So, this was my 3rd triathlon in 5 weeks, and my last one this year before turning to focus on the NYC Marathon. I scheduled this one in part for logistical convenience: I had to drop off my older son for college outside of Boston, and that was more than halfway to Gilford, New Hampshire where the race was held. I managed to finish the load-in of duffel bag and boxes by midnight on Friday, and by 12:30 a.m. was in the beautiful, empty house in Lexington, MA of our cousin, the generous Jonah Cohen. (Jonah and his family were in Chicago.).
Got to bed by 8:30. Woke at 1:30 a.m. And couldn’t get back to sleep again before the alarm went off at 3. “Well, THAT was fun.” Left at 4 a.m. to drive to the course (turns out, Concord is not 30 but really 45 minutes from the race site), and took another 25 minutes to park, along with the other 2,550 racers squeezing through single lane roads.
My transition setup was methodical, but actually getting to the starting line was more rushed than I would like: (a) there weren’t enough toilets and the lines were ridiculous; they were announcing transition closing at 6:15, and that’s exactly when I finally reached a stall; and (b) I didn’t know which wave I was in, as I couldn’t find it online the night before. Fortunately, our wave didn’t start until 7 a.m. Though I had shaved my legs for the first time (thinking it would be wetsuit optional), the water is 74 degrees and I’m wearing my sleeveless wetsuit — with long sleeve tri suit beneath. (not exactly hydrodynamic!).
It’s an “in-water start” — but in this case, it means standing in the water up to our knees. Still, much better than running across that rocky lake bottom.
I line up right next to the first triangle buoy, in the 2nd or 3rd row; better to be swum over than to be swimming over the next guy. HONNNNNNK goes the horn, we start the 1.2 mile, counterclockwise square, and we run and stumble a bit, and I dive in pretty quickly, and I am unusually calm as I start the almost-panting process of breathing every stroke, and I immediately start drafting off this guy with black, red and gold wetsuit (no, really, my very own superhero), and he’s fast enough that I have to work to keep up with him (instead of being lazy with someone whose feet are easy to slap), and he sights a great straight line, sometimes taking the guide buoys to our left, and there is more bumping and body contact than any other race I’ve done, people behind me, guys next to me trying to push me off course, but dammit you’re gonna have to swim faster to get past me, that’s MY drafting buddy, and I was sad when we rounded the first red buoy and he got away.
I should have breathed on the left side on that second leg, I’m stronger on my left, but it’s SOOOO comfortable to do the same thing over and over and breathe on my right, and by the time I reach the third leg (hooray! I’m going to survive another swim!), I don’t have the option, because breathing to the left means to stare into the rising sun (note to self: figure out pre-race where the sun’s going to be), and it feels strong and steady, passing the slow folks with different colored swim caps and close to the finish it’s almost too shallow to swim, but better than running on that rocky lake bottom, and we’re OUT! 36:32 (a 25-second PR for this distance – but at 1:53 min/100m, slower than my pace for last year’s Ironman).
The 56-mile bike course is some 2,100 feet of climbing (3,000, according to my Garmin) mostly on rolling but sometimes steep hills. Coach Debi warned me, ride no harder than heart rate Zone 2 (131-141 bpm), and “Be patient and enjoy the scenery,” and I kept remembering that.
Bike OUT
At least 10 guys in my age group, and a lot more younger guys, pass me on the bike, but I am patiently racing MY race, and pushing hard enough to log over 21 mph on the first 30 miles (some nice downhills, of course); my heart rate actually averages in zone 1 throughout the ride; but my glutes and quads are on fire and aching with the effort; my left hip cramps at 45 minutes so I take a salt tablet (this is crazy, how much could I sweat in this mid-70s weather?), cramp disappears; and every now and then I look up to see the pine trees and the amazing Lake Winnepesaukee. Be grateful, I’m alive (despite that bike/car accident 8 weeks ago) and unbelievably, racing.
Something isn’t going right, too many people are passing me, and after the race, the stats show I had slowed to just over 18 mph on the second 26 miles, but this is MY race, I am not going to burn out on the bike and get shin splints like I did at Quassy last year, and maybe I’ll pass some competitors on the run. Bottom line: 2:48:21 on the bike, avg. of 19.6 mph. A 4 minute PR.
This turns out to be an alternative nutrition success story: despite my refusal to cut carbs out of my sandwich- and pasta-filled, vegetarian diet, this was the longest race on which I avoided carbs. I started with a breakfast of bullet proof-style coffee and two eggs (could scarcely eat any apple sauce with protein powder after that!); 3 tablets of BCAAs just before the swim; three bottles of NUUN water with pink Himalayan salt during the ride (really, could have done two, because grabbed a water at the 30-mile aid station and popped in more NUUN into the “torpedo” sippy cup); 4 crunchy, chalky, alkaline EAAs every 40 minutes or so; salt tablets at 45 minutes, 2 hours and just before the run (whee! Caffeine!); and twice, I was hungry, and munched on cashews, almonds, and dates. It worked, and when I started the run, I knew from my training that 4 more tabs of EAAs at 45 minutes would be enough to tie me through the race without getting nauseous chewing down super sugary gels.
The run starts surprisingly well and I figure that if I do the 13.1 miles in less than 2 hours I’ll get a PR, and all I need is 8 minute/mile, right, to finish the run with a huge PR?
And I feel really strong at 7:30 min/mile for the first mile, but remember to get back into zone 2 for the first 4 miles, and managed to pass a couple of guys in my AG at the start (vengeance is mine!), but it’s gotten hotter, and the run has a few hills that don’t seem so bad for the first 3.3 miles out to the turnaround (mostly shaded, lots of water stations, “Water! Water!”, then by the end “ice! ice!”), but feel harder on the next way back, and I guess at the math again and give myself permission to do sub-8:30s, that still gives me a 1:45 finish, right? (WRONG), and I’m starting to fatigue…
And I walk a few of the many wonderful aid stations (just a sip, not the whole cup, and dump the ice down the back of my shirt and into my pants, WAKE UP!), and we get back next to the finish line before starting the second loop (oh, the temptation to cheat and just FINISH like that damn woman at Ironman Whistler in Canada is so huge), and I take my last dosage of EAAs and a salt tablet I dropped from my race belt (get new race belt!) as we start the second 6 1/2 mile loop (why can’t this be a 12-mile race??).
And I’ve passed five other guys in my age group, and think (in my fantasy) that maybe I’m shooting for 5th or 6th place (not knowing how many guys beat me out of the water) until this guy with “51” on his calf, with yellow-edged jersey and visor, passes me. Just for a moment. Because now I have a real purpose: If I’m vying for 5th place, I want this more than he does, and I pass him, and he settles into running a few paces behind me, I can hear his feet slapping the pavement, and sometimes he’s next to me, and I do a Benji surge to get ahead, maybe I’ll demoralize him, but I look over my shoulder and he’s still there, and I think I hear him passing as I grimly want to quit, I could WALK from here and still get a PR, and it’s not him but some younger guy, then a younger gal, but he’s still there and we have a mile or two left and we get up that last hill (our third time on this looped course!) and I am miserable, no particular knee or muscle hurting but everything everything is crying out to stop and I don’t and there’s the grass path to the finish line
and I CROSS IT AHEAD OF THE OTHER GUY. (Turns out his name’s David, and I thank him.)
And finish the run in 1:50:40, avg. 8:26 min./mile, and complete the race in 5:21:09 — an 8-minute PR over 2014 (not counting a 5:26 HIM I did in 2013, where the swim was clearly less than a mile). And I was right about 10 guys in my AG passing me — I was 43/149 on the swim, and 53/149 on the bike. But I was wrong about passing 5 guys on the run: I actually passed 15 of ’em, ending at 38/149 AG. (Maybe they had slower transitions…) And 447/2,095 overall.
I was panting for 40 minutes after the finish, and couldn’t sit down in the lake without my calves cramping, and didn’t feel human again until getting fruit and ice cream in the food tent and sharing a beer with my gym buddy Nicholas Moore…
But the takeaway is not the numeric results, because 38th is very, very far from the podium. And 8 minutes is terrific improvement, especially being two years older. But that’s not it, either. This was the race where I dug deep. I pushed harder than ever not just to finish but to finish FASTER, and I survived. It’s not as good a sound bite as “taking first place for my age group” (as I did at the West Point Sprint, a week earlier), but I felt solid on each leg of the course, and pushed myself beyond what I thought possible. I guess that’s the nature of endurance sports. And I am strangely at peace with that.
