Race Report

Well, today was the big day - the Timberman short course triathlon. Swim 1/3 of a mile, bike 15 miles, then run 3 miles as quickly as possible without throwing up or dropping dead from exhaustion. The former I had a little trouble with. Details to come.

Friday: I drove up to Gilford in the afternoon to rack my bike and pick up my registration packet. I racked my bike around 5 or 6 and then I took a soft swim of the course. I was surprised to discover that almost the entire course was shallower than 6 feet. Most of the time I could touch the ground without even getting my head wet. A couple of mates arrived, and I went for a jog with them then headed home to watch Michael Phelps win the 100m butterfly by 1/100th of a second (WOW!) and then go to sleep. I had a difficult time sleeping because of the anticipation, and probably only got around 5 hours of sleep.

Saturday: Up at 4:15AM. I ate a bowl of cereal, grabbed a couple powerbars, put all my equipment in the truck, and the rents and I headed off. We arrived at Ellacoya Park around 5:45 AM, and I began the procedures for the race - getting marked with my numbers on my shoulder, thigh, hand, and my age on the back of my calf, removing the plastic bags from my bike in case it happened the rain the previous night, attaching my pedals to my bike and tying them in place with my dental floss, filling up water bottles, setting up my transition station with my bright pink and white striped towel, putting bodyglide on my shoes and legs, setting up my bike computer (which I forgot to reset, unfortunately), putting on my timing chip, attaching my number to my race belt, and finally getting in my wetsuit and swimming gear. I grabbed a powerbar and a gatorade and headed over to the start of the swim. After doing a few laps I was ready to go. We headed out to the start and heard "30 seconds until the start!" then before I knew it the announcer was yelling "go, go, go!"

The Swim: I've never done a mass start. I've never even done a start. So needless to say, the beginning was pretty interesting. I started with a quick stroke, and tried to fall into a regular rhythm, but with so many legs and arms it was hard to. Eventually, after about 150m, I got enough space to start swimming well. I tried to focus on what I had been taught: stroke and glide, stroke and glide. The glide part never fully got there... I got my goggles hit, and water was seeping in. All of a sudden my contact was falling out of place in my left eye. I stopped, stood for a minute, drained the water from my goggles, and started again. The contact fixed itself. I was breathing every other stroke instead of 3. Normally my stroke is relaxed and slow enough I can breathe every 3, but this was much faster than I had swum before, so I was finding myself short on breathe if I went with the 3 stroke.

Before I knew it, I was rounding the last buoy, being kicked all the while. I started towards shore and started kicking my legs quicker to get the blood flowing. I stood up when I could run through the water, unzipped my wetsuit down to my waist, and headed into transition.

Swim Split: 9:38



T1: I started by flopping on the green mat and having the wetsuit strippers rip my wetsuit off my legs. It was quite entertaining, and within a moment I was up and going again. Over to my bike, I threw my wetsuit down, on with the helmet and buckled up, on with the sunglasses, grabbed the bike, and off I went. The way out of transition was madness, and I was jumping over people and bags everywhere, swerving the bike left and right.

T1 Time:1:31

The Bike: Out of transition, I mounted the bike while running, and stepped on top my shoes that were already on the pedals and began to ride away. I had a small situation with my left shoe dragging but it quickly remedied itself. For a moment I was pedaling thinking "what am I supposed to do now? Oh yeah, strap my feet in!" I pulled the shoes onto my feet, secured the straps, and sped off. The first couple miles of the course I was already passing heaps of people, and the only people around me seemed to be the athletes also decked out in their tri gear with deep dish rims and aero frames. It felt good to be riding with the elite. 1/3 of the way through the ride I realized I had forgotten to reset my computer, and therefore wouldn't be getting an accurate reading of my bike split. I hung with a group of about 4 riders for most of the ride until they pulled away at the end. When I got 1/2 a mile away from Ellacoya I unstrapped my feet, put them on the top of my shoes, and rode down to dismount. After a flying dismount, I started running with my bike and heard a "woah!" I knew right away what it was. I looked down and sure enough, that damn left shoe was missing.

Bike Split:43:34



T2: Where's that left shoe? I ran into transition, racked my bike, threw my running shoes on, and headed back towards the dismount to see if anyone was being a great spectator and bringing my shoe to me. They weren't. Oh well, I headed out on the run after taking the detour to the bike dismount.

T2 Time:1:35

The Run: Right away, I felt like crap. Not my legs, because I knew what that felt like, but my stomach. I accidentally grabbed the wrong cup on fluids in the first 50m, and almost threw up at the taste and smell of yellow gatorade. Blech. I ran past my mom and told her about the shoe and asked her to find it. One of my mates caught up with me within the first mile and we breathlessly talked about the course so far. He started off and said "come on man, pick up the pace!" I responded with "if I do that, I'm going to puke everywhere." I had drank too much gatorade on the bike, and hadn't watered it down like I had planned to. Big mistake. I slowed down a bit to let my stomach recover, and just kept running and dry heaving now and then. I made sure to grab water at the turnaround, instead of sports drink. The second half of the course was downhill but I still wasn't feeling it. I rounded the corner for the last 100m of the course and thought to myself "ok, I'll start sprinting to catch this guy in front of me." I took five paces and said to myself "ok, now I'm going to stop sprinting or I'm going to vomit." I passed through the finish, and after dry heaving a bit more, got my finishers towel and waterbottle. Woohoo!

Run Split:20:04



The rest of the time there was fairly uneventful. I got a bunch of food, waited around to get my bike, then headed home with one very important lesson learned - don't drink straight gatorade. Mix it with water.

The Results: I placed 6th in my 20-24 age group, and 56th overall, out of about 1000. Pretty good for a first timer.

My pops took all the sweet pics. He's a budding sports photographer now.

Timberman!

is less than a few days away. Today is my last off day before the race, so I'm taking it very easy in hopes my muscles will be able to recuperate.

Last Sunday I went and rode the course. It was an interesting experience. First off, according to the hourly forecast in Gilford, there was a 0% chance it would rain before 2 o clock. Yet somehow I found myself caught in the middle of a torrential downpour come noontime. The rain was pelting me so hard that it hurt, and I could see literally nothing, so I had to stop and pull off the road until it let up. I was standing in the woods next to two bikers (the leather-clad kind) who were just as unhappy as I was as their harleys got drenched. But 20 minutes later, after I probably started to develop hypothermia, the rain let up a bit so I was able to complete the last 1/2 mile of the ride, very slowly since my sunglasses were so fogged up I couldn't see anything. Once I got back to the car it started pouring again. So much for testing the run course. My mom had come along to spend some time on the beach, and the whole experience was pretty miserable for her too. Bottom line - never trust the weather forecasters. They're idiots.

Yesterday was a strange day. I came home from working at my dad's office and felt absolutely dead - I was hot, tired, and just out of it. I motivated myself to go for a swim because I knew it was the last day of exercise. I ate a powerbar, drove to the pond, and have never felt better in my swim. I only took one break in my 2/3 mile, because my ear was bothering me. My stroke was controlled and my form was good, but I just wasn't getting tired. I just kept going and going. I could have swam much longer, but had to get home to dinner. Exiting the water one of the fisherman comically said "It is Michael Phelps! I thought you were in China!"

In other news, only a couple weeks are left until I return to UNH for fall semester of my senior year. I'm living with two of my best friends from school (one of them being my roommate from freshman year), as well as one other guy. We get to move in early because one of the flatmates is living at UNH this summer and will be allowed in the apartment early. My sweet UNH table that I worked on for a good while last summer is still holding up and will be making an appearance in our apartment this year as well.



Speaking of projects, my fixed gear conversion project is going well. The frame is stripped of paint, and now I need to bring it into S&W sports in town to get the damned bottom bracket and crank off. I lack to tools to do it myself. Once that happens, I can get to painting and rebuilding. Very exciting, hopefully I can have it done by the beginning of school.

On Saturday I got a good taste of what it will be like to do an ironman triathlon. Tom and I rode 119 miles from Portsmouth to Portland and back in a little less than 7 hours. It would have been faster had we not caught just about every single red light on the way home through Kittery. Riding that far is not easy, and if I had been doing it by myself I'm not sure I would have made it the entire way. Although you do get to a point much like when driving where you kind of space out and don't think about it anymore. But to ride that, plus swim 2.4 miles ahead of time, then run a marathon afterwards... It'll require heaps of training.