Most of my training and racing is a solo effort, so I was excited to corral together a “team” and rent a place for six of us from Hastings on Hudson and neighboring Dobbs Ferry. I rode up with Alan Golds; we had planned to swim in the lake before registering, but the traffic was awful and we didn’t get there in time. The other guys – Kevin Carlsten, John McDermott, Zander Reyna, and Tom Andrews –left even later. Still, we managed to meet up at John’s Café in Woodbury, Connecticut, for excellent pasta, salad and beer. (Being fanatical triathletes, we knew it was important before a race to cover each of the major food groups.)
The Airbnb wasn’t quite what we expected – they changed the price on us minutes before we arrived because we were more than four people; John and Tom (both of whom are straight) had to share the king size bed; the second air mattress didn’t show up; and Kevin never got sheets or blankets for the couch – but at least it was clean. I was pleased to get 6 hours sleep. The morning prep went fine – Bullet Proof-style coffee and a hard-boiled egg – but the traffic approaching the single lane that feeds Quassy Amusement Park was jammed. So, setting up my transition area in only a half hour was a little more rushed than I would prefer. But, time enough for pre-race photo:
The lake was chilly but not too cold in a full-length wet suit. We had a few minutes to “warm up” in the shallow, crowded, roped-off area where the athletes had to take turns swimming short laps. The wave for Alan and me (“50 and over”!) started at 7:15 a.m. We walked down to the sandy edge – “just toes in the water!” warns the race director – and I take my chances lining up in the first row on the far right side, sticking with my rule of thumb to go in front of the guys deliberately holding back, but try to avoid the real Swimmers, like Zander (who had trained towards joining the Olympic swim team when he was a kid; thank God he’s in a younger age group) so I won’t be crawled over.
The airhorn blasts and we’re off! I run a little but quickly dive in to start swimming (never having learned that run-and-dolphin swim thing), I’m a little too choppy at first but then getting used to panting while breathing every stroke, and manage to find my rhythm after a couple hundred yards. “Strong is smooth, and smooth is fast,” Coach Debi had reminded me by text the night before. I manage to draft off someone that seems to be slightly faster – that is, I have to push to stay in his wake, but not pushing too hard. I stick with him until the first red buoy – hooray, the first “third” is done! – but lose him as a slower guy from the crowd rounding the buoy interferes. Although I’m initially worried, because drafting makes the swim so much easier, I quickly realize it’s just as well: most of the crowd seems to be veering way off to the left and I appear to be straight on target for the next yellow buoy. The lake water is fresh, even tasty. I chug along feeling calm and steady, a good mindset in the open water. A kayaker on my right side shouts out to me, and I pause to hear her say again, “pull harder with your left arm.” I have to assume that she’s a swim coach, so I take her unsolicited advice (just like during one of my New York City triathlons, someone from the sidelines told me to use my arms more), and switch to breathing on my left side, which is less comfortable but I know makes me pull harder . We round the second red buoy, and I feel that brief elation at passing swimmers with different-colored swim caps, which means that I am overtaking people who started five or 10 minutes before me, but also (I know, I know) are simply not very good at swimming. In any event it feels like there’s a slight current pushing me toward shore, that friendly phalanx of dolphins I’ve felt at the end of other races, which real or not makes me optimistic and brings me to the orange triangular buoys that mark the finish. The sandy shore has arrived.
Doggamn. I just survived another swim.
Running up to transition, I realize my feet are totally numb. The good news is that I can run across the gravelly, broken up asphalt to my bike without feeling a thing; the bad news is I can barely manage to get my bike shoes on while standing up. It’s a decent transition, I guess, though I’m concerned that a number of bikes from my rack (that is, those belonging to my fellow age-groupers) are gone, so I have to catch up…
It’s chilly in a wet sleeveless tri suit (supposedly 54 degrees), and even colder in my shoes: my barefoot feet stay numb throughout the 25-mile ride. Not sure if toe covers around the shoes would have helped, but I will keep it in mind for the future. I had bravely decided the night before not to wear my heart rate monitor (which is just as well, because I didn’t realize until after the race that I had left it at home), but McDermott was right: now that I’m racing, all data, other than how much farther until the end of the bike ride, is simply distracting. Especially because my Garmin, programmed to beep every 5 miles on the bike, beeps very early to report… that my Garmin thinks the entire race is a run, and is beeping every mile. (“Wow, I just ran a 2-minute mile [30 mph] on that downhill section!”). And beeping randomly every minute or so. Pretty annoying.
As predicted, the bike course is pretty challenging, and the hills are steep, particularly uphill at mile 10, and I’m just trying to stay in a sustainable groove — which might be slower than optimal, but I’ve scarcely had any riding the last three weeks (having just returned from the week-long INTA conference in Barcelona, where I could only run, and having been extremely stressed preparing for and closing on a difficult transaction a few days earlier) and I’m listening to my body and riding MY race. Water seems depleted only halfway through, but realize the straw needs to be shoved into the sippy cup some more. Sipping from my UCAN ‘super starch’ from the bottle cage behind my saddle, munching EAAs every 30′, and a single, yummy Huma gel (not just high carbs, but chia seeds! It MUST be good for me!) seems to be adequate nutrition for a relatively short race. The amazing Vadim Shteynberg passes me on the bike, I pass him, he passes me again and leaves me as if I’m standing still… Admittedly, I’m depressed when I see him coming back towards me, thinking it’s an out and back course that I hadn’t anticipated; actually, the road loops around back to the park entrance, so outgoing and home-bound riders share the road briefly; but, in any event, he’s clearly kicking my ass… (At the finish line, he beats me by 2 minutes; but he’s also 10 years younger; okay, I can handle that.)
Back to transition, and this time my freezing feet are a problem: I simply cannot get my running shoes on without sitting down. So, that’s a lousy transition. (Turns out, my transitions were faster than the guy who came in ahead of me…)
I stumble out the gate, down the chute, onto the road, and remembering Debi’s advice: start with what feels crazy slow and easy until you start feeling the run, and fortunately the course veers into the shade and flat and then downhill, so I’ve found a groove (though this is clearly not going to be better than my best run, but did I tell you I was at INTA just over a week ago?) and up,up,up the hill towards me come the elite racers, finishing as I’m starting the run, and OMG are they strong, the apparent winner managing to smile and thank me as he keeps building on his lead… (He wins in 2:05, a full 5 minutes ahead of 2nd place, of COURSE he was smiling.)
I however will have to face that up hill, and a few minutes later mile 1 clicks past (only the first?!). I grab a shot block with caffeine, the miracle drug, from the back pocket of my one-piece tri suit (I had put the factory-sealed package into the so-tight pocket before the race began, and they had survived the swim and the bike) but no more EAAs. Mile 2 clicks by (OK, this is going to be a long 6 miles, did I really sign up for a Half Ironman this summer??), and then OMG mile 3 just doesn’t stop going up, I grab water sips and spit out the rest at each rest stop, but I’ve slowed to 8:39 minute miles. Sometime during mile 4, I realize, I can finally feel my feet (the numbness from the cold had lasted the entire bike ride and half the run), and then it’s flat and sometime after mile 4 and the downhills begin, and I seriously pick up speed: downhills are great because so far I don’t have knee problems, and today I’m careful not to over-stride (to avoid the calf cramps I got during March’s half marathon).
And then it’s flat, but I know mile 5.5 will be that ridiculous up hill again, and here’s where this became a good race: the temptation to walk was huge. Huge! I mean, I had passed a few more people than those who passed me (ooh, there’s a tall bunny in a white and red tri suit, let’s see if we can chase him down…), but I hadn’t seen anyone in my age group the entire run… So, whoever was ahead of me is staying there, and whoever I had passed is staying behind me unless I slow down a lot, and these last 10 minutes wouldn’t really matter. Right? Who cares, really? But I realized (every race has a realization), I’m not here to get on the podium and anything less means mediocrity — I am here to race as fast as I can, today, right now, dig deep, go harder, it won’t kill me to go harder. And I manage to slug up that hill at the same pace, and the flat top comes much quicker than I expect, and i have enough juice to accelerate the last bit onto the road, and into the grassy chute inside the amusement park I actually manage to SPRINT, and I am at the finish line, hands up for the cameras in a victory salute, that was everything I could do, Today. That’s all I can do: my best, today.
And the results are far from my personal best over this distance, and this was a particularly hard course, but they are solid: finish in 2:47:56; 7 out of 22 for my age group (so, top third), 110/354 for males (again, top third), 129/574 overall. Swim in 27:59 (1:56 min/100 m), bike in 1:24:01 (19.75 mph), run in 49:48 (8:02 min/mile), T1 in 2:54, T2 in 3:17. And check it out: I had increased my average speed on the run from 8:31, picked it up to 8:02 by mile 5, and KEPT that speed despite the uphill through mile 6 (accelerating to 6:36 the last .2 miles). I was 9/22 for AG after the swim, gaining a slot during T1, gained another slot during the bike, and I was right, I never saw the other AG guys during the run (because 6th place was in 2:42, 5 minutes ahead of me, and I finished 5 minutes ahead of 8th place)!
So, this was my personal best, for today. First tri of the season. And I am ready to get faster.
