What To do When Your A Race Gets Cancelled?

by - Thursday, March 15, 2012

Some of you may have seen on Facebook or Twitter that the DC Tri got cancelled this year because the National Park Service wouldn't give the race its permit.

The DC Tri was my A race for the spring. It was going to be my first Olympic-distance tri and I was pumped about it.


So what do you do when your A race gets cancelled?

1. You call your friend who is also registered for the race and you spend 20 minutes freaking out and dropping many, many F bombs.

2. You go through a brief woe-is-me phase where you throw yourself a giant pity party that your race is cancelled, all your training was for nothing, etc. etc.

3. You get extremely pissed off and decide to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Park Service asking for copies of the permit application, all documents used in consideration and the reasoning behind the final ruling. (Yes, totally putting those journalism skills to good use.)

4. You start looking for replacement races.

Turns out it's really hard to find an Olympic distance tri in June that won't make me travel all over the place.

The only one that comes remotely close is the Philadelphia Tri. It's the weekend after the DC Tri and while, yes I would still have to travel, it would be home to my parents' house.

It's a possibility, but I'm not sold.

I was so looking forward to the DC Tri that I'm having trouble getting excited for a different race.

My friend who was registered with me suggested I just skip the Olympic distance and sign up for the half Ironman he's doing in Rhode Island in July.

I won't lie, I considered it for a hot second, but then I thought of the 56 miles on the bike and that killed that idea.

I'm still not sure what to do. I think a very small part of me keeps hoping it's all bad dream and I'll wake up in the morning and the DC Tri will be back on.

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