Background: Ironman # 34. In this, my age-up year, I’m trying to re-create the success I had 2005-2015 (7 AG wins, 3 course records, 9 KQs). That plan has always been risky, given the physical and mental ravages of so many races and a full life of sports over the previous 6 decades. I did manage a 2nd place finish this May 4 at the ITU LD WC in Spain. Which left about 3 weeks of real training time between Big Races, during which I anxiously awaited the birth of our first grandchild, who finally popped out May 25. After which I left for my annual Bad Ass camp in CO.
Goal: Simply KQ. One other competitor already had a slot, and 3 others were DNS. which left 2 real competitors in my AG.
Admin: Arrived in Boulder Friday after noon. Lodging fortuitously one block from finish line and buses to start, T1 & T2 20′ away @ Boulder Reservoir. Spent the next 24 hours registering, meeting EN teammates for dinner, sleeping, prepping bags, transporting to the Rez, returning to watch Rocketman, followed by traditional Jamba Juice dinner. Weather was warm (80s), with afternoon showers in the days leading up to the race. Race day promised wake-up temp of 46, cloudy in the low 50s until 2 PM, the sunny in the low 60s for the run.
Swim: Despite only ~ 1300 entering the water, it took over 45′ to single file us into the 67F water for the one loop swim. I lined up near front of 1:20-1:30. I swam steady with very little contact and almost no one slower or faster than me around. I was hoping to go 1:24; went 1:26 by the mats, more like 1:25 of swimming. Garmin shows 4500 yds. T1 a fairly long trip, made longer by putting on socks, sleeves, and vest needed for the cold. I was 3/4 in T1, 11 compared to 10 and 8′. Out of T1 in 2nd place.
Bike: Goal, 6:30; actual 6:34:30, which includes about 6′ of stoppage time for porta-potti x 2 and SN stop for moving time of 6:28:30. My plan was for an NP of 127, KJ 2700, a VI of 1.05, with no spikes over 180, and very little time above 150 watts. Actual numbers: NP 123, VI 1.08, KJ 2665, 1′ power of 211 (4 x 10-12% grade), 3′ of 172, 5′ of 165, 10′ of 146, 20′ of 134… The two-loop course had very good pavement, and was mostly 1-2% up or down, with 2 hills of 4-6% for 5-10′, with those short, steep kickers. The biggest negative during the ride was my pedaling balance: 58L/42R for the first three hours, 57/43 for the next 3, and 56/44 for the last 30′ This reflects my increasingly damaged Right knee with osteoarthritis and concomitant R quad weakness. T2=6:30. This was actually fastest in my AG. I was in 2nd Pl @ this point.
Run: The first 14 miles went perfectly to my plan of 11-12′ miles – all were between 10:50 and 12:20. Then, just as in Spain @ the same distance, my Right knee swelling became prominent enough that I entered a forced march to the end: I averaged 14-15′ miles to the end. I had not run more than 12 miles during training, and that distance only once. So, I guess I got what I paid for. I ended up a bit over 14 hours, but still able to walk, unlike the race in Spain when I was pretty crippled for 24 hours after the race, which was “only” 18.6 miles.
Finish: The highlight of my day came at the finish line. EN co-founder and erstwhile Coach Rich Strauss, who moved to Boulder a few months ago and who had come to dinner with us Friday night (and who rode his moto hauling head referee Jimmy Ricotello around the course) was there at the finish to greet me. Not only did he offer congratulations, but he stayed with me all the way back to my motel, carrying bags and bike for which I am forever grateful.
My motel was close enough to the finish line that I listened to Mike Reilly hollering “You Are An Ironman” until 11:55 PM. I checked the results, and discovered I was 3rd, and thus had lost the Kona slot. I found I was actually relieved with the news, rather than upset. I admitted to myself that I had been fearful of both t and ski. I’m @ peace with retiring from IM, satisfied with my career and palmares there.”You Never Know Your Limits Until You Go Past Them” <
Next morning, at the urging of my wife, I made sure to attend the awards ceremony – in my mind, to honor and respect the race and my competitors. I sat with Steph Stevens and Patti Rosen (who won her AG), and stayed for the Roll-Down, as it is usually entertaining and sometimes heart-warming seeing the re-actions of those who get the slots.
Little did I know…
In all previous years, the roll-down has started, like the awards, with youngest first. This year, the oldest AG – 70-74 men – was called first. I was dumbfounded no one responded when Mike called the 2nd place finisher’s name three times. I had just become the entertainment I stayed to see.
Running up to the stage again, Mike asked me how many times I’d qualified. I answered, this was the 10th. AND THE LAST. I have been given a wonderful gift, the chance to “go out on top” and one last opportunity to get it right, whatever that means in my condition.
I’ve decided to enhance my Endurance Nation experience for the next 4-5 months through a more in-depth interaction with coach Patrick McCrann. I’ll document that on-going dialogue here.
@Coach Patrick OK, I guess I thought I could race in Spain, then five weeks later in Boulder without your help, but clearly I was wrong.
So I’m going back to Kona, and the first order of business is a season training plan. Note I am signed up for Ironman Arizona 7 weeks later, but I want to make Hawaii the target race, and the decision of whether and how to prep fo AZ should wait until the third week of October.
This week: transition/rest; next week, biking with Scott Dinhofer in Vermont, still just doing recovery mode.
Also, I am racing the USA Triathlong standard (Oly) national championships Aug 11 so I can do the International Triathlon Union World Championships in Edmonton 2020. It’s simply a matter of showing up and doing my thing, as the top 18 (69-73) go to the World’s. It should mean only a 4-5 day hole in training. Then, 4 weeks of build, leading to three final weeks in train in Colorado, Sep 8-29 or so.
My initial thought is fire up the IM plan to start first week of July, and finish on Oct 12, but I’m ready to consider your lead.
Also, I will be seeing a PT specialist who has special training/interest in rehabbing muscles weakened due to damaged joints. According to my PowerTap pedal power meters, my left/right pedal balance is about 56/44, showing how much weaker the damaged knee has made my quads on that side.
I’m ready to dedicate 3.5 months to the project of honoring the Hawaii course better than I did in Boulder, more like what I did in Spain, but with a bit more staying power.
Truth be told, I do not think I was able to adequately pull off that double May 4/June 9 of two major very long distance races. There was simply not enough time available in the three week interim between rest after the first and rest/taper before the second; I only had 14 miles in my legs of running. I did manage to run about half the distance after that – more complete analysis to come later this week when I write a full race report.
I’ve now participated in 4 International Triathlon Union (ITU, the Olympic Organizing Cmte for our sport) World Championships. Not only is it kinda cool to say I’ve done this or that World Championship, the races themselves are very well run, and take place in great vacation spots. AND THEY ARE FAR EASIER TO QUALIFY FOR THAN YOU MIGHT THINK!!! (see below)
In particular, the Long Course races (3 k swim/120k bike/30k run) have a LOT to offer. First off, they take place in resort communities of moderate size – in 2017, it was Penticton, BC (former site of IM Canada), in 2019, in Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain (about 80,000 people, race located in the “Old Town” and thru the surrounding hills where the Vuelta has taken place). Next, they are part of a ten-day long Multi-Sport Festival, with Sprint Tris and Dus open to all, a cross triathlon, an Aquathlon, a long course Du, the LC tri and an Aquabike (same distance as the tri, without the run). More than a few competitors do 4 of these races, earning a Legends of Multisport medal. If you qualify for the Team USA in in the LC tri you can enter the short ones without additional qualifying.
Because the USA is a Big Country, with a large triathlete population, we get about 18 slots per age group, which are awarded at the respective USAT national championships. Read that again: EIGHTEEN SLOTS PER AGE GROUP. What that means in practice is that anyone 55 and older simply has to finish the race at the NC to get on the team. The NC is the half Iron distance race, MiamiMan, held in – duh – Miami in mid-November. https://www.miamimanhalfiron.com
So the team is big, and supported by on-the-ground USAT staff including masseuses and medical personnel, and stay in the team hotels.
Now, the other secret, is that even the younger AGs have pretty loose entry times. For men, 35-39, the 16th pl time is 5:25; 40-45: 5:40; 45-49: 5:30; and 50-54: 5:40. It’s actually a little tricky, because you are competing against those who will be in the AG next year for the slots. So it’s the top 39-43 y/o’s for the 40-44 squad. Here’s a link to the results from ’19 if you want to see if you might be able to make it: https://triregistration.com/TriResultsNewGrid-Org.php?raceid=2387
In 2020, the race will be held in Almere, Netherlands – easy to get to thru Schiopol Airport, major point of entry for Delta and other US Airlines to Europe. The even better news: both the Miami Man, and the ITU LC WC in 2020 are Pancake Flat! And if you simply can’t run, well, there’s the Aquabike!
Now, take a minute to consider all this. Say you’d like to race @ Kona, but, really, you know you’re not going to qualify anytime soon. Say you think Ironman is really cool. ’cause it’s so long and hard – well, these races are really on the sane side of possibility; I’m a 12:30 IM racer now, and I did the last ITU LC WC in 8:45 or so – it’s good to be done by dinner! And, this is truly a world wide event – you are on course with people from all continents (there were a few Kenyans rasing last week, along with RSA, Egypt, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and all the usual suspects from Europe and Asia. Everyone is in a national team uniform. The crowds are big and supportive – they’ve been watching racing all week, and know the drill by the time the LC tri (the last race) comes up.
Impress your friends – go to the World Championships! Plan now for 2020 in Holland…
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“90 seconds!” It was easy to pick Cody out of the crowd as I rounded the corner coming out of the stadium midway through my third of four laps. He’s 6’2”, and had the cacophonous goat bell I’d picked up in Mustang (Tibetan Nepal) to clang at races just like this one, the 2019 International Triathlon Long Distance World Championships in Pontevedra, Spain.
“Huh?” I hollered back.
“90 seconds to second place!” he smiled out at me.
At this point, I was feeling good – great, actually. Ever since I blew up my right knee weight lifting, and then skiing, during the winter of 2018, I’ve been worried about sustaining a run for three or more hours. While I had plodded through Ironman Arizona six months earlier, it had not been with the punch, verve, and confidence I wanted to show this year, my first in 70-74 age group races. My longest training run was two hours, 12 miles, and my usual pace was 9:30-10:30 minutes a mile, and that without a swim or bike ride immediately prior.
We had started our day in the tidal estuary of a river flowing down from the Galician mountains to the Northeast. The day before, at the athletes’ briefing, ITU staff warned they might have to shorten the swim from 3000 to 1500 meters. Apparently a scary number of competitors had to be “evacuated” during the 1000 meter aquathlon swim leg, probably with hypothermia from the 13.8 C temps (56 F). With 10 times the number of competitors scheduled for our race (including the concurrent Aquabike World Championships), there truly were safety concerns if hundreds of athletes might potentially be in trouble; the water safety staff was really not prepared for that.
So when race day dawned with the brackish water reading 14.1 C (57 F), I found myself clawing through a 44 minute swim against the current, rather than the 65’ I had been anticipating. While I didn’t freeze, I did shiver the entire 10 minutes I spent in T1. I know that sounds slow, but I had both the best overall and T1 times in my AG, despite spending a minute in the toilet.
The bike course made no compromises to the unprepared. The only flat part along the 37 km route, done 3 times total, was several preliminary admin miles through an industrial park across the river from T1. This involved multiple turns and road humps, slowing us down during one of our few chances for sustained speed. Half km uphill along a rutty concrete freeway, and then onto a steep 15% ramp for a couple hundred meters. Turn around, back down to the freeway. From there, we faced a prolonged climb from sea level to 230 meters (700’) altitude. A couple of km of more rolling, but upward terrain, and another sharp right turn onto the crux of the course.
These ten kilometers featured breathtaking scenery, a winding smooth asphalt surface, and continued relentless up (for the first 2.5 km), and down (the next 2.5 km), back up and down again and out on the main road. Where we faced one more done/up combo, FINALLY meeting up with 8-9 km of speedy downhill back into town. At least that was at the end, so getting ready for the run was a bit easier.
My “plan” was to treat the bike ride as an event, rather than a race, seeking to finish it with minimal damage to my sense of perceived exertion, and to make that effort level seem the same as an Ironman. Here’s a telling comparison between IM AZ and ITU LC WC, with distance, elevation, TSS, KJ, NP, VI, time
IM AZ 180 2000 235 2800 133 1.02 5:58
ITU LC WC 113 5300 200 1837 133 1.30 4:46
Who knows if I could have gone harder? I’m sure I could have, but there is always the question, at what cost. We’d learn whether I’d been too conservative very shortly, on the run.
While the bike had been cool (overnight temp was 9 C/48 F), the sun (“high noon” is actually about 1:45 PM here, just about when I got off the bike) was blazing by the time I cinched up my Nike VaporFly 4% magic shoes. This being a World Championship, the aid stations were well-stocked, and never ran out. Every mile I was able to grab a 16 oz water bottle, take a swig, and pour the rest over my head and back. In addition, I could choose from 226ER “iso” drink, or Coke, which I started slamming about 2/3rds of the way through. So despite the mid-70s temps under cloudless skies, I did not feel any heat, and actually kept the front of my jersey zipped most of the way up.
At the precise point Cody had shouted out my race status, I was gaining speed. I’d just passed another American near my age (Bob Rossbach, 68), who was jogging along, chatting with a younger female USA racer. I patted him on the back as I went by. He said, “Keep it up!”. I raised both arms in an exaggerated shrug, hollering back “I feel great!”.
And I did feel good, energized inside by the rambunctious alter ego inside me, who drives the pace on race day. He’d kept us in control throughout the bike, where my mantra was: “Make this an event, not a race; make it feel like an Ironman, not a half.”
With the frequent out and backs on the meandering 4.6 mile course, I had seen at least two others in my age group who seemed to be ahead of me; it was, of course, hard to tell, as I didn’t know which lap they were on. But I assumed I was either third or fourth, and knew I was gaining on at least one, if not both of the ones I’d seen. The guy directly in front of me, Heinz Wolf, from Switzerland, was a slow swimmer – I’d left T1 8 minutes ahead of him – but a phenomenal biker. He passed me midway through the first lap, and left T2 50 minutes ahead of me. Adding to the work I had ahead, he was the returning champion in this age group.
I knew I was gaining on him as we entered the trickiest section of the run course. The first three miles or so were very flat. Out of transition, across the river, and around a semi-shaded island, then along a riverside out and back, up a very slight rise into the local stadium (which also served as transition area and finish line) for a quarter lap around the curve. Mile 4 then circuited through the old town, with multiple turns amongst the narrow alleys lined by 18th and 19th century 4-5 story buildings. The only hill on the course took us through this warren to a medieval church, where we 180’d back down to the river and the final half mile into the stadium again.
I caught Heinz just as we began the third climb up. I touched him on his right shoulder as I passed by muttering, “Sorry, Heinz”, and for some reason, I upped the pace. I guess that evil race manager inside me felt I had enough reserve to handle a surge here, and still finish the final lap with something left in the tank. Maybe he thought I could lose Heinz in the maze we traveled up to and round the church. For whatever reason, I kept the hammer on far longer than I needed.
In the five miles (a little over one lap) before I saw Cody, I was averaging 9:25 min/mile, with my HR having risen from the low 120s at the start to the low 130s (my power meter gave out a couple of miles earlier). I was pretty sure I could hold that pace/effort level for the remainder of the run. But then, the next two miles were 9:08/138 (uphill!) and 8:52/137.
Sure, I passed Heinz, but at what cost? I soon found out: next mile, 9:35/125. OK, good enough, But the following two were: 10:30/122, 10:31/121. OK, still good enough, but not pretty. I began to alternate running with a jiggery “angry man walk”, and extend the aid station walks to their full width, first volunteer to last garbage can. And the last 1.6 miles were downright embarrassing. Not only did I go 11:53/121 and 12:49 pace/121 HR, but I was reduced to the “old man shuffle”.
You’ve seen this on the Kona broadcasts. They find some really old guys, and remark about how determined they are. On screen they appear to be bent over at the waist, or tilted to one side, feet still moving briskly, but with mincing steps covering very little ground. Not really “running”. On their faces, that “thousand yard stare” of the defeated who refuse to quit. That was me, in that final 25 minutes.
It was a bit scary. People kept asking me if I were OK, culminating with the Team USA manager who’d been encouraging me at the end of each lap, remarking how good I looked. Not this time. His face looked almost frightened. I kept moving, tried to appear cheery, and reassured him I would make it.
Which I did through to the finish line. Then, I could not move another step. One of those “gun to the head” moments. Put a gun to my head, tell me to walk, and I couldn’t. Down into a little wheel chair they lowered me, and into the med tent.
No, not the Med Tent! Been there, done that, don’t want to waste my time in it, especially with my rudimentary Spanish. Luckily, Cody had found his way to the tent entrance, and I managed to convince the staff that he would take good care of me. Off we shuffled to the recovery area for my dry clothes, some food, and a bit of space.
My right knee had become pretty much non-functional, swollen to twice the size of the left, and I had three toes with blood blisters coming up from the nail beds. I sent Cody off to retrieve my stuff from transition, head over to Tri-Bike Transport, and return to help me back up the 1/2 mile to our hotel.
I did NOT want to go to the awards ceremony. The walk up to our hotel was torture, and I didn’t see how I could manage to make the next 1/2 mile to the plaza, much less step up onto a podium. But Cody had already called my wife Cheryl, who insisted, “It’s the World Championships, you HAVE to go.” I learned long ago not to fight a united front of two other nuclear family members, so I let Cody drag me there. I am glad I got to experience that. I’ve been on more than a few podiums, including a second place at the Xterra Worlds and seven IM AG wins, but this was no doubt the most exhilarating. It helped me turn the corner from, “Well, I guess that’s the end of my long-distance career” to “OK, I’ll see if I can make it to Boulder in five weeks.” Applause while holding your country’s flag overhead will do that…
In 1956, Frank Robinson first appeared with the Cincinnati Reds, our hometown baseball team. The Reds played in a small bandbox of a stadium, a miniature version of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbet’s Field. It was confined by the irregular streets of the inner Mill Creek Valley, so small that the outfield fences were closer than almost any others in the Majors. So small, the field sloped up to the “Sun Deck”, the cramped bleachers out in right, creating the infamous “terrace”. So the Reds were defined by power hitters, like Ted Kluzewski, who hit 49 homers in ’49, Wally Post, and Gus Bell, who anchored the outfield when Robinson arrived.
He made an immediate impact. In his first year, at the age of 20, he slammed 38 balls over the fence, scored 122 runs (leading the league), and knocked in 83, while batting .290. He earned Rookie of the Year honors in the National League, and helped power the Reds to a then record 221 home runs. I became so enamored by him and the team, my grandmother gave me a subscription to Sports Illustrated, then only 2 years old, when it featured the fearsome five sluggers from Cincinnati on its cover: Big Klu, Robby, Post, Bell, and catcher Ed Bailey. The team was rounded out by Roy McMillan at short, Johnny Temple at second, and Ray Jablonski at third.
That began my enduring connection to the “first team in professional baseball” – the Red Stockings had been paid for playing starting in 1869. Other claims to fame: the first night game played in the major leagues; winners in the 1919 World Series, by default over the infamous Black Stockings; and the youngest player ever to appear in a game, Joe Nuxhall, a pitcher during the player-starved World War II era.
My dad took me to games every summer, in the sketchy part of town where Crosley Field was located. He’d park a half mile away, on a threadbare city street, where invariably someone would come up to us and offer to “Watch your car for a dollar, Mister!” The seats were green wooden slats, and often the view was blocked by stout steel pillars holding up the second deck.
The Reds parlayed their hitting machine into continued success, finally reaching the World Series in 1961. By then I had become a rabid fan, and would steal my sister’s radio to listen to Waite Hoyt (pitching star of the legendary 1927 NY Yankees) provide his warbly view of the action. My father sensed an opening.
“I’ll give you a transistor radio if you join the swim team,” he told me in June of that year. We had joined the Indian Hill Swim club the year before. Now, instead of heading to the Golf Manor public pool a mile away, the first day school let out, and getting sun-burned with hundreds of other pasty, hypoer-kinetic kids, we could bask around a private pool, safe in the knowledge that only 300 families were members, and we wouldn’t have to get out every hour to kick the water at the edge of the pool while lifeguards sprinkled chlorine powder past our eyes and noses.
The Private Pool Swim League (PPSL) featured age group swim teams from all the suburban pools ringing the Cincinnati area. It never occurred to me that I could or should be a swimmer. But I wanted to listen to those games, and I also wanted access to the magic of Rock and Roll radio coming out of WSAI, 1340 on the AM dial.
Transistor radios were the iPhones of our time. Instead of a big box in the living room with vacuum tubes and half dollar-sized dials, these were the size of about two cigarette boxes, with little speakers in the front, and even a slot for a single ear piece to listen privately. Transistors had only been invented a few years earlier, and had not yet made in onto microprocessors; if you opened up the little radio, which you had to do to replace the batteries now and then, you could see each of the individual magic transistors, which somehow took the signal from the antenna (telescoping out of the top just like an old cell phone), unscrambled them, and turned them into pulses fed to the speaker, which vibrated miraculously into music or words. It even said, “Made in Japan” on the back. It only cost $27, half the price of my bike.
I would lie at night, covers pulled over my head, while Robinson bombed his way to the Most Valuable Player award that year, and Jim Maloney routinely flirted with no-hitters, striking out batters right and left just like Sandy Koufax. And I joined the swim team, where I discovered that, while I couldn’t swim the freestyle crawl stroke very well, I did have a natural talent for breast-stroke, and would up with a lot of red second place ribbons. That’s because there was another kid on the team, Newton Hudson Bullard III (“Skip”) who was ever so much better than I was. As would happen when I got to the high school team, and again in college. Never a winner, always a bridesmaid.
But I persisted. Something about being on the swim team agreed with me. Maybe it was the sunny days, the girls in skimpy suits, and the camaraderie that grew as we spent most of out time at meets lounging around in the early evening, waiting for our event. And kids have a lot of energy; getting to thrash back and forth for an hour or more every morning during practice, before the pool actually opened, seemed a great way to start the day.
My father had built a swimming pool in the back yard. I’m not quite sure why, but he was incessant in his interest in new sports. First he took up golf, and won a trophy in 1954 for winning the employee tournament for General Electric’s Evendale jet engine plant. No mean feat, as there were over 10,000 workers there. But he didn’t like golf; maybe it was too slow, or too frustrating. So he took up figure skating. He had skated on the frozen river running through Miles City in the winters. He would take my sister and I to the local ice rink just to go round and round for several hours. And we showed up at a nearby pond each winter, if it froze over sufficiently.
But once the figure skating championships started airing on TV, and he learned about the local figure skating club, he joined up, and dragged Leigh and I off every Sunday to carve 8s in the ice for half an hour, followed by 90 minutes of skating dance moves to music. That was a winter-time activity; the club went on hiatus when school let out. So he investigated putting a pool in our cramped back yard.
And because he was neither rich nor profligate, he opted for the cheapest in-ground system available. One day, a bull-dozer drove around to the rear of the house, dug a 30’ by 10’ hole and deposited the dirt smoothly around the back, raising the level of our yard by a foot or more. Then, some guys laid forms for concrete sidewalls around the edge, and shaped one end into an inverted pyramid 10’ deep, 5’ wide at the deepest point. Sand was poured over the bottom, smoothed out, and a pre-formed plastic tarp laid down. The edges were pulled tight under some curved coping, and covered by more concrete with a sidewalk around three of the rectangle’s four sides. Finally, it was filled with water, which, over several days, caused enough settling that the sand felt firm to the touch. $1500 for the whole deal, including the diving board at the deep end. This compared favorably to the $6,000 people would spend for a “real” pool.
So my father would go out every morning before work, mid-May through September, and swim for 20-30 minutes, 10 yards at a time. For me, it was a bit of a joke, as one push off the wall, and a single pull under water, got me more than half way across. Two or three strokes, and it was time to turn again. But Harry was a big guy, a bit of a slogger in the water, and he was satisfied with his own personal endless pool.
Except, the season was too short. In typical Harry fashion, a light bulb went off. He had recently installed an “air conditioner” in the basement, a large floor-to-ceiling affair connected to the furnace duct system. He noted that it drained warm water as a result of its cooling process, and proceeded to divert that water from the basement floor drain via copper pipiing out to the pool filtration system. A heated pool! This expanded his swimming season by a month or more.
I still had that Raleigh 3-speed, but let it languish once I left the sixth grade. Swimming started to occupy more and more of my summer time. I no longer was able to bike to school, having to walk a half mile to the city bus stop on Montgomery Ave., then ride on the #4 bus to Blair Avenue, followed by another half-mile walk to school. Putting bikes on busses was literally unheard of at that time.
But one summer, a friend came over and suggested we go on an adventure: ride our bikes to Sharon Woods, a county park about 10 miles away. We loaded up knapsacks with sandwiches, water, and cookies, and off we went. It took over an hour along the vaguely remembered route from family outings there. For two thirteen year-olds, it was a day to revel in summer-time freedom. We were totally on our own, of course: no cell phones to call for help.
The next summer, I realised: I could try the same thing to Indian Hill, for afternoon swim practice. This time, all by myself, I re-created the back road route my mother would drive us. That lasted about a week, and after that, my sister, who has just gotten her license that year, took over the chauffeur duties, and the Raleigh went back to its primary job as an arbor for spider webs.
“When you go back to school, you’re going to be in the 4th grade.” It was March of1958, and I was home sick for a week from the 3rd grade. This was probably just another symptom of my rapidly worsening performance in school, Second grade, I had won an award for not missing a day. I loved school. I was a king in the classroom. I had taught myself how to read when I was four, sitting on the toilet humming along with the “Hymnal 1940” which All Saints’ Episcopal Church used for its weekly services. I could hear the words in my head, and I already knew numbers. So coming home from church, I would turn to the pages with the hymns that had been used that day (there were only three each service), and start saying the words as I looked at them on the page, beneath the trebles and clefs denoting the melody. Something somewhere in my brain clicked, and I realised those little squiggles were words which were the same as the words I’d heard sung. Enough time with that, and I was reading before I got to Kindergarten.
So my mother enrolled me in various kids’ book clubs, and by the time I got to first grade, I was the star pupil. Other kids would come to me for help with their stumbling literacy, and the teacher always had me be the first to read out loud when we started a new “Dick and Jane” book. I thought I knew it all.
Then one day, during a read-aloud, I saw a word I’d never seen before, one which could not be guessed from the context or the pictures. “Uh, umm, tur…kwa…zee?”
Mrs. Williams gently corrected me. “No, thats ‘turquoise’. It’s a color.” One I did not know, much less the stone from which it derived. I was devastated. There were things in this world which I had not yet learned!
But it was a minor setback, and Mrs. Grimes in the second grade kept pushing me along, almost a student teacher for her, so I loved showing up every day. But early in the third grade, my grandfather, who lived out in the Bay Area, died, and my life at school underwent a tumult. Not from depression, but a new-found clarity. My father brought back a few of his possessions, to give to my sister and me, to remember him by. Mine was a Hamilton watch, one of those rectangular affairs with faux-gold plating on the strap and case.
I started wearing it everywhere. One day in class, I took it off and fiddled a bit with the case – the crystal popped right out! I almost dropped it on the floor, but managed to secure it between my thumb and index finger. I thought I’d give it a closer inspection, and held it up to my eye. Looking at the blackboard, I realised that those white blurs I had been seeing were actually numbers and words, the gist of the daily lesson the teacher would write for us each day.
Apparently, up until then, I had been sort of guessing what was going on in class, and that had made me pay very close attention. Once I got glasses (for when I told my mom about the discovery, she took me immediately to an ophthalmologist to get my eyes checked, then an optician for corrective lenses. She also made me start eating bunch of carrots in the vain belief it would cure my myopia.) life in school became a lot easier. And therefore, boring. My grades plummeted. That, coupled with my disgraceful handwriting (“chicken scratches”), led to fevered discussion among my parents, the teacher, and principal. My mother had a master’s in psychology, working on a doctorate, and so I was subjected to a batch of IQ and other assessment tests, which must have convinced all involved I was not a dullard, but simply bored due to the ease with which I could handle the third-grade work. So off to fourth it was!
While I was small, I was still one of if not the smartest kids in class. I discovered this about a month later, when the arithmetic teacher held her annual “baseball” tournament. We were divided into teams, and each kid had to solve a problem. Getting it correct moved you to first base, and you could make it all the way around to home if those following you solved theirs. But miss, and you were out; three outs, and the other team got to play.
The teams, like those on the playground, were selected by “captains”, alternating one at a time. The captains were chosen by the teacher, basically her pets. I, being late to the group, was not one of those. But once the captains were selected, there was no doubt among them whom they wanted first – me!
I also discovered something else that spring, which lay dormant for another 40 years or so. In addition to the math baseball, there was talk of the “track meet”. The school system had some arcane method for selecting members of a 4/5/6th grade track team for things like the 50 yard dash, the triple jump, the rope climb, etc. It was based on not only on absolute time and distances, but also on age and size. The gym teacher shocked me by saying I was on the track team. My 7.2 second dash was there right along with kids a year older who did 6.4 and 6.7 or 8 seconds, whom I thought were the real athletes. Probably to my knees’ great relief, I did not pursue a running career after grade school, until I turned 50.
There were two playgrounds at Pleasant Ridge Elementary School, the only one I attended from K thru 6th grade. The upper, and older, was for the 4/5/6th graders. I suppose that’s because it was closer to the four-lane highway, Montgomery Road, state highway 3, which ran right next to it. We could be trusted not be be dumb enough to run out into the street after lost balls or other ephemera. Back in the old days, there had been a swing set on one end of the hard asphalt. I suspect that when the playground was paved, the swings themselves were removed when kids started leaping from their parabolic arcs and skinning their knees, or worse, on the unyielding surface.
But the A-frame steel supports remained, and served as the hitching post for kids’ bikes. We lived a mile from school, and walked most every day there and back. But once you were in 4th grade, you were allowed to ride your bike there, and you’d leave it slid into one of the bike racks (no locks needed!) where the swing seats used to hang. I had a small bike, maybe 20-inch wheels, but I was rapidly outgrowing it. Not only was it growing increasingly uncomfortable to ride, it also would take forever to traverse the route from home to school and back. Basically, I could mosey along at my sister’s walking pace. And once I got there, I’d feel ashamed for my baby bike sitting in amongst all the “real” 24 and 27 inch bicycles.
As part of an attempt to help me grow into my 4th grade maturity – and to help my sister learn how to manage money, I think – my father sat us down one day and said, “We’re going to start giving you $5 a week allowance. But don’t come to us asking for money to buy clothes or anything like that. If you want something, you’ll have to save for it.” I don’t know if my eyes bugged out or not, but I suddenly felt – RICH! We’d been getting 50¢ a week up to that point, to cover candy now and then, but certainly not enough to do any real budgeting.
It was way more of a challenge for my sister compared to me. She actually cared about clothes, and looking fresh, up-to-date. I didn’t need to change anything unless it wore out, or I outgrew it. The only thing I did covet were…motorcycle boots. I thought they would be very cool, black, leather, high-topped, with a strap and buckle. I got a few strange eyebrows when I showed up in them, but since I already felt like such an outsider, being a year younger and smaller and smarter and everything, that taunts and stares had little to no impact. I was always quite sure of myself and what I wanted.
So after I had saved for however many weeks – three? four? – to get the boots, I was left with a rapidly accumulating pile of cash. From which my father would borrow every now and then if he were a little short. I realised this was not only ironic, but also dangerous. I needed to find more consistent ways of spending the money, at least enough of it to not be conspicuous.
My first foray was into baseball cards. Come spring, Topps would start issuing packs of 5 cards with a sheet of bubble gum, for 5¢. Kids would buy them when they had a spare nickel, but they were a bit precious. Collecting was not yet a thing, so there was a lot of trading and admiring. One day, I saw some kids in a circle, standing up, tossing their hands downward, then one guy picking up something. Turns out they were “flipping cards”. Mano-a-mano, kind of like rock-paper-scissors: if your card showed the player’s face in color, and the other guy’s was the back, the stats in black and grey, well then, you got both cards. Both the same, they stayed on the ground as a pile or pot. I wanted to get good at it, especially when we switched the venue to the stairwell.
Our school was three floors, the first floor, where things like the cafeteria and gym were, being below grade. Outside entrances were via a descending staircase, surrounded by a railing. Over that railing we would lean, and flip our cards about ten feet down. This eliminated any outside influence like wind or stealthy big kids who tried to snatch the cards before the winner could grab them.
In order to gain some practice, I took one whole week’s allowance to Boatright’s, the corner store (it would be akin to a mini-mart now) across the street, where I bought a whole box of cards. The kind Mr. Boatright would open up, flipping the top, exposing the individual packets within. Which most kids bought one or two at a time. But I was buying 100: 500 cards at a time. This made the the king of the playground that day. Kids followed me around, wanting to know which cards I got. When they saw I had duplicates of someone they wanted, they’d quickly offer a trade. Other kids wanted the gum sheets, which I clearly had way too many of for any one person to use in a month.
But my main goal was to become the champion card flipper. With some house money, so to speak, I soon mastered the art so that 85% or so of my flips were face up. And I won massive numbers of cards that day. But – great life lesson here – it became so easy that I grew bored with the game, and looked for other attractions.
My eyes were drawn to the swing sets, and the bikes beneath them, directly opposite from the stairwell card flipping stadium. I hatched an idea: it would only take me eight more weeks, two months, to save enough to buy a real bicycle, which I’d have in time to ride every morning before the end of May.
I wanted a Raleigh, the ne-plus-ultra of wheels at the time, at least among the fifth-grade set. An English Bike. It had 27” wheels, chrome fenders, swept back handlebars with a matching white faux leather Brooks saddle. And, it had gears. Three of them. According to the late Sheldon Brown, renowned bicycle mechanic and historian, the Raleigh Three Speed All Steel Bicycle reached its zenith in the late 1950s, just about the time I bought mine.
One Saturday, my father drove me to the local bike shop, where I proudly handed over $50 and received the gleaming, serious looking machine to ride back home. It was a turning point in my life: I was never to be without a bike of my own, purchased with my own resources, for the rest of my life. I was free in a way only a ten-year old boy can understand when he gets his first Real Wheels.
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“Just keep pedaling and hold on to the handlebars!” My father was running behind me, hand grasping the seat post of the tiny two-wheeler he’d bought at Sears for my 4th birthday. We were heading downhill, along the sidewalk next to Ridgewood Avenue, where I lived from 1952 to 1966. I’d long ago mastered the joy of the tricycle, madly flailing my legs around the front wheel while the wind blew zephyrs at my eyes, the tassels whipping out the ends of the grips. This bike initially seemed a step backwards: it had FOUR wheels. My dad called them “training wheels” – it seemed like an insult. I saw the older boys in the neighborhood, Tommy Bingham and Larry Landfried, both a year older, on their two wheelers, kings of their domain, able to ride from Cliffridge to Ridge Circle, and back, without a hint of fear.
So today, he’d removed the outriggers, and told me I’d be on my own. He watched as I tried to steady the bike while grinding the pedals from a standing start – no go. The front end wobbled, and I furiously tried to counter the movement, throwing the velocipede into a nose dive and me off the front end, thankfully into the grassy verge.
“Try it again; let me give you a little push.” He held the bike steady while I got back on, ground my teeth, stared downhill, and pushed off once more. I managed one complete pedal revolution, before once again ending up in the dirt.
“OK, I’m going to push you. I’ll be holding on until you get going, then I’ll let go.” This was more or less the same educational methodology he’d employed that winter with my sister and me, teaching us how to ice skate at Cincinnati Gardens. He had grown up on the frigid steppes of eastern Montana, where the Yellowstone river annually froze every January as it slowly meandered through the featureless flatlands on its way north to the Missouri. Like a little Dutch boy, skating in the winter had been second nature to him, and something every able-bodied person should learn how to do. Especially before the age of 4.
It had worked with skating, and it worked with cycling. With the wheels rolling, their natural gyroscopic motion kept me going more or less in a straight line. As he would later tell me about driving on icy roads (again, learned out of necessity during Montana winters), “You can go as fast as you want, as long as you don’t have to turn or slow down.” Too bad he forgot to mention that as part of the initial two-wheeler education.
Not knowing at all how to stop the contraption (easy: just reverse pedal), I panicked as I passed the Binghams’ house, two doors down from us, near the bottom of the hill where Cliffridge intersected the sidewalk. Back then, there were few if any cars at any given time in our little backwater, but I knew I didn’t to be in the road and risk meeting one. So I practiced my turning skills, and hung a sharp right, into the side hill of their yard. Another soft landing.
We practiced that a few dozen more times that afternoon. I learned to softly “pedal” backwards to slow down, to put my foot down as I came to a halt, and most of all, somehow, miraculously, how to start up all by myself. In the end, it was simple: Just stand over the bike with both feet on the ground. Push off with one foot while lifting the other onto its pedal, and start evenly rotating around. Gravity and Newton’s Laws of Motion did the rest.
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Harry was an inveterate Do-It-Yourselfer before DIY became a pervasive acronym applied to magazines, TV shows, and entire life-styles. He was constantly improving our house and environment. His Christmas escapades, designed to win the favor of his children’s hearts if not the envy of his neighbors, showcased his motto, “Go Big and Go Home.”
The 1950s in burgeoning suburban America offered untold opportunities to one-up those neighbors. Christmas lights and decorations, taking advantaged of full hose-power and cheap electricity, blossomed every December, around windows, along eaves, spilling out onto lawns toward driveways. Macabre inflatable Santas mingled with browsing reindeer, rickety creche scenes, and awkwardly-tilted stars.
Harry, though secretly competitive, was not about to either spend his salary on strings of colored incandescents, nor risk life or limb to string them along the roof over the second-story windows. Besides, he had a basement workshop, complete with drill press, standing table saw, and random cans of paint.
He started with a few sheets of aluminum. I never saw him plan out his creations, but he must have first sketched out the folds and cuts need to craft the scene. The two cylindrical candles, with wavy flames atop, were fairly easy: red stems, yellow flame, a silver collar between the two, all resting on a wooden pedestal of green.
Next, a couple of choir kids. My sister and I were still singing on Sundays at All-Saints’ Episcopal church. Our parents, relieved there was organized baby-sitting on the weekend, sent us off on Sunday mornings, walking 15 minutes (less than a mile) to get dressed up in white robes so we could warble that day’s three hymns in the background while the pastor lead the congregation. The biggest treat of the day was usually the walk home, when we could freely amble and waste time, gathering leaves or, if lucky, snag a few buckeyes to shine up against our noses.
Harry had a secret history as an artist – he could draw a much better horse than I ever could – so the graceful curves required for two young singers in robes came easy for him. White robes with black highlights to accent the folds, blue trim, tannish faces and coal black dots for eyes – one boy, one girl, meant to represent his children belting out carols atop the hill by the front door. Finally, he rigged up a ground-level spotlight, shining up to highlight those angelic faces.
Then there were his Christmas presents. He never gave me any toys. (Come to think of it, neither did my mother. From her, it was chemistry sets and encyclopedias.) My sister did get a doll house – but it was one that Harry built. A standard open-face affair, with bedrooms upstairs, little windows on the covered side, a stairway in the middle. Of course, he had to design and make the tiny doll beds, dressers (no drawers) and tables. I think he used wooden cubes with slat backs for chairs.
One year, we built a pool table for Christmas. He had no idea how to do it, and he had no time for library searches, so we trekked into a local pool table manufacturer. He told those guys he was looking for some used pool balls and cues. During the sales searches, he pumped them for information, about the smoothness of the slate surface, the nature of the felt covering, how the balls traveled underneath from the pockets, the height of the edges, the diameter of the pockets – all their little secrets. He came across as just a guy who was curious about how things worked, while they thought maybe they were going to sell him a big ol’ table.
He learned several key facts during these interrogations, most important: the critical height the bumpers needed to be above the slate, so the balls caromed true, neither sticking beneath, nor bouncing skyward. I think the balls we’d bought were 1 5/8”, so the bumpers needed to be EXACTLY 1/2 that above the table. And, their were several classes of bumpers. Some were full thickness – those were most expensive. Naturally, he bought the 1/2 thickness ones.
There was no way he could afford a slate table, the only way to ensure pure smoothness and an even surface. But he was very familiar with plywood, and he thought it would work just fine. The under-table tracks for ball return were also beyond his skill (or maybe time), and he refused to buy those fancy leather-mesh pockets which old-style tables sported. We used old white athletic socks, gathered at the bottom with rubber bands, stapled inside the holes.
So we started with a table which was not really true to begin with. Then there was the problem of the floor we placed it on. It was in the basement, which originally had been cement, with a drain in the middle, creating a noticeable slant from the walls inward. Several years earlier, working with my Grandpa Al, he had covered the floor with vinyl tiles. Being Harry, it was not simple question of all one color. No, he had laid into the floor a giant checkerboard (after building 10” diameter checkers), and at the far ends, shuffleboard triangles – again, with hand-built sticks and pucks. After the pool table went in, we never really missed those games.
The table rested on a DIY pedestal. He was constantly attempting to eliminate all the “house rolls” with shims between that plywood “slate” and the pedestal. But we never did get it perfect, so friends who came over to play groused when I used the built-in slant to make impossible-looking shots.
Another house advantage was the narrow room. The table was so close to one of the walls, we had to buy a child’s cue for shots on balls near that wall.
The topper – literally – to it all was the ping-pong table. Harry apparently had gotten a deal on plywood, 3-for-the-price-of-two or something like that. So he used the extra wood to make a ping-pong table to overlay the pool table. It came in two pieces, easily lifted off. And it went the long way in the room, no walls getting in the way of far-back shots. It was the one game where I could consistently beat my father.
(To Be Cont’d)
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I update my coach every four weeks or so, mostly to keep myself honest about staying on track with work, effort, and plans.
Fitness: I got my CTL up to 120 by the end of Bad Ass Camp with what might be all time lows/highs for TSB (-72) and Ramp (+16). While recuperating and trying to regain some weight/water, the CTL drifted back down to 108, now back to 110, with the TSB heading back towards negative. By Sunday, after a 5.5 hour ride in the mountains, running every day, swimming x 3, I ought to be moving in the right direction, at the right pace, on my PMC.
Training: I had three weeks to fill before starting the 20-week IM plan for Arizona in Nov. So I looked around and landed on weeks 7/8/9 of the Get Faster plan as fitting my needs best. Swimming as per plan. Running more frequently with less distance/day, and no Z4/5 days. Biking, I’m doing one day Zwifting on an hour hilly race (e.g., today went 50′ @ 0.985), one day with a 2 hour ABP (per plan), and instead of a second day of FTP/VO2 work @ 2:30, a longer ride in the mountains, trying to get 4+ hours, with at least 2-2.5 hours of steady 0.82.3 work.
Season Plan: I’ve pretty much decided not to travel (out of state) to any races until September, just do local sprints and Olys. I did my first one Sunday. I started out in triathlon 20 years ago being a swimmer first, then biker, with no run experience. That evolved into run being my super power. After my bike crash in 2010, I lost my swimming edge, and now over the past 4 years with repeated injuries and the wear-and-tear in my right knee, I’ve lost the running edge. Thank goodness I bought a road bike a few years back, and started re-building my cycling strength. I probably biked faster on Sunday (22.2 mph/12 miles; 0.985 IF) than I did when I started out in 1999. Part of it is the new bike I bought last year, but part of it is the multiple 4-week Zwift-fests I did this winter, and the incessant bike camps and mountain rides I;ve been doing the past two years. While I did hang on in the run, finishing strong and passing folks, I did so at a snail’s pace – 8 min miles for 5K. It felt faster, and maybe it will get faster, but for now, I’m glad I’ve got the bike strength and speed.
Injury Report: I’m pain-free between and during workouts for one of the rare times in my life. “It’s always something.” is my normal mode. But I’ve gotten rid of the shoulder tweak which I carried for over a year; the left and right hamstring and hip issues which have been around since the summer of 2014; and the right knee agony which I self-inflicted in Jan and March of this year. This is, of course, a bad sign, as always in the past when I felt good, I took that as a sign to up the training, either volume, frequency, or intensity. I think I can handle a bit over plan with cycling, but not swimming, and certainly not running. My knee is still swollen and stiff, to remind me daily to continue taking baby steps. So here’s hoping when I check in next month, I can report steady progress, and being pain/injury free.
Race Report: It felt sooooo good to race. I was the oldest by 5 years; both of the young women next to me on the bike rack were first-timers. It was that kind of race, so I finished 36/175 OA, 1/4 in the AG. No one passed me on the bike, I was reeling people in right up to the end. Then on the run, two guys passed me out of transition, including a 60 y/o. He couldn’t run very well uphill, and apparently I could, so I nailed him after about a km or so. My first mile was 8:30, the last two were 7:5X. Quite depressing from a time prespective, but since I’d only run about 25 miles in the previous 3 weeks, I was OK with that. The main thing: I was able to motor up and down hills with good effort and NO PAIN. Bottom line, I’m feeling more and more positive about being able to handle an Ironman by November, as long as I don’t do anything stupid.
With no IM from Oct 2016-Nov 2018, and at the top of my AG, and with multiple interruptions to run training all of 2018 due to wobbly knee and other medical issues, I went into this race as a test: could I still have fun and compete at this distance, looking forward to my #AgeUpYear in 2019.
Targets: 1:20/6:00/4:40/3rd Pl with sub 10′ total transitions
Of note, the weekend before, I had flown Seattle/Miami and back in three days to qualify for the ITU LC WC at MiamiMan half iron in 88F humid heat. I did that race basically @ IM pace; bike was 2:56, run was 2:17 (swim was non-wetsuit).
Pre-race diet: liquid 1000 cal Jamba Juice dinner the night before; Ensure 350 cal x 2 @ 0130 and 0530, along with 180 cal/12 oz fruit juice.
Swim: Water reported @ 60F; my watch showed 61. Swim course changed from previous years: starting 1/4 mile west; rolling start. Athletes allowed in one-at-a-time @ the timing mat down a ramp. Canon @ 0650; I hit the water about 15 minutes later at the back of the 1:10-1:20 group. No warm-up possible in the water, so it was a bit of a shock for the first 3-5 minutes or so, but after that, I was not chilled, thanks to a spare neoprene skull cap @robin sarner gave me. And, I use the DeSoto two piece system, with 5 mm thick arms. That extra 3mm of neoprene makes a big difference for me in colder water. The stop button on my watch must have been hit about 500 meters from the end, as it only showed 3850 yds/1:10. I appear to have swum fairly steadily, if a bit conservatively, as Final Surge shows a time of 42:20 @ 2000 yds; I’m a very slow stroker, 40/minute for this race. I was 6th out of the water; 1st was about 3 minutes ahead.
T1: 8:08. I walked/ran 0.5 miles during T1, and had the fastest time in my AG. We also had the longest route from our bike rack to the exit, except for those few (including 1&2) who were parked in the AWA area. I put on my helmet and stuffed my wetsuit outside the tent, ran through it with carrying my shoes, and put them on at the bike rack.
Bike: I rode this quite conservatively, Strava estimates my FTP @ 226; WKO @ 219; I used 212 as my number. My overall NP was 133, AP was 130 for a good VI, and an IF of 0.652. The three laps were fairly consistent on both time and HR: 1:59.41/104; 1:58.49/112; 2:01/111. The wind was nominal @ 2-5 mph, and shifting from east to north during the day. My max HRs for the three laps were: 123, 124, 122. I drank every 15 minutes, and ate a part of a clif bar (2 total) or had an oz of EFS gel every half hour or so. I pee’d 2-3 times. So I do not believe I overcooked the bike, nor did I burn any matches.
T2: 5:30. Again, I stayed outside the tent, and took about 50″ in a porta-potti on the way out. My wife has been @ this venue with me multiple times, so she was waiting right outside the fence @ the tent. So we chatted while I put on socks and shoes, and she took a few pictures (see above). I think I was second fastest in my AG, but my T1+T2 was fastest by a lot. My Go Bag® contained EN visor, Race Saver® bag, sunscreen packet, Clif Shot packet, race bib/belt, and sunglasses (my Giro helmet visor preclude need for shade on the bike). I also carried my EFS gel flask from the bike to the run.
Run: 5:05. I saw Tim Cronk as I came out of T2, and proudly waved my still half full GoBag @ him. Despite all the fiddling with that stuff, the first mile was my fastest @ about 9:50 and an HR of 122. Pace/HR slowed to 10:30/116 by mile 5. But in retrospect, I think I was overdoing things by about 30-45sec/mile during the first 8 miles, as I progressively slowed after that with a dropping HR. The set-up in Tempe allows spectators to see runners 8-9 times during the marathon, and Tim was also on his mtn bike, so I knew from them I wasn’t getting above 3rd unless one or both of them blew up on the run, and not losing my place unless *I* blew up. After 27 completed IM marathons, a number them where I *did* have to work to get my results, I know that working as hard as possible is not something I want to do unless I HAVE to. So I let myself slow down, which meant i kept the same RPE, but saw my pace and HR slowly drift south. So be it; I’d only really been running since August, my knee cap no longer has cartilege under it, and my L/R pedal balance on the bike has worsened from 53/47 @ the start of the year to 56/44 in this race. I want to save any heroics for next year.
My nutrition was 6-8 oz of diluted Gatorade Endurance. I started rotating Coke in @ about mile 14, with two cups of chicken broth over the next few miles. I managed to fill the tank by mile 21, causing a two minute stop to drain the excess. I wore the newest (10/18) Nike Vaporfly 4%. They show little wore, resulted omg a minor blister just medial to my L big toenail. Otherwise, I don’t thing they added any benefit to me for the day, but they did feel softer than the normal racing flats I wear. I’d planned on Injinji toe’d socks, but Tim had chastised me for wasting time in T2 putting them on. I timed it out, only about 15-20 seconds. “But what if you miss first, or the podium by 20 seconds (possible – I snuck in my third KQ ten years by a margin of 8 seconds. So I made a decision as I was pulling the shoes out – both socks were in the bag, I grabbed to no-toe Wigwams. That’s shy I’m smiling in the shot above
I got a chance to meet @Scott Schneider as we both started the loop, me on my second lap, he on his first. It was a boost to me to see him charging along, as I knew from the time and his demeanor that he would finally get his finish on this, his third attempt. I also spotted @Kent Gavin and Robin (they’re kinda hard to miss) out ahead of me on both loops.
The result from this race (coupled with the half iron the week before) gives me confidence that with a longer period of run training, and maybe a couple of longer runs during the final build – my three long runs were actually half marathons races all @ 1:53 – I can get close to those times I listed at above a year from now. In the meantime, I’ve got some skiing to do in Dec-Feb, then those ITU LC WC on May 4, and a KQ @ IM Boulder on June 9.
