a few discussed below (non contact recreation.) Full support of the contact recreation use is not a guarantee that the water is completely safe of disease-causing organisms." So by saying that Lake Woodlands meets the TECQ standard for recreational use does not actually mean that it is safe to swim in after-all.

I am told that the water is "safe" but my experiences tell me otherwise. In 2007 I completed the swim course and acquired an ear infection in the days immediately following the race. In 2008, my goggles fill up with water and I ended up with an eye infection shortly thereafter. I did not race in 2009 (due to an injury) but a buddy of mine did... he swallowed a bit of water and became so sick that he lost about 9 pounds on the Sunday after the race. And this year, the same buddy, cut his foot on one of the many exposed zip-ties on the exit mats and ended up spending close to a week in the hospital due to a bacterial infection in the blood-stream. So you can tell me that the water is safe, but my experience tells me that might not be entirely true. If these illnesses are purely coincidental, then they are a strange coincidence in-deed. The only way a racer will be able to make an informed decision before participating in the race is to be aware of what the acceptable standards are, and subsequently informed of the present findings of the body of water in question. In my opinion, this is the burden of the race organizers... much like posting a course map, or sweeping the gravel from the turns of the bike course. It's due diligence.

I am looking forward to seeing if I can beat my time next year, but I haven't quite convinced myself that it's worth the risk.
Hooray for springtime and "fresh" water swimming.
Soulrider