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On Saturday Kerry and I headed out to Gilford, NH for the 2008 Timberman Sprint. Looking back to the start of the year when I first decided to embark on this lunatic adventure of racing a triathlon, my goal initially was to finish it. Little did I know that over the course of the past 8 or so months, my goal would change slightly.
I also initially had no idea that that thing they call “swimming” was in fact really a bar-room brawl with a difference: it happened in about 8-15 feet of water, but punching, kicking and shoving were the order of the day. By the time Timberman came around, however, I was well versed in the ways of underwater Kung Fu and now live by the mantra of “what happens under water, stays under water”.
My original goal was to just finish. Then, when the running initially went well and I had a race under my belt I reset my expectations to finishing inside of 1h30. Soon thereafter I decided that I could do it in 1h25. Then my expectations started to become more demanding and I wound up setting a goal time of 1h15.
Race morning finally arrived and Kerry decided that it would be a whole bunch of fun to rip the valve stem off of her new Zipp 404’s about 30 minutes before the transition area closed because, you know, doing a triathlon with 1,000 other competitors isn’t stressful enough. I stood idly by while she performed the world’s fastest tube change. Rule #1: don’t get in the way of a pro when she’s stressed, amped up on coffee and adrenaline and trying to break the world record for changing a tube. If you do, you’ll die.
After that little fiasco, I thought that the rest of the race would be a breeze. I was wrong.
I’m convinced that the Males 35-39 age group is really a safe-haven for the criminally insane. I mean, who the f**k in their right mind thinks that it is normal behavior to try to swim over, sucker punch, kick, claw and otherwise try to drown as many competitors as possible within the 9 minuteseternity that is the swim? There is still a bruise on my elbowjaw from someone else’s jawelbow.
I can’t wait for the next round.
Transition at Timberman has got to be the longest transition that I’ve yet seen in my vast experience of 7 triathlons. You get out of the water, bang a right, sprint along a straight, run up some wood platform to your left, hook another right, swing left through a set of water tubs to wash your feet and then try to find your bike amongst the 1,100 or so that are racked.
After a lengthy 2 1/2 minutes or so of transition I was finally on the bike. Ok, now I’m not the world’s best cyclist or anything like that. In fact I don’t even have all that much experience on a bike. But I at least know how to mount and dismount without endangering the lives of those all around myself. Just because there is a yellow line that says “MOUNT”, that doesn’t mean that you have to come to a complete freaking halt exactly at the line and take the next 45 seconds or so to try to swing your leg over the top tube from the wrong side while blocking everyone else behind you. It also doesn’t mean that you should put your bike in it’s 53/12 gear and try to mash it as hard as possible, fail dismally at that and veer to the left or right into your competitors. If you really want to take them out, kill them on the swim. It’s far less noticeable. Try practicing the mount; it may just help.
Ok, so back to the ride. Things were going fine right up until I wanted to use my 53-12 on the first downhill section. I clicked on the STI lever and all I heard was “click-click-click” and nothing else. Nada. My rear derailleur had gone slightly out of adjustment, so I couldn’t get into the smallest cog on the back. Oh well, not the end of the world and pretty much the only major “problem” of the whole race. It cost me some amount of time, but in the grand scheme of things it was really just a minor blip on the radar.
Coming back from the ride I had a reasonable transition to the run - neither of my transitions was super fast, but they went smoothly enough so I’m satisfied with them. The first half of the run course is slightly uphill, so I took that a little slower. I’m finding that I actually like gentle uphills in the first part of the run course - it seems to wake my legs up much faster than a flat does. Amazingly enough, my legs felt pretty good right off of the run - it seems like being able to run more regularly again is actually helping. Since the run is an out-and-back course, the 2nd half of the run was pretty much downhill all the way and helped me to get the fastest run split I’ve yet had in a triathlon. They recorded it as 20:01 for a 6:41 pace, but they based that on a 3 mile loop. Mapping it via google, it looks like it is more accurately a 2.9 mile run, which would make my pace about a 6:55 pace; still not too awful.
So, final results:
84th overall, 1:17:55
17th in my age group
Swim - 8:55
Bike - 45:27
Run - 20:01
Overall, I’m fairly happy with the results.
For those that are interested, I’ve got a ton more pictures on my gallery.
