Palm Beach Bike Tours

Ken Steinhoff spent more than 40 years in the ink-slinging newspaper business where he had a license to be nosy. Palm Beach Bike Tours renewed that license in his retirement years. The blog is ostensibly about cycling, photography and using GPS technology to figure out where you're going and where you've been. It's really an extension of his lifelong effort to tell the stories of "ordinary people doing ordinary things", which sometimes turns out to be pretty extraordinary. If all that sounds like something in which you might be interested, please sign up for the PBBT RSS feed to keep in touch.

Palm Beach Bike Tours regular rider, Scott Maulsby, completed the 2008 Tropical Triathlon in Lake Worth this weekend in 1:25:46. In August, he finished the Loggerhead Triathlon in 1:27:06, so he has improved 80 seconds in a month. Actually more and more on that later.

There was much controversy to this year’s Tropical Triathlon. The swim portion was almost canceled because of bad weather (aka Hurricane Ike). Even with the green light to swim, many were slowed by the choppy surf. The bike route, too, was an issue.

Bike: 11 Miles or 13 Miles?

Tropical’s bike portion was to be 11 miles. Several competitors rode the 11 miles then looked at their bike computers, got confused and stopped for clarification or simply cut back. As more and more participants turned early, others followed. Race officials stopped those who returned after 11 miles, put them back on the course and instructed them to ride 13 miles. By all accounts and dozens of odometers, the bike portion of the race was 13 miles not 11 miles.

Scott was one of the many who lost time by following the advertising and other riders instead of the course. So, while the clock shows just an 80 second improvement, had he not run into the 11/13 problem, he might have finished even quicker.

Lesson Learned: Follow the Course

Follow the course, not your odometer.

Full results for the Tropical Triathlon are available online.

—Matt

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