Are you an average triathlete?

If so, you are a 38-year old white man who participates in sprints, Olympic-distances, and the occasional half IM. You also run 5ks, 10k, and marathons. You're married, with children living at home, and hold a white-collar job. Your family income is $126,000 per year - $2,276 of that you spent on bike stuff within the last year. You say you're into triathlon for the personal challenge and to get and stay in shape.

Here we go again

Going back again to Michigan to see if I can get it right this time! (Have you ever noticed that's how triathlon sucks you in and keeps you coming back? There's always one or two things that you could have done a little faster or more smoothly).


Note to the Race Gods: No flats, this time, please!? K THX.

Nation's Triathlon

This Olympic-distance race is looking pretty darned good for next September 14th, I think! The new course looks fabulous!

Registration is open NOW for USAT members only, opens tomorrow to everyone. Less than last year, I think, also: $150 (plus $10.75 to active.com). http://www.thenationstriathlon.com/

I'm in!!! I'm starting to like the Olympic distance as my favorite triathlon distance. Long enough that you don't have to sprint the whole race with your eyes bleeding; short enough that you aren't dead and can actually do something else the same day.

Who's with me?

Disney triathlon done!

Just finished the Disney Tri yesterday and it was a pretty decent quasi-Olympic event with a fun 36-mile bike leg - in contrast to the horror stories I heard from last year!

I'm happy to say that I earned hardware as 3rd Athena over 40 - out of TEN! It was hot (naturally - it's Florida) and the "run" was more like a hot death-march, but I pushed on as best I could past the armadillo roadkill without ending up flat on the pavement (like more than one guy did) and I'm glad I hung on because 4th place was just 23 seconds behind me! (I was 12th/21 in my age group - solid midpack finish there!)

Super-great to see Shawn and Linae there too, who found me just before the swim. Thanks for coming out, ladies!!!


Long report when I get home!

At Fort Wilderness Campground at WDW

I don't have wifi at our RV site, but we do up at Pioneer Hall next to the transition area for tomorrow's Walt Disney World Triathlon. I'm sitting in the rented golf cart typing on my laptop (excuse typos!) as I watch the cast of the Hoop Dee Doo Review hang out on the porch opposite me and chat with passersby. They're in period Victorian/western costume with big skirts and hats and buckskin jackets and it looks horribly hot! Ah, their show just started and they headed inside, where presumably it's air-conditioned.

We're in a campsite just about right in the middle of the whole campground. My race number is #68 and my bike is about 2 racks from the bike exit, perfect spot so I have almost no run through transition with my bike. The swim looks fine, although I did take the free nose clip so I don't breathe in amoebas and die from meningitis. Maybe. I may tear it off when it drives me crazy and leave it at the bottom of Bay Lake, however.

I start in the first wave at 0730 and should(!) be done by 11:30 I hope - under 4 hours with a 35-mile bike leg. We'll see. I'm not likely to push it tomorrow if the course gets crowded or it gets too hot outside. Hope to see you sometime tomorrow, Linae and Shawn! Thanks for coming over!! And Kathy and Molly, if you're reading, it was great to see you and hang out even though it was much too short.

Today we had a fairly quiet day - did triathlon check-in, then we rented a pontoon boat and took the girls on a tour of Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon. Then we took the resort launch over to the Magic Kingdom but didn't go in - we just took the monorail around to the Polynesian Resort and had an early dinner in the snack bar there. Then back via monorail and boat launch to the campground and that was enough of an excursion for today! Maybe some swimming pool time this evening. It's hot and muggy and overcast but only occasionally sprinkling.

The bike is racked, I just have to do final prep of my clothes and then up at 5AM tomorrow to make the first swim wave!! I'll be glad to be finished in the so-called 'cool of the day' (for Florida).

Ready or not

I have the inaugural Annapolis Triathlon on Sunday. It has all the potential for being a fantastic race venue, but I'm still a bit concerned.

Swimming - I did a short swim today including one 500-yard set in 10:38 with a pull buoy, which I think may be a pull buoy PB. Cool! I'm very concerned about the sea nettles since it may not be a wetsuit race, though. They're thick this time of year. I have the anti-sea-nettle lotion ready. I'm also considering wearing running tights and some kind of long-sleeved top (or even pantyhose on my arms) during the swim if wetsuits aren't allowed. They may slow me down a bit, but not having to be distracted by sea nettle stings will balance that out.

Setup - it's a 2-transition race and they're not allowing cars down by the docks, so we have to ride our bikes there to set up in T1 from the football stadium (T2) tomorrow. Normally I'd never consider riding my bike through downtown Annapolis since it's so crowded and congested and the streets are narrow. This sounds like an adventure unto itself.

Hills - I've run the hills in Annapolis many times before and it's always been ugly.

The Bike - the shop is inspecting my bike today and they called to say that the chain ring was installed incorrectly. WTF!?? I didn't like the service that I got at that other bike shop when it was there, and now I found out months and months later that they did something ELSE wrong? Bah! I'll pick it up tomorrow and hope it gets through the race okay. . . .

Weather - it's looking pretty good! ~72*F in the morning, high humidity as always, chance of showers and high of 85*F in the after noon. It may be a hot run, but that's to be expected.

Now to think about packing up all my stuff. . . .

---

Update: Woot! I just took a second look at the course maps and they've re-drawn the run course! They have taken out the wicked hills over the Severn River bridge and up and down the riverbank on the north side. That's good news for me - those are nasty inclines that always reduce me to a trudging demoralized wreck! I may actually have a good chance of RUNNING the run on this new course! (Of course everyone else will too - I guess I have to count on my familiarity with jellyfish as my only advantage tomorrow!)

Race report: 2007 Columbia Triathlon

We had a very fun pre-race dinner at Tomato Palace in Columbia! Adjacent to the host hotel, handled a big group quite well, broadcast the Preakness on a big screen right above our table, great folks and great food!

Sandy, Chuck, Jim, and Michele before dinner. . . .

Dave, the lean mean cycling machine:

Holly and me trying to snap a self-portrait of us:

Host extraordinaire Bill "Jellyfish" Wheeler and his handsome son at dinner:

We probably had 20 people altogether!

A rainbow appeared over the lake outside, which I thought was a good omen. Hah!


My race:

Swim: Went fantastic! I was comfortable the entire trip, sighted easily, swam straight, got bumped a few times but that didn't rattle me, passed caps from two waves ahead of me (and got passed in turn by numerous relayers starting behind me). I was delighted with my time coming out of the water! My pace (2:04/100 yards) was slightly faster than my average swim pace these days in the pool, so that's my first race day swim where the wetsuit advantage didn't get canceled out by swimming off course!! Can't really expect better than that. Yay!

The rest: It went downhill from there. Probably the less said about it the better! My lack of hill training was painfully obvious on the bike course, my legs got toasted, and I had a low-energy bonk on the run. No power coming from the engine room, and then I started getting a bad attitude, which just makes it snowball. I ended up walking a lot of the run. Oh well, some races are like that!!

It was definitely more a physical bonk than a mental one, though, because on the 90-minute drive home I got so sleepy that I had to stop to pick up some Mountain Dew to recharge! That did the trick, fortunately, and even though I was exhausted I made it home safely!

I had great fun seeing everyone and putting together names and faces! At the end of the day yesterday I was thinking I'd never ride that freakin' course again, and today I'm thinking I have a score that I have to settle! We'll see. On to the next race, Eagleman half Ironman in 3 weeks, which is blessedly flat as a pancake!

Columbia is in the books!

Preliminary results have been posted.

I had a great swim, not a great bike, sluggish transitions, and bonked on the run. I finished, though! Saw lots of wonderful folks and had fun. Now tired.

NANCY TOBY 50 <--- note new age group!
SWIM 1500m: 34:07 (2:04/100 yards) PR!
SWIM TO BIKE TRANSITION: 5:41
BIKE 41 km: 1:50:28 (13.8 mph)
BIKE TO RUN TRANSITION: 3:44
RUN 10 km: 1:23:49 (13:30 min/mile)
FINISH: 3:57:47
3rd place out of 3 Athenas over 40

2006 official times:
SWIM 1500m: 37:23
SWIM TO BIKE TRANSITION: 5:37
BIKE 41 km: 1:44:28 (14.6 mph)
BIKE TO RUN TRANSITION: 2:46
RUN 10 km: 1:14:11 (37:33,36:38 splits)
FINISH 3:44:23
PR and personal course record!337th/389 women (86%)
4th/4 Athenas over 40

2005:
SWIM 1500m: 48:15
SWIM TO BIKE TRANSITION: 5:36
BIKE 41 km: 1:50:02
BIKE TO RUN TRANSITION: 2:45
RUN 10 km: 1:20:21
FINISH 4:06:58

Good luck racers!

Very best wishes on a great day to my buddy Comm and friends at Ironman Arizona on Sunday!

Also very best wishes to everyone running the Boston Marathon on Monday, especially Bob Mina, Joe Bator, TriBoomer, Forrest Fowler, Regina Fowler, Dave Decker, and Ken Cowen! I sincerely hope the weather is much better than those ominous forecasts for a nor'easter!

We'll be watching you! Listen for our cheers as you cross the timing mats!

Also on Monday: The Tour of Georgia begins!

And they WILL have live streaming video like they did for the Tour of California! Yay! Let's hope it works!

Goin' to Disneyworld

September is shaping up to be a busy triathlon month! On the 9th I've got the inaugural Annapolis Triathlon, an Olympic-distance event. Then on the 23rd I've just entered the Disney Triathlon, which is a weird sorta Olympic distance (1500m swim, 10km run) but with a 58 km (36 mile) bike leg. Apparently they've totally revised the bike leg this year, but haven't posted a map of it yet. That's okay with me, it sounded like a truly horrible unsafe event last year packing cyclists and runners into one lane of roadway. Plus, as long as I'm schlepping Buttercup all the way to Florida, I might as well get in a decent medium-distance ride there, correct?

Getting finished in under 4 hours sounds like a great day to me! I'm not especially fond of any event that takes longer than that, to tell the truth!

And oh yes, I entered the Athena division, as always. At the event that I finally don't qualify, I'll happily request a change into the appropriate age group divisions.

We will be driving a rental RV down there and will only spend about one extra day in the area. I think since the girls will only be four years old we will probably limit ourselves to playing at a water park or maybe Sea World for this visit. The whole Magic Kingdom experience can wait another year or two.

To swim or not to swim?

Chesapeakeman registration just opened up, the best little iron-distance race in the country, which is held just 45 minutes from my house.

I'm torn. I was hoping to do the almost-half-iron triathlon that they have held with it in the past, but that's not being offered this year. They are still having the 2.4-mile swim and the 2.4/112 mile swim-bike Aqua Velo.

The last two times I was in the midst of them, I said I never wanted to do a 2.4-mile swim ever, ever again. After an hour in open water with a long way yet to go it doesn't seem like so much fun any more. Sigh.

But according to local triathlete Jude Apple, "Peak high tide is at 6:04AM and it is a relatively high one at that (1.7 ft above mean low water). This means that from about 6:15 on you will have a westward (downstream) current. . . . you should have a "tailwind" the whole way."

So. . . . maybe I'll think about it again if I have really good swims at Columbia and Eagleman. Fortunately this gem of a race hasn't been discovered by the multitudes yet and registration won't close too early to decide to enter. Then again, I can always volunteer, right?