The Appleman Sprint Triathlon
Race Report
I was motoring along trying to relax into a quick warm up swim on Saturday afternoon before the Triathlon and ‘Bonk!’ I swam straight into a sail boat. Neither the boat nor I were injured in the incident.
I did a quick warm up the day before just to see how the old body felt about this tricky little bit of aerobics known as the Appleman Triathlon in my home town. I felt fine considering I basically stopped training for it over a month ago. “Mailing it in” is the phrase I use. I don’t really know what that means but to me it means just showing up and letting the chips fall where they may without any expectations.
It’s an unnecessarily long ½ mile swim in the pond they call Long Lake, followed by a very hilly 10 mile bike ride and an interesting 5k run with some nasty single path trails that make the real triathletes get all whiney.
I followed up my warm up by joining my running club for a leisurely six mile-ish hash run through the woods. Probably not the smartest thing given I hadn’t run in 2-3 weeks.
I took Buddy with me on the Hash run. He likes running in the woods at a leisurely pace. At one point the Hare’s made us swing off a rope swing into the Nashua River. It being a hot day there was a crowd of teenagers at the rope swing doing a constant stream of aerial acrobatics off the river cliff into the water.
Buddy thought this was a grand thing and plunged into the river, swimming in circles trying to save each teenager who entered and exited. I had to dive in with the leash to haul him out or he would have circled until he drowned.
…
With the morning light I found myself no worse for wear except my sore foot from an encroaching case of Plantar Fasciitis. I hopped on Fuji-san and pedaled the mile or so to the beach to get ready for the 8:00 am start. It was a beautiful day. It would be hot later, but unless something went horribly wrong I would be home by breakfast before any of the heat showed up in force.
They have a chronically short supply of Porta-johns at this race and I let a vision impaired athlete cut the line in front of me. I was in a bit of a hurried trot to get into my wet suit and make it to the beach for the first wave. I hate being in the first wave.
Weddings and Triathlons never start on time and I was in the water sloshing about in anticipation with all the rest of the nervous seals in no time. I stubbed my toe on something and reached in to find a children’s torpedo toy that I carried to the beach. Then I noticed a dead fish floating by and I delivered that as well.
It’s great fun to have an event in your home town. It was kids from the soccer teams I coached in the past who marked me up with the mandatory black marker. The competitors and volunteers were mostly people I knew. It’s like the neighborhood triathlon.
The swim goes off from the boat launch and it’s a tight start. I tried to stay in the back and outside but we were bounded by a dock and frankly there were just too many people in the wave. I never got a clear lane until the last couple hundred feet.
The swim was ugly. With all the jostling I couldn’t get into a groove. I had no form. Worse than no form I seemed to have regressed and forgotten everything I know about endurance swimming. Mix me in with a couple hundred jacked up participants and all of a sudden I’m a ten year old floundering in the swimming hole again. The last couple hundred feet were very shallow and the mud was churned up such that you could feel the particles in the water. Icky. Like Pea soup.
The good news was I didn’t lose any energy in the swim, I was just slow. Coming out of the water my zipper snagged. I had decided to wear my race shirt under my wetsuit and it got caught in the zipper. Usually it’s just my back hair. Luckily one of my ex-soccer girls was there to help shell me. I had a speedy transition.
Fuji-san has been giving me some issues lately with a sticky front derailleur, but, hey, who needs more than one gear? Really? I had some interesting down shifting episodes where I had to unclip my foot and kick the derailleur to get it down into the lower ring.
Given my paucity of talent and inspiration in the swim I began to immediately pass the unlucky fine-swimming folk in front of me. This course rewards a local like me who knows where the hard corners are and where the hills are. I learned afterwards that someone crashed on one of the corners behind me and had to be transported. One note is that they did not do any safety inspections on the bikes in the morning. A downhill 90 deg corner at 30+ MPH is not the place you want to discover you have bad brakes.
I got passed by the first female, I think, (some others probably passed me in the swim), about 8 miles into the ride. I was pushing pretty hard on the bike with that being the only training I had even remotely done. I had a good push through hills and was passing the whole way. At one point they had positioned one of those “your speed is” signs next to the road and out of the corner of my eye in my tuck I saw it flash 30-something.
I stood up in the saddle and bitched a guy going into transition. My wife who works that corner as a volunteer missed me coming in and naturally assumed I was the one who had crashed.
I had another good transition and was joking with the guy I just passed, who, it turns out was racked right next to me. I slipped into my new Brooks Cascadia and set off into the run.
It was just after 9:00 but was already hot in the sun. My form was good, but my HR was maxed so I kept backing it down. I was still passing lots of good swimmers as I made it though the twists and turns to the trail section. I took water at the stations but just to dump down my back it would be pointless to try to drink any in this short of a race.
All through the road section I was passing competitors in clumps. It’s funny how people tend to clump together in races. It must be part of our nature. Especially on anything that required any actual running skill, like downhills, uphills or corners, the triathletes just didn’t seem to know how to maintain form and pace. I wasn’t speeding up. They were slowing down. Nobody put up a fight.
We cut into the trail section and my legs were tight. We had to traverse an open field into the full sun and it was hot. I just kept firing away at an 85% effort level and let the course come to me. I ended up power walking some of the really steep technical bits because I knew it wouldn’t affect my time.
Popping up and out of the woods for one last steep downhill and a 800 flat to the finish on the beach I noticed my shoe was now untied. I didn’t consider tying it. What’s the worst that can happen? I finish the race with one shoe on and get my picture in the paper?
I held my form and pace, not too bad, passing a few more folks on the downhill and the flat. I took a sneaky peak over my shoulder as we turned into the beach and no one was trying to catch me. No need for a sprint. I chugged across for a 1:14:50 finish.
1:14:50 – I’m ok with that. I know I could do a lot better, but you always can.
I was 19 in my age group and 219th overall in the swim with an 18:36 (ouch).
I was 9th in my age group and 64th overall in the bike with a 33:05.
I was 3rd in my age group and 36th overall in the run with a paltry 23:08 5k, go figure!
Leaving me to be 8th in my age group, 71st overall out of 459 competitors. I can live with that.