| Busse Davis Alfes Drake VanHuis Pelka Ripley Kehoe Bax Healy-B Rothenbaum Stowe Healy-C Sokoloski Schneider Trella Hoover Steenrod Pellican Varner Walkotten Zimmermann Grandchamp Jackson Bustion | 51:30 53:14 53:15 53:35 55:04 55:23 55:29 56:30 56:52 56:52 57:14 58:00 58:10 58:20 58:36 59:32 59:39 59:47 60:00 60:05 61:14 61:58 66:16 67:20 73:05 |
Results are in for the 2007 Captain's Biathalon - and the winner was - A FRESHMAN. Paul Bussee cruised through the 4 mile run - 1 mile swim - 1 mile run in 51 minutes 30 seconds - nearly 2 minutes ahead of last year's champion Bryce Davis and freshman Pat Alfes. Newcomer Michelle Pelka led the way on the women's side, edging senior Caroline Kochmit.
That's right, there was no Open Water Swim this year. With morning temperatures hovering around 40 degrees and the Lake Michigan down to about 66-67 degrees, we cut out the lake swim - though the participants didn't discover that until they hit the turnaround point of the run. We told them they'd be running down to the lake and that we had fresh towels for them waiting when they got out. Instead they met alums Casey and Betsy who gave them the good news.
Bussee was an early favorite - considering he was a state qualifier in cross-country and has been 4:43ish in his 500 free. He paced with the early leaders until they were just past the football field. Then he picked up the run and left the pack in their trail. Pat Alfes tenaciously held onto Bryce, managing to pull even as they got onto the track, but Bryce out sprinted him to finish second. Kyle Drake was twenty seconds back. He likely would have been faster had he woken up sooner. You see, Kyle overslept a little and in his rush to get to the pool he forgot to bring his shoes and ran the entire race in his UCSC flip-flops.
All in all, it ranks as one of the best biathlons. It was great to have our women's team there along with a handful of alums. It was also helpful to have some 60 swimmers there to help change the pool over for the afternoon's high school meet. Yet another changeover came later when, after the meet, we set the pool up for long course practice.