This was the friendliest group of racers I can recall — everyone talkative and eager, because we were all so grateful to be racing again after the pandemic. All that training and solitude, the uncertainty of whether and then when races would start again and in what format (panting through a mask for 5+ hours?), and now a reason for all that training, not just that theoretical mirage of a race “in a few months”.
A lot of people also drove down from the NYC area, but I met folks from Denver and Indianapolis, and the roster showed a guy from Santo Domingo. Everyone was hungry to compete and to be with others who understood that this is more than a hobby.
Quite a few of us were also humbled by the lack of racing and training challenges — and I was among them, having lost 4 weeks in May with an Achilles hot spot, back strain and cold/asthma flare-up. (Vaccination is great, but stop wearing a mask and we get colds again!). With that loss of fitness in mind, my new coach Steve Redwood (with whom I had trained for the duathlon in April, but this was our first triathlon) put together a soberly realistic rather than ambitious race plan: 40 minutes for the 1.2 mile swim, 172-190 watts (20.1 mph) on the 56-mile bike ride, and 10 minute/mile on the 13.1 mile run. And since he was open to discussing and my tweaking it a little, I bought into it.
The Eagleman in Cambridge, Maryland is a 4-hour schlep from the New York suburbs, and even longer if you use a GPS system that doesn’t give spoken directions to announce that you missed the exit off I-95 and adding another 1 ½ hours. But race buddy Nicholas Moore and I overcame that adversity and finally got to our AirBnB Friday night where Ralph our host awaited us, a few miles from the race start.
Registered, swam and checked out the course on Saturday.
Sunday morning, got up at 3:30 a.m. because of all the fueling, prepping water and nutrition bottles, stretching (respect those back muscles!), and needing to arrive by 5 a.m. so we would have a good parking spot and not need the shuttle buses. Flood lights lit the transition area and the lines for the portable toilets were long but manageable.
Though we swam the day before, there was no swim warmup area. We lined up by expected swim results; I opted to be on the fast end of a slower group. (I asked two woman in their early 60s if I was in the right place: “40-43, or 37-40”? One replied, “Depends on my mood…”) Found Nicholas, we chatted with the other guys around us, and after a 6:40 gun time, we started at 7:05.
The water was beautiful: only slightly salty (it’s the Choptank River, not far from the ocean) and 73.7 degrees. I had been on the edge of wearing a full-sleeve wetsuit, because it’s faster, but ¾ through the race (my watch vibrates every 500 yards) realized my legs were warm and was glad for choosing sleeveless. The start and the buoys were a bit of a mosh pit, but definitely better for my attitude to overtake than to be overtaken. Swim felt strong, really dug into the pull and a nice tempo. I realized that I prefer to breathe on my right side because I swim harder (and better) breathing on my left side, so that’s what I did the whole race, keeping an eye on those buoys in the big counterclockwise “rectangular” course (as Nicholas and I observed the day before, that last leg was a lot longer than the first one). Spot on my goal time for the swim: 40:20 minutes (2:05 minutes/100 yds). Probably my slowest, but felt solid, and always grateful to have finished an open water swim! 28/98 for my AG…
T1 (1st transition) was problematic: Though we all got help getting out of the river and running up an asphalt boat load-in ramp — after standing up, my knees buckled and I promptly fell! Cut up my left elbow and knee, and needed a volunteer’s help to get up again because my calf cramped. I figured it gave me some grit (indeed, embedded me with grit) but I had a hard time running across the park to my bike rack, breathing heavily after the fall, sitting down to get off the wetsuit and get on socks and shoes. So, a very slow T1 (first transition): 4:58, more than 2 minutes slower than the AG leader…
Still bleeding as I got on the bike (a racer smiled and said “took a spill?”), so a little grimacing on the elbow pads to the aero bars, tooled through town and down some tree-shaded small streets before we hit the big open fields, marshes and bay views. Around 7 miles in, a guy on the side of the road is SITTING by his bike and I shout out “you have what you need?”, and he says “No,” and I start to slow down to help, almost causing an accident (didn’t realize how close behind me other riders were) and I took off again: if someone is so unprepared that he doesn’t bring a spare tire, it’s not my job to save him.
T2 was much less eventful than T1, but I’m out in 4:30; lost another 2 minutes to the AG leader, so clearly I need to improve on this.
Stuck with my plan (172-190 watts— no more! Don’t do it!), was passed by a lot of younger riders, figured I was killing it or more likely my age group’s leaders were just way ahead of me, but surprised how many people I passed just poking along. Either they were great swimmers, or had burnt out early by starting the ride too fast. Towards the end my power dipped into the 160s, so pushed a little to bring it up to goal speed, enjoying the 5-mile lap announcement on my Garmin consistently coming in at or below 15 minutes (20 mph, in contrast with my hilly home turf, just trying to break 20 minutes/15 mph). It’s flat (only 236 feet of elevation) but we hit a few “invisible hills”: the winds off the ocean and marshes. Nicholas and I had driven most of the course (and gotten lost doing it! There’s a theme here…) but the part we actually covered was familiar and comforting. By Mile 45, I was getting tired and glad 11 miles later to get to town with lots of spectators and move on to the run. Bike results: 2:47, 20.15 MPH, 36th/98 for my AG.
Ah, the run. This was as always the moment of truth. Folks later complained that it got warmer, and there wasn’t a lot of shade, but I didn’t notice it: I was just trying to do the first 3 miles at 10:00 min/mile, and I felt I was just trudging along comfortably but shocked that the first mile was 9:18, next was 9:12, at 4 miles I was 8:56, and worried that I had been way too fast because mile 6 was 10:28, mile 7 was 10:54 (though even the leader lost 1:30 minutes and 2:00 minutes there, all those short street turns at the turnaround on this two loop out-and-back).
At Mile 8, I almost turned to anyone next to me to say “we’re in new territory now: I haven’t run more than 8 miles the last three months” but I kept it to myself — so many people were confessing that because of the pandemic they had failed to keep up with the training; but hearing those apologies DURING the race was not helping anybody.
Back to trudging at what felt like the same speed but by mile 9, I was at a faster pace, 8:53. I had been sipping from my water belt but slowing down to get cups of ice to throw down my one-piece tri-suit/pants (wake up!). By mile 10, Steve had told me just to race, and to enjoy counting all the people I pass. Sure enough there are a lot of folks walking, but I am NOT among them, and by the end of the run I’m net 30 (guy blazes past me just at the finish line) and my last mile is an unbelievable 8:47, despite all those injuries I had a negative split!
Finished the run in 2:01:59 (a 9:17 average), a lot better than the 2:10 we had predicted.
Went to the medical tent and got my Swim Out lacerations cleaned up…
Afterwards, I remembered the difference between recovering from a long triathlon and recovering from a marathon. With a triathlon, it hurts to go up stairs as well as down stairs….
Finished in 5:38:47, 29/98 AG, 472/1,550 OA. Among my slower 70.3s, but faster than I expected, and so glad to have not only finished but to have chosen and stuck with the path of a controlled ride and a negative split on the run. Really felt ownership over this one, instead of the race happening to me.
Call me a hermit, but I really hadn’t thought about triathletes as a community before this race. I mean, each of us is training and even racing on her own, in isolation, doing our best and competing against the next guy; after all, it IS a race. I suppose there are teams, and I suppose I’m on a team (though I’ve not met the other members of TriEndeavors — hint, hint, Coach Steve!). And as my family will sadly report, whenever I meet another triathlete, I’m eager to talk with them (as if they are from my village, and understand what it’s like to be between races). But like a theater production, you can’t race alone; you need the race to exist, the roads closed or at least planned out, the police and volunteer support, and the athletes. This was part of coming out of 16 months of darkness. A new opportunity for gratitude.
So: Onto the next race — another 70.3 in August!
