Race Coverage

Drafting in Detroit...

Saturday, 23 August 2014 00:10

By Heather Lendway (heatherlendway.com)

About a month ago, thinking forward to next year, I had emailed USA Triathlon to find out more about draft legal triathlons as a potential way to get into ITU racing. As a strong swimmer and biker, I may not be the ideal draft legal racing candidate but I didn’t want to write it off. I got a response that informed me there would be a draft legal race in Detroit in two weeks. I was competing at USAT Nationals in a week and planned to race the following Sunday at the YWCA women’s tri, both of which I still wanted to race.

Since I don’t own a draft legal bike, I sent an email to Kevin O’Conner and Hannah Sullivan at Gear West right away. Almost immediately I got a response that they could definitely help me get setup to race. Last minute planning is not my style but within 24 hours I was registered for the race, had a flight and hotel booked,...

car rented, bike, wheels and bike box all lined up. Of course I got Stopwatch Greg a flight ASAP too; there was no way he was going to miss this spectator-friendly race. The Monday before Nationals Kevin fit me on a Felt AR2 with Ultegra Di2 electronic shifting and a set of Zipp 303 tubulars. This bike is top of the line and insanely fast; if you need a road bike I definitely recommend this one (apparently it sold out before it hit the stores too). After getting the bike fit taken care of, my focus was back onto Nationals (see that report here).