XTERRA Camp Eagle Race Report

Bu Circ Toepel, XTERRA Rep

Goat oriented trails.  That is how one competitor described the bike and run course at this new event.  Race Director, Chris McWatters effectively used the trails surrounding his youth camp in Texas Hill country to create one of the most challenging, kick ass XTERRA courses ever.  The course wound through grass fields, roamed sandstone, climbed and descended killer hills, followed dry river beds, crossed a river on a cool wooden bridge before dropping riders down in to ride downstream on the slickrock actually in the river!  The swim was no less interesting as the swimmers climbed a ladder up the dam in the middle taking them from one level of the river to another.  As if the awesome trails weren’t enough, his crew built a bike flyover bridge which the runners had to negotiate about 3 miles into the 4 mile run course.  Over the top Chris!

Jamie Cleveland was the lone pro at this race (I bet there will be a lot more next year!) and he made the most of it by smoking the swim in 14:39, riding the bike in 52:28 and running in 28:12 for a finish time of 1:36:51.  Charles Bisantz from Austin took the top spot for the amateur men finishing in 1:40:07.   Charles run time of 22:27 was second fastest of the day. Kyle Grieser was next in at 1:42:11 partially due to his 31 second transition in T2 and 3rd place was Juan Garcia-Neveu from New Mexico who also had the fastest bike split of the day at 50:29.  Honorable mention has to go to Mike Carter who just missed the podium by 1 spot.  Mike is an XTERRA ambassador and is always a huge help to us at the awards ceremony.  Honorable mention #2 goes to Lance Polloreno who came in 5th.  Lance helped us ensure the run course was marked line of sight and he did an exceptional job of it!  Anyone who got lost on the run had an eye problem.  As in “eye can’t read the sign or see the markers!”

The women’s race was close coming out of the water with Christiane Reetz from Boerne, TX coming into T1 at 19:41,   Pamela Garcia-Neveu from Placitas, NM was only 5 seconds behind her and local girl, Tracy Heathcock another 26 seconds back.  That is the same order they would finish in as Christiane scorched the run in 39:05 for a total time of 2:06:32.  Less than 20 seconds separated the top 2 after the bike as Pamela put in a very impressive 1:06:04 bike split.  Her total time was 2:14:11 and gave her 75 points for her age group win.  Tracy did her best to reel the others in on the run with her 42:03 run but it wasn’t quite enough.  Her solid 3rd place overall finish also garnered her 75 points towards Nationals as she convincingly won her age group. 

The post race festivities included beer and burgers to re-fuel the athletes and spectators after a glorious day in the dirt.  The crew at Camp Eagle is familiar with cooking for large numbers and it appears that BBQ is one of their specialties.  The awards were an innovative wooden X with respective plaques attached and the usual large quantity of free XTERRA gear was distributed to the athletes.  The amount of effort put into making this a top notch event prompted racers like Chris Trevelise who has been racing triathlons for 9 years to proclaim Chris McWatters as the best rookie race director ever!  Congratulations to all the athletes who successfully negotiated one of the toughest XTERRA courses around and thanks to all the sponsors and volunteers who made it happen.

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