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 Swim
Comments: I positioned myself over to the far left of the start right behind the first row of guys. Don't feel too comfortable in my ability to pull away from the better swimmers so I decided to take a more conservative approach. Once the gun went off I realized that it seemed as if nobody in front of me really wanted to make a move so I took off duck diving, butterfly, etc. I was able to get a good 15 or 20 yards out and then start working my way back in after about the 1st 100 yards. I do all my breathing bi-laterally, except for some reason this time I was able catch a good rhythm only breathing to my left. With my breathing in a good rhythm I started to concentrate on getting good extension and a good rotation and pull. The first 1/2 mile or so felt so good. The water was sooooo clear that I was able to see everyone in front of me and decide whom I wanted to draft off of. Problem was that I seemed to be in such a good rhythm - every time I decided to draft someone, I would end up passing them. Regardless, I felt comfortable and that seems to be the most important thing during the swim. I was even getting a nice strong kick with my rotation. Everthing seemed good. Got a little bit of chop while swimming parallel to the course but nothing as bad as some of the swims I have done in South Jersey in years past. All I did was switch my breathing to my right side and keep plugging away. Once I reached the marker for the swim back in I started to pass a lot of blue caps from my wave, as well as powder blue and yellow caps from the one or two waves before me. My sighting was as good as it ever was and I never swam off course. I continued to swim until my feet started hitting sandy bottom and then I stood up and made my way for the swim exit. What would you do differently?: Nothing. I have completed shorter courses at a faster pace, but for a 1.2 mile swim I was extremly happy since all of my pool times have been around 38, 39 or 40 minutes. The wetsuit and a little bit of adrenaline works wonders.  Transition 1
Comments: Left the water and immediately had some trouble with the tear away zipper on my suit. It didn't seem to be tearing away. Once I got the top half of my suit and sleeves off, my goggles and swim cap came off easy. I flopped onto the sand and two young kids went at it on my wetsuit, ripping it right off of me. Grabbed the wetsuit, ran to my rack spot, tossed the wetsuit, put the helmet on, put the glasses on and took off. Half to the transition extit I realized that the long sleeve top I wore that morning was still on my saddle. I had put it there before leaving for the swim start in case it had started to rain. I tossed it towards the fence surrounding transition and then continued to the bike mount line. I put my bike down and all of a sudden realized that I had forgotten to put my race number and race belt on. shite. I put that on and jumped on the bike. My shoes are already clipped in so I started pedalling barefoot on top. I was able to get both of my feet into the shoes and strapped in without much problem at all. Got up to speed pretty good. What would you do differently?: Put race belt on at rack spot and do not cover my saddle.  Bike
Comments: The first 4 miles went pretty good. I attempted to stay within myself especially knowing what was coming up in the next 5 or 6 miles. Me? I'm a big guy (6' 225lbs) that comes from a place (SE PA) where I'm not out riding hills like this all the time. I didn't play around with swapping out my cranks for shorter ones or swapping out my rear cassette (although I wish I would have). The March Hill Monster was as bad as I thought it was gonna be. I came within a gnat's hair of giving up, getting off the bike and walking up the hill. Seriously - my cadence was probably something like - i don't know - 40? 50? Something ridiculous. My mph up that hill was like 4mph! I was so close to giving up - yet I didn't and it paid off I think during the first half of the course. My legs felt pretty good and I realize that that hill served as a decent warmup for the 1st part of the course. Normally in the sprints I do I'm averaging anywhere between 20mph and 22mph on mostly flat courses so I was a little dissapointed in failing to achieve even 17mph on this course. Especially since I was working on getting an avergae between 19 and 20 just before turnaround. Anyway....my fueling went well, drank about 24 ounzes of Accelerade every 60 minutes and ate a gel every 20 to 30 minutes. Didn't drop any fuel or get a flat so I should be happy with that. Once we hit the turnaround it just started to rain, and I continued to curse the course because the entire ride back was an ascent. Every time the road turned or curved I expected to see the road dip but it would only continue up, up, up......and those last handful of hills the last 20 miles of the ride. good god. I just didn't have it in my to go any faster than about 10mph. I was happy to just get to the top. As bad as those hills were, the two or three descents over the last 8 miles were incredible!!! What a rush!!! The road was damp but I didn't care. I had two things in my head. It seemed like a lot of riders around me were being conservative goinng downhill. and going as fast as I could downhill was the only way I was going to increase my mph that late in the race. The first one I hit 48.5mph and I had to take my hands off my aero bars and put them on my bull horns because my front wheel started wobbling back and forth. That has never happened before. Still a rush though. The next two hills I was also well into the 42-44mph range and it felt great. It was a shame those descents were not longer. What would you do differently?: play around with the thought of switching my cranks and rear cassette out. Generally - get out on some long rides that include hill work. Transition 2
Comments: Reached the NO PASS ZONE and volunteers steered us to the left because a rider went down. Second time I have done a running dismount and did not have any problems. Everthing went well. Picked up the bike and ran to my rack. No problems. Put shoes on WITHOUT socks. There was my biggest problem of the day. Took off back out to the run out. What would you do differently?: Put socks on.  Run
Comments: Lets see - where do I begin. My initial strategy was to run to every aid station and then walk thru each one. I figured that on such a cool day I could easily beat my half-marathon PR of 2:30. Well first I stopped at a porta-potty. Fine. Then right after the potty stop I stopped to walk the aid station. Right after beginning to run after the aid station my right hamstring started to knot up. Now I had Enduralite tablets with me but since it was only about 65 degrees I decided against taking them. I guess I was wrong. After about 2 or 3 minutes of stretching I started to run again. Now the next aid station came up so I walked again. After passing the aid station now my quad wanted to get stretched. So I stopped again and stretched my quad out for another 3 minutes. ridiculous. I was only able to get through about another 2 miles before I needed to sit on the ground and stretch my hamstring and groin again. Getting close to the 5 mile mark I could feel the blisters on both feet starting to form. Damn it!!! It got so bad I just said screw it, removed the Newtons and ran the last handful of miles back to the race start barefoot. It felt sooooooooo good. The asphalt was cold and wet. And I made sure to run down the middle of the road so I would be running on the smooth yellow paint lane divider lines. Once I passed the beginning of the second lap I put the shoes back on and continued with the run to each aid station and walk through until I got to about Mile 8 and my feet started to hurt again. Now I told myself lets just run for 1 minute and walk 30 seconds and keep doing that until we finish. Well that worked until I reached the Mile 10 marker and saw that my watch said 6:24 (or right around there). That's 36 minutes for a 5k. I can sneak under 7 hours if I continue to run. Now I was running 5 or 5 minutes and stopping to walk 30 seconds until I got the last mile or 1-1/2 miles. Post race
Warm down: By now it started to pour. I grabbed one of the blankets they were handing out and I made way to my cousin's car to get dried off and warm. Went to the food tent, tried to eat but I was more interested in drinking and then ran to transition, packed my gear up, grabbed my bike and headed to the truck. No traffic back to the condo on Paugus bay. What limited your ability to perform faster: I think this is my first and last attempt at 70.3 distance. Anyone that knows me, knows I only average 3 to 4 hours a week of training. There are people that will read this or have participated in Timberman that are genetically gifted and STILL manage to put in 15 hours a week of training volume during their seasons. Me? I think I'm happy doing my local sprint distance races on the weekends in SE PA and South Jersey. Event comments: Everything I read said that this is considered to be one of the best and it truly was quite the experience. Laconia, Weir's Beach, Winnipausawkee are awesome places I would love to come back to visit with the family. Last updated: 2009-10-01 12:00 AM
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United States
EndorFun
70F / 21C
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Overall Rank = 1948/2740
Age Group = 30-34
Age Group Rank = 213/290
Left Thursday morning with the wife and kids and arrived in Laconia and the condo (right on Weir Blvd and Paugus Bay)me and my cousin Pete rented around 6:30 that night. Decided to make a run over to Gunstock on Friday afternoon to pick up our race packet and avoid any of the chaos that was sure to arrive Saturday afternoon. Snuck down to the swim start at Lacoya prior to Gunstock. Water was nice! Arrived at Gunstock, picked up our race packets, checked out some of the vendors, bought some gels and a new pair of TYR NestPro goggles and headed home.
Saturday morning we met fellow BT Zukker outside our condo after our brief Saturday morning bike/run brick. Happened that he had rented the condo adjacent to our condo. Everybody agreed on a time to meet Sunday morning and make our way over to Laconia. Next we headed back over to Gunstock for the "mandatory" pre-race meeting. Basically a waste of time. Number one it was too crowded to get close enough to hear and second it was basically everything that was included in the Athletes Handbook PDF file. Left Gunstock and dropped the bikes off in transition. My biggest debate was how I should rack my bike since I had the water bottles on the back and if I racked it by the saddle I would be fighting the water bottles when unracking my bike. Figured out that the best way to do it was by the brake levers. I only do sprints so I never race with the rear bottle holders, this was the first time. Good decision. Had no problems with unracking the bike Sunday morning.
Sunday morning I woke up at 3AM, got dressed, ate a Clif bar and drank some Accelerade. Grabbed my gear, threw it into Pete's truck and walked next door to get Zukker. We all were on the road by about 3:30AM and arrived at the park and a line of cars to get into the park at about 3:55AM. The park gates opened at 4AM and we were about the 12th or 13th car in line. Driving over to the park in lieu of taking the shuttle provided all of us with a little bit of flexibility and a sense of security. We were able to stash any gear we wouldn;t need in transition in the truck and we would also have a place to sit if the weather got bad (which it did). We parked and sat in the truck until transition was opened up at 4:30AM. Grabbed our stuff and went to set everything up. All of us put bags on our bikes the night before and it was a good call because there was some overnight rain. After setting everything up, and dropping our gear back in the truck everyone pretty much went their own way. It was about 6:15 by the time I was all set up and ready to go. With the portapotty line getting longer by the minute, I set out down towards the swim start where I remembered seeing a bath house two days before when stopping by the park. There were about 8 people in line waiting for two toilets. One toilet was facing sideways behind the other two. I waited almost a minute and nobody made a move for the toilet so I jumped in. Nobody must have realized it was there. Bonus for me. Got settled and then headed back to transition to grab my wetsuit, goggles, swim cap and gel by 6:45AM when transition was going to begin to close. Left transition and walked down the beach for the Swim start.
I was in Wave #17 (second to last) and scheduled to go off at 8:15 with the L-Z portion of the 30-34 group. I watched the first 12 waves go off, listened to the crowd go nuts when Potts got out of the water in 23 minutes and then started to get into my wetsuit. I hung out in the water around the starting line watching some technique and also getting in some 100meter sprints to get my heart rate up. I took a Gu around 7:50 or so....