To Draft or Not to Draft?

What's up guys? Its been a busy season and an interesting past month for me. A couple races and a couple big life changes later, and I've decided to focus on non-draft racing for a while.

This does mean setting aside the Olympic dream. However, I don't know how realistic that ever was for me, which is why I never really marketed it like some people we all know (YOU know who you are!) And, with non-draft triathlon being such an amateur-focused sport, there are ever fewer opportunities to make a living in it. However, I don't have to travel as much to chase points, and I get to ride my bike a lot more!

I've always compared draft-legal racing to a bar fight: You will probably get punched in the balls and get a bottle smashed over your head, you might throw up at some point, and you'll wake up the next morning feeling like hell. The guy who wins is usually the guy who knows the exact right moment to throw a punch and is a really fast runner.

Non-draft racing, however, is much more like Civil-war style warfare. We will line up in neat lines, exchange southern-gentlemenly pleasantries, and take turns shooting at each other until one side runs away or drives a bayonet into your spleen. No touching of the hair or face. The guy who wins is either from south of the Mason-Dixon line or has the most expensive equipment.

I like that draft-legal racing is less of a gamble, and focuses better on my strengths. Also, I'm not a confederate, I'm not racist, I'm not even a Republican (ha!) but I do consider Robert E. Lee to be one of my heroes. One of the best battle tacticians ever, and his men would've followed him into the gates of Hell.

I've even had the results to back it up. In Austin over Memorial Day, I raced CapTex and came in 6th. All of the work and none of the prize-purse. A week later I raced the PATCO Championships in Dallas, which was draft-legal. There, I found that, like most American elite males, I'm not that well-suited for draft-legal racing on an international scale. And, like most American elite males, I have a huge junior-high crush on Taylor Spivey... After this I decided to take my talents to South Beach like Lebron James and chase either a championship or the money or whatever and focus on non-draft.

Since then, I've raced a couple local races to throw down a tomahawk style dunk and let the local boys know whats up, and I raced Minneapolis last weekend. I did not execute on the swim, but the rest of the race was decent. I wound up a disappointing 11th. This weekend I will race the Kansas 5150, which was not on my schedule until about Monday, but hey, life happens and sometimes you wanna race instead of going to a wedding! I'll let y'all know how it goes! Until then, FOLLOW THE PACE RABBIT!! But you better be 5 bike lengths behind and staggered or that's drafting, which is like a 2 minute penalty...