FIRMman Half Iron Triathlon
Narragansett, RI, September 12, 2004
1.2 mile swim / 56 mi bike / 13.1 mile run
PART TWO of TWO
It was pitch black when the first alarm went off, and when the second one went off too. I made instant oatmeal using the coffee maker, once again ate it with two plastic coffee stirrers wielded like primitive chopsticks, and drank my energy drink. By 5 I was all packed and moving towards the elevator like a sleepy phantom in a loud tri-suit. I followed another SUV with a bike rack down to the beach and scored a parking spot directly across the street from transition. It was chilly enough that I threw on a long-sleeved shirt, and still so dark that I couldn't really see where my rack was. The ever-helpful volunteers pointed me in the right direction, and I set up everything I needed. By the time I was body-marked and empty of bladder, the sky was getting light in a spectacular way. Ripples of red and orange spread out of the east, lighting up the grass in the dunes and making us all look very ruddy and healthy. But you know what they say: "Red sky at morning, triathlete take warning." I had a hard time thinking that this sunrise boded ill, though. The rest of the sky was clear, the breeze was extremely gentle, and the water was calm and inviting.
Before too long I knew a bunch of my rack neighbors, especially effervescent Arianna and organized Joanna, two of a large contingent from Team In Training New York. It's always more fun putting your Bodyglide and wetsuit on when you have a bunch of people to laugh with.
We had to waddle a long way up the beach in our wetsuits to get to the start, but this was ultimately to our advantage, as we'd be swimming with the receding tide, getting a nice push from the current for most of the swim. The water was almost too warm for my triathlon tastes, probably around 72 or even warmer. I like the water to exercise a pronounced cooling effect to compensate for all the overheating I'm going to do later. Stilll, it was undeniably pleasant. All the women were starting in one wave, the third one to go. The first wave consisted of Dick Hoyt and his son Rick, a paraplegic who has quite an active triathlon career. Dick has completed lots of marathons and triathlons, including Ironman Hawaii, with Rick. He tows him in a raft on the swim, rides with him in a special seat on the front of his bike, and then pushes him in a sort of racing wheelchair on the run. Dick is one dedicated dad. We all felt a little lump in our throats (well, I did) as they headed out to sea.
After the Hoyts, the first wave of guys took off, and then the air horn sounded for us and we thrashed our way through the surf out to the first buoy, where we turned for the long swim parallel to the beach. We were sighting off Narragansett's famous Towers, two massive stone cylinders with an arch between them, all that remains of a once prosperous casino that burned down in the 20's. [?] Right away it seemed like we had caught the current and were moving along nicely. The only flies in my ointment were the jellyfish in the water and the insane chafing on the front of my neck. The jellyfish weren't stingy or anything, but they were really thick in the water in some places, making me feel like I was swimming through a jello salad. The chafing was more annoying. I had put Bodyglide on the back of my neck, as always, but I'd never had any issue with the throat area before. But something had gotten messed up in there and the salt water was making me acutely aware of it. I rolled onto my back to try and fix the problem, but to no avail.
I was pretty happy with the swim - the Towers kept looming larger and the turnaround buoy came quickly. The swim back to the beach was short, and I was out of the water in just over 40 minutes. I probably could have pushed harder in the swim, but I knew it was going to be a long day ahead, and I was trying to conserve energy. Transition went by in a blur, and suddenly I found myself on a bicycle which seemed to be my own. We went east for a mile or so before turning around, heading through the heart of town and up to Route 1, a somewhat major highway where the cars that were out at that time on a Sunday morning were doing a brisk 60 or 70. The shoulder was plenty wide in most places, though, and the road surface was nice. Somewhere around five miles or so, I started feeling like my back was just going to crap out on me. There was a sharp pain in my ilio-sacral joint that made me think it was not going to holdout for the whole bike ride, let alone the run. As I kept spinning the pedals, though, it mellowed out and I just put it all out of my mind.
We rolled up and down endless but gradual undulations before turning off at Kings Factory Road around mile 18. This section was on quiet but bumpy country roads that stair-stepped up pretty steeply at times, making the average speed for the loop a lot lower than I would have liked and taking more out of my legs and back than I anticipated. We did see some lovely little Rhode Island farms, though, and I spotted two youths washing their steers with a hose at one point, which made for a charming vignette.
Back down on Route 1, we kept rolling, up and down, moving towards Westerly, which is practically in Connecticut. The Westerly turnaround came up quickly enough, but somewhere between the 40 and 50 mile markers, I was starting to feel that maybe my bike computer was malfunctioning, as the miles seemed to be ticking over way too slowly. My plan had been to ration out my energy, not go out too hard on the bike, so that I'd have something left in my legs for the run. Sounds logical enough, but it didn't really work out. I was starting to whimper in my mind as my watch kept moving inexorably, and I still wasn't back at the off-ramp for Narragansett. Finally it arrived, and the twisting downhill to the transition restored my good spirits somewhat. I slipped my running shoes on and grabbed my hat, stretched my back out for a few seconds, downed a gel and some water, and headed out of the transition area at a brisk shuffle. Whose legs are these, anyway? I wondered to myself.
In the first mile or so, we undulated some more, and after the first aid station, we started climbing a little. These are probably not even hills you would notice much if you were driving, but they loomed pretty large to me. I had promised myself that I'd stop and stretch my back as often as I needed to, so I hadn't run 15 minutes before I was lying on my back on the grassy verge, twisting my knees to the left and right. This was going to be a long afternoon, I was beginning to suspect.
At the mile 3 marker, we scooted through a little footpath and into a super well-groomed little neighborhood where the residents handed out water and sprayed us with their hoses. Some of the kids were doing cheers on the lawns. "Hey shaka laka laka GOOOOOO runners!" It was nice. I was a little distressed by the fact that so far I was averaging about 14 minute miles, but I hoped I'd loosen up or get my legs back or something. It was an up and back through the neighborhood, and another 2 miles down. Next up was a turn down Middlefield Bridge Road, and across the bridge itself. The body of water in question appeared to be some sort of a pond or slough or something. People paddled kayaks, golden retrievers splashed on the shores. The sky was bright blue and it was all just lovely. I was more excited though by the aid station on the far side of the bridge, the first one I'd seen with gels. I gulped gratefullly.
I was thinking that the mile 6 marker must be coming soon, and as I trotted stiffly along, I became ever more alarmed when it didn't show up. I kept grimly moving forward, stopping more frequently to stretch. My legs didn't feel particularly bad, but my back was just so stiff and immobile, I just felt like I couldn't get any kind of flow going. The sharp pain in the I-S joint wasn't acting up, though, so again I plodded and trotted, alternating the trot with the plod for variety. For a while I felt like I was in limbo. The mile markers were completely missing, my stride was a hobble, and I wanted merely to endure. But suddenly, there was a green "Mile 8" painted on the asphalt. Mile 8! That's not so bad! Another mile to the turnaround, and hey - now there were only four miles to go. Things were getting pretty tough, however. My lower back was now getting into the act and the overall achiness and soreness that seems to come with 6 hours or so of strenuous exercise were starting to show. I was forcing myself to jog 200 steps, then trying to limit my walk break to 20 steps. Those kind of got longer as the miles wore on. The stretch after the Middlefield Bridge was a brutal uphill, and I felt like walking was by far the most efficient way to get up it.
The volunteers at the top of that hill were very encouraging, shouting, "Just a couple of miles to go! Looking good!" I knew the latter statement was a lie, so that cast considerable doubt on the credibility of the first statement. But I knew I was getting kind of close. In some sort of sick theory of relativity thing, distances seemed to expand infinitely even as time sped up. Before the race, I had hoped to finish in under 7 hours, and secretly thought I might even be closer to 6:45. Those last couple of miles, though, went by so slowly that I knew both goals were sunk. I trotted and walked, trotted and walked, feeling like maybe I was doing something very bad to my back that would preclude my driving to Boston or anywhere else after the race. It was really not feeling great at all.
Finally I saw the beach pavilions, where a volunteer bade me turn left and onto the beach. Onto the beach? ONTO THE BEACH????? What kind of a sick, disgusting, perverted, evil idea was that? I remembered this from the course talk, but I had blotted it from my mind. I had to stagger through about 300 yards of soft sand, absolutely unable to muster any kind of finishing kick whatsoever, cursing the sand and the race organizers with every step. The only positive I could find was that when I reached the solid surface of the parking lot and the finishing chute, I felt very slightly faster. And then I was done. Time to consume vast quantities of fluids and go float in the sea to ease the strain on my limbs. The idea of being free of gravity for a few minutes was unbelievably enticing.
Unlike the brisk, refreshing waters of Monterey Bay, the Atlantic at Narragansett Town Beach didn't do much to ease the inflammation in my legs and other bits. It just wasn't cold enough. But it was still cool enough to feel nice, and I floated blissfully on my back, swishing my limbs around in the water. The bliss was short-lived, alas, as I bobbed off the bottom to clear a small wave and found my left foot cramping in two directions at once. Not fair! The top of my foot and ankle were cramping at the same time that my arch was cramping the other way. The pain was exquisite. As I hopped around in the water clutching my left foot, my right foot decided to join the party and cramp up too. I probably need to consume more salt when I race long distances.
After a small eternity all the cramping came to an end. I made my slow-motion way back to transition, packed up, changed clothes and consumed an absolutely divine egg salad sandwich on a fluffy fresh roll. There were still a few finishers rolling in, but they were few and far between. Most of the participants had taken off too, except for the firm men and women who were anticipating awards. Though I was not one of them, I did hang out to cheer for the winners, who by golly had earned a little glory. I was also trying to keep moving and stretch out a little, as I had visions of going into full body spasm as I drove, and I kind of wanted to avoid that.
Eventually I decided that I was safe to drive and oozed myself onto the seat. It was amazing how easy it was to get up the hill to Route 1 behind the wheel of a huge powerful SUV. My back was stiff and sore, but not too much worse than it had been, and I felt a quiet satisfaction that I had once again persisted through a hard race. After about an hour, my satisfaction grew so quiet that I nearly fell asleep, so I stopped for a Red Bull and some chocolate. Thus fortified, I made it to Boston, actually navigated to Mike and Will's place, and collapsed gratefully on their couch. It's good to be with friends who are like family, in that you can slouch around in your jammies and not be concerned with your severe case of Post-Race Stupidity Syndrome.
Two days later, I got off the couch and drove back to New York. The final chapter in the 2004 race season, the much-anticipated Meat Pie Tri, was only days away. I was very, very glad that this race would be a sprint.
Amazingly, my back actually felt better, once I'd recovered a little from the rigors of the race, than it had before the race. Maybe it's true that we humans are built to run marathons. I'll try to take some encouragement from that thought, and from the surprising resiliency of my long-suffering bod.