This was the shortest multi-sport race I’ve done: 2.2 mile run, 12 mile bike, 2.2 mile run. As a French ultra-marathoner friend once wrote, “The shorter distances. They are more violent.” So the strategy (other than to get out of bed at 5:15, not crazy early in the day but late enough in the season to think, “Really? Do I really have to do this?” And that, my friends, is why I register in advance of race day: it forces me to get up and do the damn race…): to run really as fast as I can for the first run, imagine I am only riding the bike leg, and then with a slight pause to “find my legs” off the bike, go maximum effort again. Privately, I was shooting for 7:00 minute/miles, and 20 mph on the bike. So, that’s just over an hour, 1:10 to be precise, without including the two transition times.
Nice, small bunch of people: some first time couples on their mountain bikes, some experienced and older and FAST people. Bumped into Danny Secow, who I’d met at Westchester Tri last year.
I’m glad that I’ve aged out from your age group: he’s unbelievably fast, and ends up in this race taking third place for his class. (But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
The race itself is relatively uneventful, except that the initial uphill brings my HR all the way to maximum and it’s a short out an back on the east side of the Park, and I’m just pushing hard, and it feels good, and I manage to average 7:08s. Though I am largely ignoring my watch, avoiding the distraction and potential worry about metrics, it beeps at the end of each mile, and I peek, because nothing wrong with getting encouraging news.
The bike is more challenging, not that The Hill is so terrible, but because by 8:40 a.m., the Park is filling up with people: joggers and bicyclists and strollers and dog-walkers. So even though I had been concerned about getting swept up in the danger of the other racers going too fast and too closely together, the danger turned out to be the pedestrians/civilians. Almost everyone were fine with my calling out “On your left!” or more frequently (because of the way the no-cars traffic seemed to work) “on your right!” Some even thanked me. Well, one did anyway… And one woman yells, not yet seeing me, “Oh, really? I don’t friggin believe it!”
This is why I love New York.
Bikes get pretty spread out, though I did leap frog with one young guy in a black shirt and tights (even though it was a gorgeous sunny day, temps at 58 and went up to maybe 70), the downhill around the public pool is pretty technical and scary, and I was afraid if I wasn’t careful, I’d end up overshooting the transition area and do THIRD lap by mistake. Bike: 20.8 mph.
The run was rough, only because I wanted to go fast as I can, and I had pushed pretty hard on the bike, and on the way back on the last mile I’m thinking “Wherever I am near the podium, it won’t make a difference now: whoever’s ahead is way ahead, and whoever’s behind is… Wait, that guy who was running towards me and was about to turnaround … He could catch me.” So I am doing what I can as hard as I can, and I GET TO THE FINISH LINE.
(Short race, great to have a short race).
And the second run is in 16:25, or 7:24 per mile. So the average of the two runs is 7:14 min/mile – almost as I had been hoping.
Final time, 1:08:18. More notably: Second Place for my Age Group!
This is turning out to be a good season. Thank you, Coach Debi.
2/14 AG, 54/290 OA