Rutger finishes in third position
but is not satisfied with his race.

Oceanside, California, Saturday April 3 -  Today Rutger Beke and his training partner Gerrit De Pauw started their 2004 triathlon season with Ralph's Half Ironman. Last year, Rutger finished second here after Tim Deboom, so there are high expectations: at least back on the podium and hopefully more... It won't be easy though, since, compared to last year, the competition is definitely stronger with a.o. Luke Bell, Francois Chabaud, Michael Lovato, James Cleveland en real half-Ironman specialists such as  Craig Alexander and Peter Clode.
At 6.40 am a cannon is fired to start off the male pro race. After a few cloudy days, the weather has turned sunny again. Very soon Rutger ends up in a second swimming group. At the head of the race, Luke Bell and Matthew Clark are able to escape. They get out of the water  about 40 seconds before a group with Peter Clode, Chabaud, Cleveland and Alexander. Another minute later, at about 1.45 minutes from the leader,  Rutger goes into the transition zone as the leader of the second pack, in the 11th position.
The athletes now start their 90km bike leg through the military camp Pendleton.  Rutger takes off vigorously and, after 25 kilometers, has moved into third position, two minutes behind Bell and a surprisingly strong Francois Chabaud, who already bikes in second position at 1.20 minutes. In the next 15 kilometers, Rutger slowly closes the gap with Chabaud, but, after one hour of biking, he suddenly gets into trouble. He feels without further energy and very quickly looses a lot of time on the first two athletes. Nevertheless he manages to preserve his third position up to km 75, when he is passed by Clode. At that moment he is 4 minutes behind Luke Bell, now immediately followed by Chabaud.  At the end of the bike leg, Bell enters transition just before Chabaud. Clode arrives 4 minutes later and Rutger manages to keep his fourth position, albeit with a  6 minutes delay on the leaders.

It does not get much better during the run: Rutger can develop his basic running speed, but any acceleration on top of that seems impossible.  After 5 km, Bell is stricken by cramps and thus Chabaud takes over the leading position. Clode starts to weaken and is passed by Rutger around km 8 and later by many more. He will not finish the race. From now on, there is not a lot of change anymore.  Finally, Chabaud takes the victory with an advance of about 1.15 minutes on Bell.  Rutger manages to preserve his third position and finishes 6.15 minutes after the winner. Behind him, Alexander  passes behind Lovato and finishes in fourth position.
After the finish, Rutger classifies this race as the weakest Ironman performance in his career. He is unable to find an explanation for his spectacular weakness during the latter part of the bike leg. Something to further analyze with his trainer Pieter Timmermans!
The good news though, according to Rutger, is that, despite his weakness, he still has been able to get onto the podium. He also says that he prefers to  under perform in this California Ironman, rather than in Hawaii.

Gerrit De Pauw starts at 7.17 am, together with his fellows age-groupers. Last year, Gerrit won his age-group race and finished 15th overall.  This year, he wants to do even better. The swim leg goes on very smoothly and afterwards it will be found that he swims in about the same time as Rutger. During the race these comparisons are impossible though, since all athletes start in many waves at different times. Anyway, Gerrit feels good and performs quite well in the bike leg, which he finishes in about 2 hours and 31 minutes. He continues his excellent performance with a runtime of about 1 hour and 20 minutes. All his times are in line with those of most professionals and thus Gerrit not only wins his age-group (18-24) again,  but he also finishes 9th in the overall race, as the first non-pro. A fantastic result!!