This was planned to be my longest race of the season, fit my schedule, and was in a scenic part of Pennsylvania where I might have visited my cousins if their schedules had fit, so I didn’t even look at the course until just before the race: 1.2 mile swim in a big, clean lake; 56 miles through a lot of rolling hills and some short steep ones; and 13.1 miles of running four loops around a ridiculously hilly course. (Add ’em up – 70.3 miles – a.k.a. a Half-Ironman® distance). Ignorance was bliss…
Actually, I almost wasn’t able to race. On the Tuesday before the race, I “supplemented” a rest day (mistake no. 1) with kettle bell deadlifts, which I belatedly remembered are different from kettle bell swings (mistake no. 2) and hurt my lower back. A tweak in the morning, a growing awareness in the afternoon, hard to walk by evening. Coach Debi recommended YouTube videos to stretch my QL. Man, they WORKED. Did it again Saturday morning, texted Kevin Carlsten (whom I had convinced to do his first 70.3), that I’d be ready by 2 pm, and we were off!
Small race – 750 people including the Olympic distance (oh, that would have been lovely…), 250 in our race. Set up in transition- and couldn’t find my racing glasses! Oh, well, my regular glasses would have to do. And couldn’t find my baggy of Ucan powder for electrolytes and carbs! Oh, well, I had a plan B: EAA crunchy tablets, more Huma gels than I really needed for both the bike and run, and chewable Saltstick tabs. So, overstuffed the Bento box with fuel (need a bigger one, even if it’s less aerodynamic!) hustled onto the line for the outhouses, went to the warmup area of the lake (a very shallow, very weedy lagoon – useless!) and shivered waiting for the race to start. But: bumped into Rob Martzen, fresh from IM Lake Placid, and Jan Swenson, there to cheer on Fran – and Kevin again, with whom I buddied up for a bizarre swim start: two at a time, “two seconds” from the pair ahead of you, sitting and pushing off from a dock!
The staggered beginning around a big, counterclockwise rectangle made for an immediate realization: very hard to find someone off whom I could draft. Because if I could catch ’em, they were too slow for me. And if they could catch me, I’d better be ready to hustle to stick with ‘em.
I started comfortable and smooth, and building into a strong, deliberate, faster groove, sleeveless and loving the 73 degree water, breathing to the right on the first leg to avoid looking into the sun, alternating sides on the second and third leg, breathing right on the fourth. And passing people, not knowing if they were my age group, but feeling (maybe for the first time) that I was in my element, for the whole swim. Felt like I had a current behind me, lifting me forward. Wasn’t prepared to climb a ladder onto the dock, and couldn’t find the rungs for a moment, but stumbled onto land, hooray! Time, including stumbling across the transition mat while peeling off the top of the wetsuit: 34:50, or 1:49/100 meters. Solid, but more importantly, comfortable in a way I hadn’t known.
Pretty good transition (3:09), considering that I couldn’t get the wetsuit off my ankles… Because I had registered late (and was racked with those who picked up packets on race day), I couldn’t estimate how many in my age group had already left. So I run out as best I can, assuming I’m in the middle of the pack. (Mistake no. 3.)
Ah, the bike. We had been told we’d be on the Poconos Raceway, but I hadn’t realized until we’d been riding a few miles that they meant a NASCAR raceway. Pretty cool to be on such flat, well-paved tarmac, made to go zoom, including the banked roadway on the way back. We get back on the regular road, played leap frog with a woman almost my age, passing her, she passes me, back and forth, until I failed to shift to a low enough gear to deal with the turnaround at mile 10, and she takes off. I kept planning to say, “Damn, you’re fast!” but I didn’t catch up with her to say so until after the race finished…
I knew it was rolling hills, net downhill the first 38 miles, then a short sharp ascent in the village of White Haven, and the balance of 18-19 miles (it’s a slightly long course) is net uphill. I had started out pretty much alone, passing a few people, feeling strong, but I had found early on that my injured back really ached when I climbed, so I was staying in aero position as much as possible. I dropped from averaging 20-21 mph to 14-15 mph going up the steep sections, trying to keep my heart rate within zone 2 (131-141), working my nutrition, drinking most of my 3 bottles of water (OK, that may have been overkill and not worth the weight). The roads are beautiful, the weather is amazing (breezy, starting at 69 degrees, reaching to 80), shady under the trees, beautiful sunshine.
But folks starting passing me. A lot of guys didn’t have their age marked on their calves, so I was assuming that the older-looking ones were my age group, and feeling like I was being repeatedly dropped by the competition. (Another mistake…) Every 70.3 race, I am reminded how LONG 56 miles can be, and was pretty spent and ready for the change of a run by the time I finished: 3:04:39, or 18.55 mph average. Not my fastest, but solid, especially with that terrain.
Get off the bike, sit down to change shoes, and stumble out of transition area. A terrific T2 – only 1:29.
But, my back, my poor back: I can barely walk! I hobble, then walk, then jog, trying to get back to that good feeling I had the morning before, and amazingly, after around a ½ mile, it feels okay. However, it feels exhausting. I finish Mile 1, and I am ready to be DONE. And it’s 12.1 miles to go…
Four, brutal 3.2-mile loops. Steep hills out of the resort area (there’s an older, heavy woman sitting in a chair at the top of the first hill, cheering us on, God bless her), I’m averaging 9:30s, more hills, a flat section, then downhill where I’m averaging 8:10s (there’s a volunteer running in place, dancing and waving her arms as she shouts “To the right, to the right!”), to a turnaround where we cross the timing chip mats, back past the dancing woman (by the second loop it becomes unbearable to hear her…), up again, a short out and back to add mileage to the Olympic 10k course so our race will add up to 13.1, up, up, up a long hill, back down past the crowds near transition….
4 times.
By the second loop, I’m not only walking the water stops, but also walking the steep hills. I wonder about quitting, but I stop to pee in an outhouse (losing another 2 minutes, but what does it matter, I’m so far behind everyone…. Another mistake), and stumble uphill. Kevin and I pass going in opposite directions; I had thought he had passed me on the bike, and that he was almost done, but he was on the second loop as well.
By the third loop, I really want to quit, but manage to get through it. As I finish THAT loop, I overhear a spectator say, “I mean, if he finished 6 miles, he could have friggin’ WALKED the rest of the race!” and realized that someone else had quit, it wasn’t me, and I only had one loop to go. Kevin catches up, I gasp that I might walk the rest of the way, he goes on and walk/runs as well, I walk a lot more, depleted, passed by a guy in a green felt, pointed cap (dressed as either Pinocchio or Peter Pan, I’m not sure – but it’s like the NY Marathon, you know things are bad when the guys in costume pass you), and when I ask him, he confirms that he’s in my age group. So I am sure that I am struggling for 6th, 7th or 10th place, and I lose my give-a-damn. (Two more mistakes…)
So by Mile 11, I am walking as much as running, but I pick it up at the top of that last long hill, and stumble some more, digging deeper to reach that sweet finish line. And I have survived perhaps the hardest run I’ve ever known, and my back is intact, and I finished: 2:05:56, or 9:37/mile, and a total finish of 5:50:01. A good 25 minutes slower than my better races.
And then the shock: 4/13 for my AG, 77/239 overall! I was in 3rd place the WHOLE RACE up to somewhere between Mile 8 and 11 of the run! If I hadn’t made all those mistaken assumptions about being the last in the pack, I wouldn’t have stopped to pee. I might have worked harder, I coulda been a contender and on the podium.
Look, it might not have made a difference – I might still have “lost” to the 3rd place finisher by a minute or two – but the lesson here is not assume, by default, that I’m alone in the race because I’m BEHIND everyone. I might be alone because I’m AHEAD. (And also: 4th place isn’t really a “loss” after finishing a Half Ironman distance.)
Rough race.
Glad it’s over.
When’s the next one?
