Category: 2017 Race Reports

Initially planned to do this final race of the season with Rivertown elites Kevin Carlsten and Jisk Hoogma, but they wanted to leave later than I did, so to preserve my calm, I went alone. But arrived at the same time, and parked almost next to each other. (They even drive faster than I do!)

A bit of an ominous start: as I check my bag, the security guard (clearly an off duty or retired cop) tells me that my bib number, 1013, is the code police use on the radio when they need backup… Cold start – 36 degrees. Felt very local, hanging out in the loose corrals, supposedly grouped by expected finish times. Another cop (” NYPD Marathon” shirt) notes that my number is the one a cop never wants to use… Stripped off the sweat pants and sweat shirt, but still in tights. (A guy in his later 60s is wearing track shorts and tank top, shivering at the starting line. My money is on HIM, and sure enough he passes me early on. But that’s OK, I’m running MY race.)

Horn blows, I’m near the front of the pack, we’re off around a park and little pond, then off through residential neighborhoods, almost no spectators, a good pace, feeling solid. My goal is to break 1:36 (which I’ve done, although that was 3 years ago), maybe even 1:35, and Coach Debi has told me to run 7:40 the first mile, 7:20s until mile 10 to avoid “blowing up”, then surge for the last 3 miles. Feels like a lot of gentle downhills at the start, but I’m not rushing it. Strangely difficult to measure my pace – the Garmin swings wildly from 6:53 to 7:40 within moments, and credits me for completing miles long before reaching the course markers – must be from the city geography.

So my first mile is spot on; at 5k I’m averaging 7:25s; at 10k, 7:21s (good!); but I’m not feeling the love, and despite reasonable nutrition (EAAs at 25 minutes and 59 minutes, and a gel at 1:07 – reminded by the digital monitors to eat), dropping to 7:40 at 15k (8 miles) and more and more people are passing me.

At mile 9 1/2, my left calf starts to cramp. I am stumbling, and yelling “whoa!” with each potential face-plant, and worried that my bib number is going to be needed (“I need backup!”). In an almost flat course, there’s an uphill, a ramp to cross a bridge, and the lead runners are running along the other side towards me, which means I’ll have to do it twice. At 20k, I’ve dropped to 8:09 min/miles. Kind of cool seeing the World’s Fair globe so close up, but I’m just this side of miserable and I’m not into sightseeing…

(A spectator, clearly another cop, shouts out, “Hey, love your number!”, then turns to explain to his friends. Shut up…). The temptation to quit and walk is rearing its ugly head, because the digital monitors indicate there’s no way I’m breaking 1:36, unless I can speed up to 7 minute miles, but when I try to accelerate the calf cramp gets more frequent (“whoa!”) so faster is not an option. So I slog the last mile or two, not walking, this may not be my PR but I don’t have to walk it. And push a little harder, nothing to lose now! Finish. Thank you. Done.

And I see Kevin and Jisk just after I cross the finish line.

Bottom line: 1:40:14. Not my fastest; indeed, my slowest; but none of the wheels fell off. Plus, among my peers (aging and slowing, alas!) I do pretty well: 5/63 AG, 264/3156 OA, 226/1575 males. And there may be a silver lining – Coach Debi thinks the cramping indicates something is wrong with my form. So, during the off season, I can work on changing my mechanics. And maybe I can still get faster…

Meanwhile, the off season has arrived. Done, done, done.

Three goals for this race in our little village: do a PR; if not, at least do better than last year; and beat my nemesis and inspiration James Condon. (He took first place last year; I took it the year before; I took second and he took third two years ago…). We only see each other at this race, which is full of small children and more casual runners, mostly doing the 5k.

We’re off, heading around the high school, and my target passes me in the first half mile, light blue sweatshirt and long, long legs (“Mr. Condon!” I shout, he laughs), and he quickly gets at least two blocks ahead. My buddy Dietmar, recovered from a great Chicago Marathon, generously runs with me for the first mile, then takes off, never to be seen again.

The second 5k loop on this hilly course is always a challenge, given the temptation to quit and just walk home, but once again Jim Nolan is at the first turn shouting encouragement, shaming me into finishing the race. I’m close to maximum effort, and that light blue sweatshirt is still far ahead, but nothing is impossible and I have that bunny to chase, and I realize that he’s slowing on the downhills, he’s tired like the rest of us and thinks he can ease up when it’s easier, but doesn’t know I’m still there, and I push off harder and let gravity do its thing, and by the end of the second descent I’m close, and as we make the turns through all those short backstreets I pass him a half mile from the end, my neighbors Anthony and Amy are cheering, and an older guy who I always see walkin/ jogging around town is finishing the 5k and says, “9”, must be counting the guys who are in the lead, and I am sprinting to get a safety margin against Condon making a surge, and the Finish Line is mine.

Cross the finish line: 41:49 (to be honest, for a 5.9 miles/9.5 km course). Faster than last year, slower than my best, but I am 1/9 AG (50-59), 8/44 OA. And it’s nice to be the Fastest Old Guy.

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

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 6^th, 7^th or 10^th 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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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?

This was a good one.  I hadn’t done this race since 2013, and it was a good way to get together with my racing buddy Scott Schiffer who lives nearby – or least nearer than I do.  We had dinner at a diner in Fishkill, New York; watched some of the replay from the Tour de France time trial; and I was in bed by 9 o’clock. Got up at 4:30, because no matter how well prepared I am I can’t get out in less than an hour. Drove 15 minutes to Pine Plains, New York and checked in for a very small, very local race.

Only 70 people had signed up, and only 66 showed up, because it was the Sunday of a four-day July 4th weekend, and how many idiots would spend part of a mini-vacation doing a sprint triathlon?  Around 66.

Had a new realization on the way to the race. I was scared.  (That’s not new; bizarrely, after all of these triathlons, I’m always scared to start the race.) So, next I asked and answered, what’s scaring me?  I was afraid of failing.  I suppose a lot of us feel that way; maybe it’s heightened before a challenge (and sprint or Ironman, every race is a challenge; as French ultra-marathoner Emanuelle Jaeger said, “the shorter races – they are more violent!”).  But the new part was realizing:  what would failure look like?  I mean, having survived a few bad races, I don’t think I’d recognize “failure” if it bit me on the butt!  It’s ridiculous. I race and finish triathlons. Would failure mean:  coming in less than 1st place for my age group (as I had done in this race last time?). REALLY?  And coming in after Scott, an excellent athlete who trains virtually every day? REALLY? Or not doing better than the 1:30 I had done last time?  How the hell does that equate to failure?  Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous!

So I realized this was a morning filled with opportunity, with possibility, simply to do the best I could. And really, every race is like that. (REALLY, every morning is as well.)

I arrive at 6:30 to start at 8 a.m.   Call me crazy, but the extra time makes me calmer. I set up in the semi-assigned transition area.  Meet some nice guys, one of whom lends me a race belt (as I later find mine in the car).  Go down to warm up in the l’il  Stissing Lake (so small that motorboats aren’t allowed).  The water is really warm, and I’m tempted to wear my speed suit instead of sleeveless wetsuit, but I am not a capital S Swimmer and need all the help I can get.   Some back stroke, some fast work, some standing around on the beach with a nice bunch on a beautiful day. (74 degrees, whatever % humidity.).

Total of two waves – based on date of registration, not age or gender! – and so informal, we start with a “Go!”

Well-placed, multiple buoys, I’m knocked by a big fella who passes me, nudges me off course, slows down-  someone to get around!  Round the first buoy, it’s only .5 miles in total, I’m going strong but focusing on smooth, breathing every stroke on the left side which feels better for a change, it’s a long, second side of a 4-sided figure, the sun is bright, the water clean, round the last buoy, haul in as fast as I can, run through the lake weeds (ugh) onto the beach, and DONE. 14:34, some 30 seconds slower than in 2013.  Oh, well. But not bad!

Get to the bike, Scott is leaving as I arrive (“I’ll get you, Red Baron!”  No, I didn’t say that out loud), decent transition, out into the asphalt, stumble a little with getting clipped in, and I have a LOT of catching up to do.

Fabulous Bruce Cadenhead in his USAT suit passes me (having started the swim 3 to 5 minutes after I started),  another guy passes me, and I am just pouring it on as fast as I can to catch SOMEBODY, for a moment someone off the bike and fixing his chain is within target distance, but he’s gone as well. I mean, after all my training in heart rate Zone 1, I am in Zone 3, and why not, it’s a sprint, time for everything I’ve got.   I’m cooking along, taking in some nutrition, and at about 40 minutes, I think, shouldn’t this be curving more to the right to be near the starting line?  Maybe an optical illusion.  And:  not a soul in sight, shouldn’t I have a least SEEN some of the 6 or 7 guys who finished swimming ahead of me?  And: it finally dawns on me, this is supposed to be a 2-hill course, but I’m on hill number 5 or 6….  I must have missed a turn.

I slow down, some of the fire gone since I can’t possibly make the podium now, but still in Zone 2.  I wave down a van, asking the driver if she’s seen any other bikes, and she says “yeah, they’re going down Route 82. Hauling ass!”  And it’s a good thing I talked with her, because Route 82 took a sharp right shortly after that, and I went with it, and suddenly I’m on top of a policeman directing traffic to allow other cyclists turn right, ONTO the road I’ve been riding, and these guys are not the elite athletes I’ve been chasing, these guys are slugging along on bikes with great big saddles, and I ask someone in a blue helmet, “what mile is this?” And he answers, “15”.  And I laugh out loud because I’m on mile 18 of a 16.5 mile course!

Perfect for confirming that basic lesson:   I really am racing against myself.  Bike, after 3.2 extra miles and a lot more hills, is 19.8 miles in 1:02 (19.2 mph, a lot slower than the 20.5 of 2013 – but also 1,220 feet of climbing….)

So I jump off into transition, and there’s a goofy tape which I guess is supposed to make us run around the entire transition area in order to “be fair”, and I’m doing the best I can.  Keep it slow the first 200 meters, then pour it on, it’s mostly shady roads, I pass 6 people, one guy passes me (“How old are you?”  “31!”  “You may pass…”) and it’s painful and it’s hard to focus past the “why bother?”  Because I’m not going to beat anyone who’s ridden 3 miles less, but I want at least to RUN faster than I did four years ago, and each mile of the 3.5 miles is a mini victory, I can’t sustain this 166, then 167, ultimately 170 beats a minute, rounding the athletic fields, slowing slightly with the thought that those orange cones require us to do some stupid loop, but no, I turn left, down the grass and across! the! Finish! Line!

OMG, that hurt, wait, I’ll give you my racing chip in a moment…

25:08 for a 3.5 mile course.  Avg. 7:11 min/miles, and only 8 seconds slower than the last time I did this race, 4 years ago.  I’ll TAKE it!  Total time, 1:45:37.

And two great kickers:  the Race Director overheard me talking with Scott (who took 1st place for our age group), and she asked, “did you miss that turn where the sign blew down?”  Me:  “I wouldn’t know!” RD:  “Well, we didn’t have enough volunteers this year.  I’m going to give you your money back.”  And she brings me a check made out to cash!

Well, that’s extremely decent.  But after cleaning up I realize that I won’t keep it, and I tell her, “listen, I still did a race, and USAT Rules say that I’m supposed to know the course, and it was a great day.”  A moment later, a guy comes up to tell her that he rode 20 EXTRA MILES because of missing that turn (and, I bet, not taking that sharp right to stay on Route 82!).  I have to hope she gave him the check I gave back to her…

And, I also tell the Race Director:   I may be 54, but I’m 55 in triathlon years, and for once, I want to be older, because that means I came in THIRD PLACE for my age group!  (And if I subtract some 10 minutes for the extra 3.2 miles – then, I would have finished in 1:35, which would be Second Place, by a good 5 minutes.). 3/10 AG, 24/66 OA.

And the season is still young!

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.

Ah, blogging time. The good the bad and the ugly. This one ain’t good.

I ran the New Jersey Marathon in 2013, my first marathon, and missed qualifying for Boston by 1 minute – 3:31. Should be pretty easy to train harder and shave off a minute, right? But my last two NYC Marathons were 4:14 in 2015 and 4:11 in 2016. What the hell?

So, this time went back to this flat course, and trained through the winter, but because of the month-long cold I caught after a solid, strenuous Half Marathon in Sleepy Hollow, the last three long runs were compromised and even cut short. (You know things are bad when you have to call your son to pick you up 5 miles from home…) So, I had gone back to the doctor and finished my second round of anti-biotics two days before this race. No chest cough, symptom free, nurturing the taper and a Zen-like calm. Sure, maybe not back to full strength after that chest cough, but relaxed and truly excited rather than nervous.

Rather than driving down for 1 1/2 hours on race day, went to the expo, picked up registration, and stayed in a room of an Airbnb house in Monmouth Beach, less than 10 minutes away from the starting line. (Even saw orange arrows for the course a block away…). Grabbed pasta and salmon at a nearby bustling restaurant. (A local told me, “The owner’s a runner. Tell the waiter you’re doing the marathon and you can order off menu.”).

And chilled on the terrace of my room.

In bed by 9, wide awake at 1:30, slept again until 5:15. Made bullet proof coffee with the French press I brought with me, a fried egg and saltstick chew. Arrived at Monmouth race track at 6:30ish, used the bathroom a couple times and stretched.

Caught up with Team NRGY triathlon friends Jan and Fran.

And Coach Greg Bassett (after checking my bag, and phone…)

Good cheer and still mellow at the starting line. Went to the back of Corral 3. I am shooting for 8:00 minute miles, but I am ignoring the pacers, and even set my Garmin to ignore the pace – heart rate only! Zone 1 (131-141 bpm) for the first 4 miles, z2 (141-151) up to mile 22, let out the lead and negative split from mile 22 to 26. Solid, confident, disciplined plan, right?

Great start. Ignoring the pace (and assuming I would run as slow as 8:45 in Z1), I was pleasantly surprised when the watch beeped at each mile as reported that even in z1, I was running 7:44, 7:53, 8:05, 8:07. Killing it. When I get to the end and can run hard, I am going to have a great result, right? Part 2, crank it up to zone 2.

Pretty suburban streets, blossoms on the trees, a perfect partly cloudy day and 58 degrees. Met and chatted with Ryan from Albany, he’s doing the same pace, enjoying his company, but I am disciplined, I slow down or just inhale through my nose, exhale through mouth when heart rate creeps up, and I stick with him for a while until he takes off, running HIS race, I am running mine. I might qualify for Boston, I might not, but I have decided I am sticking with heart rate. And lo, post-race data review, at mile 10 I averaged exactly 8:00 per mile. And stayed in zone 2. Magic.

So my next mental hurdle is Mile 14, because that’s where I hit the wall at NYC 2015 and 2016. Heart rate is drifting a little, creeping up to 157 for a moment, I slow down and wrestle it down to 153, give myself some slack for “drift” and I realize, hey I might not make that Boston-qualifying 3:30, I can live with that. And suddenly a horde of runners is upon me, surrounding the pacer for 3:35 (like jostling for the attention of the classroom teacher), and I try to move forward and around this crowd and suddenly they are GONE.

That’s when I realized, at mile 17 or so, that the wheels were coming off. Slowed down to 8:28, then 8:40, and my legs are suddenly heavy, and I have no power, the pacer and entourage to finish at 3:40 pass me like I am standing still, and I can’t accelerate, even though my form feels solid (good posture, lifting knees and open hips, landing on balls of feet, pushing off with legs in straight lines); no injuries; but no way.

At mile 20 or so, I stop at a toilet for a minute (at this point, who cares about a result?), and I try a packet of almond butter (first bite was good, wait a minute or two, finish it) which I was carrying as a safety blanket to my EAA tablets every 30-40 minutes. (Hmmm, did I really take all those tablets, or did I lose interest in crunching on all that chalk?). Only later, talking with my cousin Rob, did I realize I had bonked – my body ran out of fuel, and didn’t want to follow my directions any more. No matter how much I wanted to go faster.

In any event, I slow down to 9:30, then 10:30 miles, I catch up to and pass Ryan from Albany who is flat out walking with 5 or 6 miles to go (me: “come on man, we’ve got this!” Ryan: “no, my hip has crapped out”) and I almost walk with him in solidarity and for the relief of STOPPING, but remembered: this is MY race. Even if I’m going to crash and burn, I’m doing it my way.

So I stumble along, here goes a pacer with the 3:45 sign, then a group with 3:50. (This is like when the runner dressed as the Statue of Liberty passed me at the NYC Marathon…. That’s when you know things are bad.) I really decided to walk the last 2.2 miles, I have simply lost my give-a-damn, I only want to get to the finish line so I can STOP, STOP, STOP. But it hurts more to walk (the lactic acid pouring into my legs) than to run, so I run. A pack with the 3:55 pacer blows past me, chatting as they leave me at the boardwalk, but I trudge along…

And I raise my hands for the photo op and cross the line at 3:57:45. 815/2,050 OA, 606/1,273 men, 52/125 AG. OK, still better than average, and a whopping 14-minute improvement over last year’s NYC Marathon, but clearly not the race I wanted, either in result or more importantly in style.

So, I need to work on nutrition, so my long triathlons and other races are more fun. Amino acid tablets alone aren’t sufficient for my body; in the subsequent week, I’ve been experimenting with “healthy” HUMA gels and UCAN super-starch drinks; I may even go back to the straight up PowerBar or shot blocks.

No
More
Bonking.

Spoiler alert:  this wasn’t my fastest race.  In fact, it was probably my longest time for this distance.  Yet, it was a great race; I felt strong, persevered, and was surprisingly satisfied despite the numeric result.

Drove over with running buddy Vassilis Bakopoulos, who in contrast with my planning months in advance on doing this, decides the night before to register at the starting line.  That’s the beauty of a very local race.

The weather was ideal:  48 degrees, climbing to 52 by the end of the race; cloudy, and I almost didn’t wear my cap (but glad I did – sweat dripped ahead of me, away from my glasses).

I am shooting for, nay, cajoling the universe for a PR.  I had done this race in 1:36:24 three years ago (7:21 per mile) and wanted, wanted, wanted to do 1:35:30 (7:17 per mile).  Left hamstring/inside of knee had been aching for several weeks, so I was a little concerned that going full out could result in walking 6 ½ miles back home.  I might end up with another disappointing result, like the last two NYC Marathons.  But I wanted to fly, as best I could.

I put myself about five rows back of the start (edging in front of the people who are edging back, but behind the Serious Competitors who are crowding forward) and we are OFF, beneath the giant American flag and up through the village to the road that goes up, up, up.

The good news is, I was so focused on being in tune with my body as we started that I forgot to start my watch for the first 15 seconds.  That felt like a positive mindset.

Plan was to run 20” slower than goal pace the first mile, or high heart rate zone 2/low zone 3 (which was pretty likely, since the course started with 3 miles of up hill…)  The groomed trail portion of the race was cut out, because of leftover snow, and I’m fine with that, I didn’t want to be crowded or jockeying for space on the run as well as the starting line.  The first mile clicks by at 7:30 – a little fast, but feels okay, and the lead runners are already spreading out in a chain reaching up the hill, and mile 2 is on target at 7:19, terrific, heart rate a little high but manageable.

but mile 3 is steeper (the early macho section of our cycling group’s Sunday ride) and my heart rate is creeping towards zone 4, so that mile 3 is only 7:40, with mile 4 closer to target at 7:25, and can I keep this up, and how am I going to make up that 30-45 second difference (which with my confused math seems like even more)?  I don’t have anyone in particular to inspire me (Michael Kaiser from New Jersey, my nemesis and inspiration at my first half marathon here, is gone, gone, gone very early on – he does 3:20 marathons and will run Boston in 3 weeks…),

and I suppose I could choose any of the bunnies ahead of me, but I am also focused on running MY race, and the bunny I am chasing is the 7:17 mile.

So I keep glancing, and if I’m dipping close to 7:30, I kick it up, and just pray – literally – that I can keep this going.  Coach Debi said, remember, you’ve never been stronger.

Water stops are few and far between – 3 of ‘em, the whole race – but it’s not very warm, and I can barely drink the sips I grab.  I crunch down my EAAs after 40 minutes, but forget to take my second dosage…

So we get to the end of the climb, and start down Route 117 (a four lane highway on most days), and after a rolling uphill, the downhill miles begin.  A woman I don’t know, strong and relaxed, passes me and while taking off her outer layer notes, “those first 3 miles were demanding.  You know this course?” So I tell her about the upcoming climbs out of corporate parking lots, and the Phelps Hospital portion, the stupid loop near the lighthouse, and the steep climb at the finish line; she thanks me and disappears into the distance…

But I am cranking it, me and my watch are friends today, mostly ignoring the HR monitor (it just freaked me out at the marathon), I frankly can’t believe I’m on task and finding the power to keep cranking it out, and these down hills are beautiful:  mile 5 at 7:14, mile 6 at 7:00, then 7:07, 7:15, and 7:25 – okay, my average feels solid, but I know about all the upcoming hills I just talked about.

And suddenly at mile 9 ½, my left calf starts cramping up, enough that I stumble, not fall but stumble, and the right calf joins in (solidarity, don’t you know), and it gets real painful, real fast.

And the uphill at the train station is better than the downhills, but I’ve got 2 ½, 3 miles to go, and I am slowing, slowing:  mile 10 at 7:55, mile 11 somehow back on track at 7:17, mile 12 (that stupid loop) in 7:56, and then those last empty streets towards the finish line is 8:02, and the up up up hill to the finish line is at an 8:00 pace…  But I have pushed through, I sprinted as best as I could hobble the last 100 yards, I get to the damn finish line, cross one electronic mat, then the other.

Results:  1:39:56. 7:38 per mile.  Not my goal, but the best I could do.  And I feel good among my peers:  6/43 for age group, 93/720 overall, 74/386 males. And BTW, my Garmin says it was 1,276 feet of climbing.

Maybe I’m rationalizing or making excuses, (seen on a t-shirt during my first NJ Marathon:  “The Older I Get, the Faster I Was”), but despite this being the slowest HM I’ve done (32 seconds slower than last year, but with the course change, reportedly 200 more feet of climbing), I feel really good with this performance.  It was my maximum effort, and I had fun (though I didn’t enjoy it, if that makes sense); I pushed hard, and harder when I wasn’t hitting my goal, finding the power to get back in the game; and pushing hard as I could at the end, despite the pain and the unlikelihood of getting a PR or making the podium.  It was a lot of effort, but worthwhile.

The off season is officially over.  Bring it on!