2005 Sea Colony Make-A-Wish Triathlon (International distance)
Sept. 24, 2005
I left our rental condo in Sea Colony’s tennis community at 5:40 AM to meet my friend Ron in the parking lot to ride our bikes down to the race. When I opened the front door, I got hit in the face by an enormous blast of warm air. It was windy. Very windy. My first thought was that the bike ride was going to be very challenging. My second thought was that the surf was going to a lot higher than it was the day before, when it was almost lake-like in its calmness.
We rode down to the race area, which was behind the large oceanside Sea Colony towers, did our bike inspections, racked our bikes in the transition area, and started to set up our stuff. I realized I forgot my water bottles, so I rode back to our place to get those, then set out my towel and began arranging my equipment on it. Meanwhile Ron was talking about how intense the wind was between the condo towers. Then, we started to hear rumors that the swim would be cancelled. “No way! That’s the only event I’m any good at!” That was something I’d heard of happening at triathlons, but it hadn’t occurred to me things were that bad. I decided to walk up to the beach to take a look for myself. As I was walking up, a guy with a bullhorn was walking beside me, obviously a race volunteer, saying something about the surf. “They CAN’T cancel the swim,” I said, “it’s just a few waves.” We got to the end of the boardwalk where a small gaggle of people were gathered. The guy with the bullhorn looked out at the enormous sea of very large, very white breakers and declared, “the swim is cancelled.” Turns out he was the race director, and he had just made the call. A bunch of volunteers began barking into their walkie-talkies. He then explained apologetically to me and the handful of others standing there, that the coast guard was not going out, they couldn’t get the kayakers out past the surf to oversee the swim, the buoys had been washed away over night, there were 40mph gusts of wind and an 8-foot surf, quite likely some powerful rip currents, and “this is a charity event, not the Hawaii Ironman.” He also said his operating assumption was that most people are amateurs at open swims, and that it was not worth it to have one person drown. I was very, very disappointed. But I had to admit he was right, it was the only call to make. The surf was VERY rough, the result of a tropical storm called Philippe that hardly anyone was aware of because of all the attention paid to Hurricane Rita hitting the gulf coast. It would have been an exciting challenge for me but this guy was in charge of a race with 1,000 people ages 16 into their 70s. As he said, “someone is going to drown.” Later, the race director explained all this to the assembled racers, and that in lieux of the swim we would be doing a half-mile beach run. So, it was to be a duathlon, run-bike-run. Not good for me, considering running is my weakest event. All the training I’d done! I was disappointed and cursing the bad luck – good weather on Friday, good weather on Sunday, on race day a tropical storm – but there was nothing to be done but race it.
All 1,000 racers walked down the beach to the starting line. Then, with the wind whipping through our hair, the skies threatening rain, and the enormous surf roaring to our left, we lined up to race. My friend Ron and I were in the 3rd wave, and our friend Dave was in the 5th wave. Each wave started 5 minutes apart. If you’ve ever tried running in sand, it is incredibly tiring. On the beach, you’re much better off running right along the surf, where the sand is wet and hard. So it seemed like a no-brainer to me. But, surprisingly, only a few of us ran along the water; most of the runners ran higher up on the beach. It turned out there was a very good reason for this.
I had been trying to work on my running for the past several months, and in particular trying to figure out how to run long distances without knee pain. There’s a whole school of thought on the internet that the best way to do that is to throw away your running shoes and run barefoot (for a taste see www.runningbarefoot.org). Who knows if these guys are nuts or brilliant mavericks who have seen the light. You quickly learn when researching sports medicine that the first rule is that nobody knows nothin’. For every authoritative opinion, there is an equally authoritiative opinion holding the opposite. For the most part, actual scientific studies are few and far between, especially studies that have been repeatedly confirmed. Plus, everyone’s body is different. You have to use your own judgment as a filter, be experimentalist and trust your own experience. But I found many of the arguments of the barefoot runners persuasive (just to be clear: these guys run marathons, on city streets, barefoot) so I had been working on learning to run barefoot.
It turns out the hardest part of running barefoot is not toughening up the soles of your feet, it’s strengthening your foot muscles and tendons and ligaments, their having atrophied and weakened inside the unnaturally confined space of shoes (so these guys say). I was nowhere ready to run 10k barefoot, but I was able to run half that on a soft track, and shorter distances on asphault.
People who hear about barefoot running think it’s sounds nutty (which makes it even more fun as far as I’m concerned). But when they announced the beach run, there was no question how I’d be running it. I was delighted to put my training into practice. That allowed me to run along the edge of the surf without worry about getting my shoes soaking wet like most of the competitors. The result was I did much better than I ordinarily would in a running contest. In fact, I finished in front of my friends Ron and Dave, who are ordinarily faster runners than me. The only problem was that there was a sand shelf at the edge of the surf and two or three times when a strong wave hit I found myself in water up to my knees – but that passed in a few seconds and meanwhile I was able to stream along the hard, smooth sand. At the end I had to cross the deep dry stuff to leave the beach and it was much harder work. We ran up some ramps, between the towers, down some ramps, across the parking lot, and into the transition area, where I quickly brushed some of the sand off my feet, put on my socks, biking shoes, and helmet, and it was off to the 36k (22 mile) bike leg.
The bike was a straight out-and-back affair on Route 1 along the shore, North from Rehobath to Dewey and back. On the way up, I was feeling really good, maintaining a decent 34 km per hour pace without too much strain. Then I remembered that I’d had this feeling before . . . . In my training at Hains Point in Washington I sometimes felt myself going really well, only to hit the turnaround and bam! run into a terrific headwind that unbeknownst to me had been speeding me along until that point. So I was worried about the ride home on this very windy, gusty day. My friend Ron didn’t catch up to me until the bridge about halfway to the turnaround, which gladdened my heart (who else could I compare myself to? It sure wasn’t the pro guys up front on their $8,000 bikes. . .) Due to construction there was a strict no-passing-on-the-bridge policy in effect, and just as Ron reached me we got stuck behind a slow guy on a mountain bike, so we had a chance to chat and rest for a few minutes, and then we got off the bridge and Ron was off – but I actually managed to stay right behind him (though not drafting of course) the rest of the way to the turnaround, which also gladdened my heart. At the turnaround I slowed down to eat a sugar gel, and Ron accelerated out of my view. But it turned out that the ride back was even easier than the way out – the wind must have been mostly from the side, angled slightly south. Much of the ride I was going 43 km/hr or even more, a speed I normally hit only on hills. Overall, the bike ride was enjoyable and I was very happy with my time of 1:01:54 (average speed: just under 36km/hour, or 22mph).
One other factor that made it nice was the fact that I actually passed a fair number of people rather than being purely a pass-ee like at my first triathlon at Bath County, which was demoralizing. That was because I wasn’t in the first wave as I was at Bath County, and because there was no swim that put me ahead of a lot of people who were must better cyclists than me.
The second transition went smoothly – off with my biking shoes and helmet, on with my running shoes. I had purchased some “running flats” – shoes that provide all the cushioning and support of bedroom slippers, favored by the barefoot running crowd – but had decided my feet were not ready to run that distance in those yet. So I put on my cushion-y regular running shoes and it was off for the 10k run (6.2 miles) and the most painful part of the event. As I started, I saw Meg and the kids, and they cheered me on, which was a delight (my friends Tim and Koraly who have a house at Bethany had also graciously shown up to cheer me on, but I missed them in the blur of the crowd). The first mile was the worst, but after about 10 minutes I began to settle into a better pace, and while not exactly enjoyable, the next 3 miles or so weren’t too bad. A couple of minutes before the turnaround, it was nice to see another friendly face as I passed Ron who was on his way back home. By the last two miles, I was really ready for this race to end. The most demoralizing thing was to look up and see this tall building way, way in the distance and realize that was where the finish line was. (Now I know why I always run staring at the ground in front of me, despite all the advice from the (supposed) experts to keep one’s head up . . . ). Then it was across the finish line, past a blur of faces and into the crowd to find my friends and family and hit the delicious food at the post-race picnic. I was quite pleased with my run time of 51:18, considering I’d never run a full 10k before, even fresh or in practice. Still, among the 98 guys in my age bracket (35-39), I placed only 52nd in the run, while I came in 24th in the bike and 14th in the beach run. Overall, I came in 34th place among the 98, and 132nd out of the 505 finishers with a total time of just under two hours (1:58:43).
The next morning, the weather was much nicer, and Ron and Dave and I went down to the beach and did an ocean swim. The surf was still somewhat high – enough to remind me just how tough it would have been to try swimming the morning before. It was bad luck that the storm came through on race day, and a bitter disappointment not to do my best event and a real triathlon, but it was still a lot of fun and I was pleased with my times.
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