Post Vineman

Vineman gets 6.5 RCV legs.

The 19th annual Vineman triathlon rated 6.5 legs from the CompuTrainer real Course Video (RCV) global production crew. The event, in Northern California's wine country, is famous for its scenery and heat. It is almost as infamous for its logistical challenges (aka nightmares). First the good news. Ten years have passed since RCV man first tested the waters of the Russian River at sunrise, with all of those virgin effort memories back in technicolor as the 455 athletes prepped for the Saturday start. The river givith and the river taketh away. Depending on the current the river at Johnson's Beach can be swift or stagnant, high or low, cold or tepid. You just never know. Sometimes it is so low that you have to get out and walk over river rock, an occurrence that propelled me to my best ever IM swim of 72 minutes in 1997. I asked the lifeguard staff about their safety role and one commented that the only casualty last year was scrapped knuckles from bottoming out. Still, it is a beautiful sight to see all the swimmers in the water heading under the two bridges, water steaming under majestic redwoods as the sky turns from deep blue to white hot. And then there is the bike. I think that the reason the bike leg doesn't get the respect it deserves is that it is completely open. That means cars. And trucks. And rednecks in trucks. And rednecks in trucks who don't like to be told by the CHP that they need to slow down or stop to allow four hundred cyclists primary use of their roads. And some of the roads are narrow. And windy. And blind. And over bridges. And across 101 twice, and thru tiny towns, and back-roads. There are some gorgeous wide, newly paved shoulders and just as many snakes (no shoulders). The two loop 56 miles course is as picturesque as they come, making Wildflower look like a desert. If there is a prettier course in California, let alone the West, I have yet to see it. It is fun, challenging and has enough technical sections to satisfy the roadie as well as the tri-geek. The run has gone thru a lot of changes over the years and its current configuration is more utilitarian than esoteric, flatter than the old 'if the bike don't get ya, the run course will' out and back. The finish has changed again as well moving to Windsor High School. Again, more pragmatic than its industrial or winery predecessors, but not as much fun. Russ Pugh has done an amazing job leading this event thru the last two decades and now mostly oversees, turning the directorship to Dave Latourette. They take care of business and have a complete understanding of the complexities of staging a 140 mile, three event race in Sanoma County. The awards ceremony and race slide show have always been fun.

As we have mentioned several times prior, going the Ironman triathlon 3 for 3, is done very, VERY rarely. Vineman, with its beautiful and unpredictable swim and stunning bike leg, get two of the three. The run is boring and the logistics, including hotel and airport proximity, definitely detract, leaving us with an overall RCV rating of 6.5. A big leg for the entry price of less than $300, perfect for Iron virgins. The bike is a 10, and that is the leg we really care about.

ED Note: CT RCV legs are the movie equivalent of stars. A leg being metaphorical to both the limb of interest to bikers and the description of the section of the course that features the bike, e.g. A 112 mile flat course might warrant 5 legs, while a monstrously hilly and technical 56 mile 70.3 might net 10 legs.