It is much harder to write about the races that don’t end on or close to the podium, and to find victory in them anyway.
I had downgraded first from the Toughman 70.3 triathlon to the Olympic distance (because weddings and other family travels had prevented sufficient training), and then from the Olympic triathlon to the Olympic aquabike (because I have hernias that suddenly flared up and told me that I can’t run; this is what it means to listen to the body…). So, finding that I could still swim and bike without a problem, I was lucky to find that Toughman provided a swim/bike option.
It’s just as well that race day pickup was prohibited because Friday’s check-in was the most disorganized cluster I’ve ever known. When we arrived at 2:30, there were 10 people ahead of us; we didn’t finish until an hour later, when at least 30 people were waiting! I recognized a referee from other local races who muttered, “This has been a rough week, today…”
* To add insult to injury, and consistent with the disorganized check-in, there were no photos or results posted for the Aquabike after the race! (Luckily, I grabbed results from the tracking app…)
Race day itself, I learned that Aquabike is a THING, especially at this so-called national championship event (for which you could register without qualifying at an earlier race). While I had assumed that most participants would be, like me, downgrading because of a running injury, I was sadly mistaken. Some guys waiting at the starting area had travelled from New Hampshire, Indiana, and Florida for this race. THIS was their sport. They were SERIOUS swimmers (“how fast do you expect to swim?” “Oh, in open water, I can only do around 1:14 min/100 yards”) and apparently strong cyclists as well.
The lake is beautiful, and it’s a mass start from the beach. Horn goes off, we run in, and I’ve got a good line on the 5 buoys going out, short turn, 5 buoys coming back. Despite a race official telling me the day before that the water was 68 degrees (“yeah, that’s what it is historically”), it felt like a beautiful 73-75! So the full sleeve wetsuit was almost too warm. Swim felt strong – I had improved my stroke and was enjoying an efficient pull — but apparently I settled into a comfortable rather than a challenging pace. Finished the 1.5 km/0.9 miles in 28:19 (that is, 1:50 min./100 yds.) Meh. (5 days later, on a relaxed recovery swim in the pool, I averaged 1:48). I really need more killer instinct on the swim… But here’s improvement: Legs didn’t cramp up coming out of the water! And yes, the guy who did first place in my age group did it at 1:14 min/100 m.
T1 in 2:44; was toying with arm warmers, but adrenaline masked the chill and left them behind.
The ride was gorgeous, though rough road, and hilly – but I knew the hills from riding the course with Alan Gold two weeks earlier, getting lost, and then driving it. (He was racing the Olympic tri – and later on race day would WIN FOR HIS AGE GROUP beating 2nd place by 0:21 seconds! GOOOOOOO, ALAN!). I decided my goal was just to do ride as hard as I could, since I wasn’t pacing for a run afterwards; a 9 or 10 RPE (relative perceived exertion). And I passed quite a few people to start, keeping my wattage around 220. But whoever came out of the water 8-10 minutes earlier wasn’t waiting for me, and then the triathlon racers started to pass me. Mostly younger; a man and a woman crested a hill with me and then going downhill passed out of sight, jockeying for position; how did they go so fast? I finally passed a guy with “70 [years old]” written on his calf; I said, “You’re killing it!”; he said, “I come from good stock.” Tried harder to make sure I at least beat him…
Ultimately finished the ride in 1:21:05 (= 18.6 mph). Despite my efforts! Bottom line: finished the race in 1:52:07; 11/11th for AG, 34/63 male, 42/109 overall. Meh!
So on the one hand, it’s obviously disappointing to rank so poorly. On the other hand, the racing felt good, I had fun (without taking it easy), was competing with some stellar guys who apparently focus on this sport, and didn’t have the edge I normally have by being able to catch up on the run. What the heck, I did another race, it’s the end of the season, and I’m getting hernia surgery next week. Next year will be better!
Ah, August 8, 2021 in Webster, Mass. was a long time ago, but failing to take time to grieve prevents one from letting go. Among the good, bad and the ugly, this was bad and ugly. So it will be short!
Great to travel with Kevin Carlsten. Highlight of the weekend was dinner (outdoors on a beach) and my sitting in with a guitar player (since I had my sax with me, having gotten it repaired on the way to the race site).
The 1.2 mile swim was solid. Seeded myself for 40 minutes, finished faster. Legs cramped on the way out of the water, but didn’t fall. Improvement!
Bike started strong, but a cop directed me to take a wrong turn, so I rode 2 miles extra including a thrilling downhill until turning around only when I got to a 5-way intersection with no signs and no volunteers — and there was my downfall: I thought if I pushed hard, i could make up for that 6 minute difference (no, dummy, it’s 12 minutes). I should have given up on “THE PODIUM” and just stuck with Coach Steve’s plan of averaging 190 watts. So tried to go fast and ultimately tanked on the bike; Kevin (doing the Olympic distance and starting 20 minutes after me) passes before I finish the first loop; I get off the bike and I’m toast before starting the run.
And the run! The course consists of out and back, but ducking into three or four neighborhoods off the side, in and out EACH TIME you pass the entrance. I am starting okay, but by mile 4 have slowed down, and towards the end a volunteer says “only 1 mile to go!” And my Garmin says I’ve only run 9.5 on a 13.1 mile run. I am about to give up, but I’ve sacrificed a week of vacation with Rachel for this race, I am not going to get a DNF (did not finish). So I turn around, go in and out of the nearest loop, and finish (and because I didn’t pass all the timing mats, the race director asked me to confirm that my Garmin said “13 miles” for the run).
Swim: 38:40 (2:00 min/100m); T1: 2:43; Bike: 3:21 (16.7 mph); T2: 2:10; Run: 2:18:02 (10:33 min/mile), final time: 6:22:35. Oy, vey. 5 out of 8 for AG, 63/ __ male, 84/138 OA.
So, this was just a terrible experience all around, with terrible results and painful, as well. But the weather was wonderful! What’s not to like?
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.
Where the heck IS Cambridge, Maryland?
Registered, swam and checked out the course on Saturday.
Nicholas Moore in the Transition Area – getting ready to race!
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.
So many athletes; so many bikes; face masks not required!
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…
Swim Out!
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.
Done with the ride, heading towards Bike In
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.
Nicholas and me, after finishing – what’s not to like?
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.
I promise you: if you read to the end of this, you’ll laugh.
Along with paying for a NYC law office I scarcely used for the past 12 months, I also paid for the subscription for this dormant website. Turns out both were reasonable investments (though the rental obviously cost much, much more): now that I’m fully vaccinated (finally, an advantage to having asthma!) I’m occasionally back in the office and this weekend, BACK TO RACING.
While I raced, the rest of the house slept…
It was with some trepidation that I prepared for this race, not because of the sprint distance — run 2.1 miles, bike 10 miles, run 2.1 miles — but because of the weather: 32o F (that’s 0o C, for my international friends). Which was fine for a run, but pretty awful for a ride, and I’d frankly been riding indoors all winter to avoid temps like that. Plus the race was a 40-minute drive from my northern suburb to Brooklyn, BEFORE adding in time to find parking… I didn’t review the “last minute”details until 9 pm the night before, only to learn the race didn’t begin at 8 a.m., but at 7 a.m.!
So, I had to get up at 4:30 (Rachel wisely choosing to sleep in another room), take in my nutrition, feed the cats, drive, and try to get there an hour before race time (to get my bib, set up bike transition, use the yes very cold portable outhouse and warmup). I had parked my car and ridden into the park — and I needed help to unclip my helmet, my hands were too cold to feel the clasp! In the transition area, everyone is wearing masks, but squeezing bikes into only 4 racks. Looking through the swag bag to get my racing chip ankle bracelet, I found, in advance of the race, the medal we all received for participating (just like Little League trophies – “everyone gets one”). I held it up to my freezing colleagues and said, “We can go home now!”
An ugly but informative t-shirt
A time-trial cycling race was already under way, but at 7:00 a.m. the starting waves for this duathlon were so casual that the race director said “who wants to go next?” I was only somewhat warmed up, but I figured the sooner I started, the sooner I could finish and go HOME, so at 7:05 I crossed the blue and red racing mats – all alone.
This was the closest all pandemic that I came to a virtual race: going as fast as I can without any bunny to chase or monster to run from, ignoring my watch and feeling the heart rate rise, following the racing staff’s direction to turn left to avoid the bicycle route, panting before I reached the first mile because there’s no pacing on a race this short, noting the pretty lake on my left, and it’s over. 14:26 = 7:07 minute/mile pace. (Having recovered from plantar fasciitis that kept me from running for 6 months in 2020, this was my fastest pace in over a year,)
Rush into T1, change running shoes for bike shoes, throw on my warmest yellow jacket (because THIS guy is not going to survive freezing temps with anything less), which probably costs me some time. Another, younger guy has arrived panting and gets out only slightly behind me (no wardrobe change for him). T1 takes me 1:28 minutes –not great.
I run to Bike Out, get on the road, clip in and start to ride as fast as I can, but with the transition from run to bike, I feel the lactic acid aching and my legs feel like lead and that guy who was just behind me goes zooming off, leaving me as if I’m standing still. (Felt like living inside the indoor biking platform Zwift, which I stopped using because I was getting dropped by avatars of other guys riding in real time…)
The bike course is three, 3.35 mile loops around the park. Again, no one around me (except the TT guys whipping past, as far as I could tell — but I later learned that the winner of our race had averaged 30 mph on the bike!) Tried as hard as I could, but realized I wasn’t applying myself consistently, sometimes going for higher RPM, sometimes going for heavier gearing, cautious around the Saturday morning joggers and dog-walkers… Finished in 32:53, or 18.7 mph. Not very fast; there’s definitely room for improvement.
T2 was faster, back into running shoes (my orange, springy Nikes!), start with a stumbling gait, and I look for where to turn but there’s no sign or anybody at the first driveway and I see a sign that says “Do Not Enter” so I keep going straight and I realize as I’m going uphill, I don’t remember there being a hill on the run… And I realize I’m on the 3.3-mile bike loop!
Oh, well. I had determined that this was a “C” race with Coach Steve (after Coach Debi Bernardes announced her retirement, I started training with Stephen Redwood of www.triendeavors.com, a Brit living in Greenwich, Connecticut — a bona fide GMT… Wait for it…. Wait for it… Greenwich Mean Taskmaster) and I’d rather go a little further and make sure I had missed the turn (note to self: REVIEW THE RACE MAP!) than go back down hill and have to turn around again. This was definitely harder than the first run, and when I finally pass a young woman who had been chuggin along on the bike I realize there is no way this woman had passed me, she’s done a shorter run, and I definitely was running an extra 1.3 miles. Do the best I can, but no burst of speed at the end as I finish in 24:52 = 7:26 avg. min/mile (first mile in 7:51, second in 7:17, third in 7:06!) Solid. Total time: 1:14:03.
So, here’s the funny part: I immediately tell the race director that there was no one at the turn and I had run the bike course, and he shouts across the transition area, “Sharon!?” Apparently, Sharon had grown bored after less than an hour and left her appointed post… Race director says, “go talk to the timing official” by the computer at the finish line.
The all powerful Timing Official…
I wait for the timing official to deal with other complaints, and he says, “you want to lodge a complaint about the course?” I said, I guess so. He says, “let’s see, what was your pace on the first leg… Could we add in 20” per mile?” Sure, I said, this is great. He says, “Okay, instead of 1:14, your official time is 1:04:33.” Great! Thank you! “But that doesn’t change your standing. You still came in 2nd for your age group.” What? I said. Even with the extra 1.3 miles I came in 2nd?
Wait. How many guys in my age group?
“Two.”
Told you I’d make you laugh!.
And who beats me? This guy Matt A. Hayes, a guy who had “friended”/followed me on the Athlinks website the day before the race — and Athlinks say he has done 554 races! He clearly had been doing his homework, looking up his competitors among the race registrants. OK, Matt the Mysterious wanted this win more than I did — well done, Sir. So, I guess I have a new nemesis for local races… (Don’t be jealous, Zander, I’ll still train and race with you.)
