Pawling Triathlon

Raphael Bingert 2nd place O/A

Pawling Tri:

Mike Tanzi took the overall.

Raphael finish just behind him in 2nd.

Troy Dean won the 17 and under race.

John Paladini 2nd 18-24M

Mark DeLuccia 1st 35-39M

Saw a bunch of other Team Bikeway member's names in there so great job!

Full results HERE.

Here is Raphael's RR:

After a night of pouring rain and pretty strong winds, the morning did not seem too bad. Rain had stopped, Wind had gone down so It looked like I could keep the wheelbuilder aero disc covers on my 808.
I had been thinking all week how to handle the race knowing Mike Tanzi would be on my back after the swim. I knew he would probably be around 1mn after me on the swim and could run around 1mn faster than me on 5K. So, I had to keep even bike time with him. Not an easy task knowing from his past duathlon results that his bike TT has improved this year.

I knew there were some other good athletes to watch too: Marc De Luccia from Team Bikeway and potentially some other fast racers from the area. You never know who is going to show up!

Here we are at 9am, Marc, Mike and myself from Team bikeway ready to start with wave #1. The swim was short and went well. I could stick in the draft of the lead pack of 3 swimmers at the beginning and got distanced a little bit so did most of the swim by myself.

Came out of the water in 4th position, went out of transition in 3rd place, struggled to put my shoes on the bike because I broke the rubbers holding my shoes before putting my feet on them. Once I finally managed to put my feet in my biking shoes, I could start settle in a good pace.

I passed the 2 guys ahead of me in the first 1/4/ mile and rode ahead. Just before the turn around point, John McGovern was standing at the top of the last hill, wearing a traditional scottish costume and playing bag-pipe. That was kind of cool. I passed the turn around and quickly saw the rider on my tail. It was Mike. We exchanged a quick look. He Seemed determined! I knew he came back on me and expected to have him pass me on the second half of the bike. But I could keep the lead and finish the bike in pole position, under pouring rain.
Coming off the bike, I felt strong muscle contraction in my left calf that  forced me to walk to my rack in the transition area.


I put my shoes on, tried to stretch and started to run on the back of my feet to kind of stretch my calves. I took a wrong way out of transition but was called by Mike who waited for me and told me "common let's go". Really nice of him. I told him to take off and started to run easy. I often experience problems during bike to run transition and knew there was a good chance this went away after some time. And it did before 1/2 mile in the run. Mike was already 100 yards ahead. I tried to run as fast as I could but he still could put some distance between us. I crossed the finish line in 2nd position in 59'43, ~1mn after Mike, cheered by my 3 children, and my wife (hidden under a tree to take shelter from the heavy rain).

Marc crossed the line a few minutes later and took his age group.

Overall, a nice, well organized local race, with friendly volunteers and good post-race meals! It was also amazing to see the high participation from team Bikeway members.