Federal Escape

“This water is BLACK – I can’t see into it!”

I’m standing in “5 Mile” Lake, trying to get in a little warm up before the start of the men’s wave for the “Federal Escape” Triathlon. Next to me is another OF, who’s apparently been here before.

“Actually, it’s dark red. Look at your hands when you get underwater.”

I can barely see my hands in front of my face down there, but, yes, they do appear red- tinged as I look through my clear lensed swimming goggles. The water has that harsh metallic smell I associate with the hard rock streams we might encounter in the Appalachians when I was a kid, and we’d go swimming in a holler on a camping trip out from Cincinnati where I grew up. The kind of stream, when it’s flowing almost dry in late summer, shows rusty lines along the water courses.

This lake is filled with iron. I could cure my anemia during this race, just from the water I normal ingest.

Paddling around in the warm-up, I notice that underwater, I can not see anyone else – we’re all in black wet suits, of course – even when I am about to ram into them. Kind of like what we get in Horseshoe Lake in late summer, but black instead of green-brown. Luckily, there are probably 100 or so swimmers in this wave, so collisions should be few.

The race director actually counts down from 10, meaning everyone start at “2”. I make sure to hit my watch at “3”, lean forward, and start swimming by the time he gets to “GO!”

It’s a two loop course, which apart from the total lack of visibility underwater, is pretty benign. I just try and go at my usual race pace, which is the same for all distances from 1500 thru 3800 meters: go just hard enough so I don’t have to take any breaststroke breaks. When I first started racing in open water, I didn’t have a good idea of how long I could swim fast, so I would often find myself having to get a rest breaststroking (which for me is actually about as fast as everyone else around me is swimming freestyle.) Now, I know where that limit is, so I try to stay just south of it.

I exit the water at 29:54, which is about 3+ minutes slower than I usually do this distance. It’s slower than I go without a wetsuit. Either I am in very bad swimming form, or the course is long. Way long.

Whatever. I walk up the sandy slope to the grassy transition area, pulling off my wetsuit top and shoulder straps as I go. When I hit the timing pad, I start running, racing around all those who have been trotting all the way. Shoes, glasses, helmet, sip of water, and out onto the bike course.

This course is four loops of 5.83 miles each through eastern Federal Way suburban streets. For some reason, instead of a simple 4 turns each lap to make a rectangle, the street grid forces us to make FOURTEEN turns each lap – nearly 60 in the whole race, or one a minute.

Each turn requires a slow-down, good angle, then start pedaling back up to speed. Trying to maintain a steady effort level, never mind a steady speed, is of course impossible. It’s like climbing an endless series of rollers, but without the downhills. Very easy to trash one’s legs doing this, so I take it a little easier than I normally would for an Olympic distance bike leg of 24.8 miles. To top it off, my power meter is acting funky in the first and third laps, and in the other two, is unreliable for instantaneous readings as the tilts around each corner mess up the measurement algorithm on my iBike. And speed isn’t helpful, nor is heart rate, which stays low. So I just go.

Back in transition, a 60-ish guy is trying to rack his bike where he had it before, on the other side of the pipe from me. There was plenty of room when he racked, and there is plenty of room there now, but he doesn’t seem to see it. He keeps grousing about somebody taking his space, and not having any room to leave his bike, and so he just drops it on the grass, hoping, I guess, that no one will ride over it on the way to their own space.

I’m not sure if he’s in my AG or not, and I’m a bit peeved that he has swum/biked faster than me since he looks about my age. I hop into my shoes, slurp some Gu, slam on my visor, and take off through the woods on the first of the two loops for this 6 mile leg.

A pace watch or an HR monitor might help me here, but I haven’t bothered with those in races for years, so why start now – just another piece of equipment to slow me down. The day is grey, and cool for end of July – 60F – but I start to heat up nicely as I pull into the first climb out of the park.

I’m wearing a new pair of “racing” shoes I just got from Newton. These shoes are way too expensive, but I like their training model, so decided to give these a try. They are bright monkey vomit green, with insoles depicting Sir Isaac N. in full wig and regalia. My heels smash his face with every step – take that and your stupid Theory of Gravity, to say nothing of Momentum (“A body set in motion will tend to stay in motion” – he obviously never tried running hard for 10 kilometers after swimming 1.5 and biking 40K).

These shoes are supposed to enable mid-sole striking, through little lugs under the ball of the foot, and lower heels than most other running shoes. I like them because they are made out a breathable mesh with wide (2-3 mm) holes and a wide toe box, protecting what few toenails I have left.

But, the racers are EXACTLY the same as the trainers except for lacking any hard rubber heel protection covering the softer compressible foam. So the heels wear out seemingly after one race. Pretty expensive way to gain 5-10 seconds per mile.

Anyway, at one of the many turns in the run course, the aid table is set up. I stop, take a drink, and look over my shoulder for Mr. Bike-in-the-grass. He seems to still be back there, maybe 400 meters behind. I figure I’ll just keep going at my pace, and stomp him into the dirt if he happens to catch up to me. But, clearly, I can’t slow down either.

At the start of the second loop, our route goes right through the line taken by the swimmers out of the lake. A sprint distance started about 1 hour 50 minutes after we did, so not only did I have to run through them as they walked DOWN to the lake for the start, now I’m running through them as they come back up. Did the RD actually not think about this possibility? Maybe he should have started them about 1/2 hour earlier??

Oh well, another aid station, another slow down for water, then back to Racing In The Streets. My tri suit unzips in the rear, and the air flow back there is not enough to cool me down, so I just strip off the shoulder straps, dangling my suit like some anorectic pro-wrestler would. You can do this in a USAT race, but not an an Ironman. All participants there apparently have to keep their nipples covered, which in days past produced the “Man-Bra”, or very skimpy halter top for men, worn now only by the ethnically confused German racer Faris Al-Sultan.

I finish the 6 miles (0.2 short) in 42:54, faster than I thought. Must be the shoes.

Post race conversations with a couple of good college swimmers reveals they were 2-3 minutes slower than their usual 20 minute time. They think the course was 1800 meters; I’m going with about 1750. Coupled with short bike and run courses, my overall time of 2:25:03 is just about spot on for my usual Olympic race. I even get a foot tall little plastic trophy and a gift certificate for a Road ID for winning my AG. Mr. Grumpy was actually 57 y/o, and 4 minutes back at the end. I was 32/154, and 1/3 in my AG.

After the race, we have to wait over TWO HOURS for the awards – that’s why I began a policy of not waiting at all unless I win; I may have to modify that to just not waiting more than an hour. no matter what.

I do get involved in a bunch of conversations with older guys who know me and want to introduce themselves. One is going to be the Medical Director for the med tent in Kona this fall, and he introduces me to a budding IM fanatic who pumps my brain for 30 minutes about training and racing tactics. The other is the guy who came in second to me in today’s race. His main interest is to show me the fading bruise on his thigh from early June which prevented him from racing in Coeur d’Alene. He had Google’d me the night before, seeing me on the race list, and wanted to know what it meant that I got a “course record” there. So I had to give him my whole resume, and reassure him that, yes, it does take us longer to heal at this age and the key thing is to just keep going.