The 2004 Timberman Tri

The Big 2004 Triathlon Trip
to New Hampshire

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is tobe found in their industry,
application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.

Mark Twain

This is it! My goal race for 2004: the Timberman Tri ! After the heartstopping experience last year of flying with the bike to England, I chose something a bit closer to home that didn't require packing it up.

Week of August 15

Wednesday My last run before my sweetie and I head to New Hampshire for the Timberman Tri! Yeah, if I weren't so tired, I'd be really, really excited. This evening's run was a short, easy thing, along The Green, to the pedestrian bridge and back. The only downside were the crowds on the path, especially those clumps of people who gather in the middle of the trail and talk while everyone else is trying to walk, run, or bike around them. Oh well. Felt great, though. When I got to the far end of the bridge after running easily, I was surprised to see 25:27 on my watch. Geez, it hadn't FELT like I was running that fast! Total time: exactly 37 minutes. Hopefully I'll do this well Sunday. Wish me luck!

Friday After a long day of traveling, my sweetie and I arrived in Holderness, New Hampshire. Thank goodness we got here early: I had planned to go for a short (1 hour) but hard bike workout and a short fast run late in the day. After hours on the mind-numbing Interstate through Maine, I needed those workouts! We headed off the beaten path around Brunswick, Maine, and took small country roads through to New Hampshire. New Hampshire's Lakes Region is really something else! The scenery is breathtaking, and if you can find a little cottage around here for a few days off, I highly recommend it. My bike ride was along the astounding Route 113. I got to see mountains and lakes and forests, all in peace and quiet and in golden evening sun. It reminded me of my once-in-a-lifetime bike ride last year two days before the UK triathlon, when I had gone out in the English countryside. A very short run after today's bike ride, met up with my sweetie who had gone on a longer run. What a great start to our little vacation!

The Timberman Half-Ironman Triathlon

Sunday August 22 Brrrrrr.....A very chilly morning since the clouds from yesterday's heavy rain have cleared out. My sweetie and I are up at 4:30am and out of our little cottage at 5:30am. At 6am, we're in a mile-long traffic line-up to get into Ellacoya State Park, the site of this year's Timberman Triathlon. So far, it sounds pretty much like last year's UK Half-Ironman. The only thing that's missing is the acid-in-my-stomach nervousness. It is a BEAUTIFUL morning, just like last year. I must have a weather angel on my shoulder. I setup quickly in transition (thanks for the MP3 player, Mom and Dad!) I listened to my See Lance Ride tune over and over again, as well as Daniel Lanois' exquisite The Unbreakable Chain. The start has been delayed by ten minutes - thank goodness, since I'm ten minutes behind, too! Finally get the wetsuit on in a rush by the car. My sweetie and I walk out to the water to where the swim exit is and we take a look at the water. The cool thing about American triathlons? National anthems. They actually sing them here, and this morning they even sang the Canadian national anthem! We walk to the other side of transition,I get a good luck kiss from my sweetie, and I start walking across the shore to where the other waves are starting.
The start area is a ways away from the transition and you can get to it by walking in very shallow, warm water with a nice sandy bottom. It's actually very, very relaxing so I'm feeling unusually calm as I stand in my wave group, chatting with another woman who's telling me about Ironman Lake Placid. Suddenly everyone's swimming (funny, I can't remember a gun going off), and I dive forward, expecting my lungs to start burning and my arms to start feeling weak. Not today! The water is such a perfect temperature that I get into the swim almost immediately, although it takes a long time before I seem to feel comfortable swimming. I sight quite often because I have a bad habit of swimming off to the left (probably because I only breathe on my left). The water is so clear that I can see swimmers 10 to 15 feet away from me. Just before we reach the first turn buoy the wave behind us catches up and one guy goes by me like a torpedo. I'm swimming with another girl in a sleeveless Orca wetsuit and every once in a while we pop our heads out of the water to sight buoys. As we go around the turn buoy, we're totally blinded by the sun so we rely on each other to sight in the right direction. In fact, by now there are a lot of swimmers who have stopped swimming and are trying to find the next buoy, so blinding is the sun. It makes a beautiful design in the water when your leading hand dives in, however. You can see the rays of light curving around your hand and illuminating the clouds of bubbles in front and below you. For a while I swim and delight in this, something I would never have been able to do even last year. And I've got Daniel Lanois' The Unbreakable Chain playing in my head. I guess you really have to hear the song to know what it does to you. I focus on the long, relaxed strokes I've been working on in the past two months. With two-thirds of the swim to go, I finally find my rhythm and really start to move. Now another, more aggressive wave has caught up with us, though occasionally a few of us stop and talk to each other while trying to sight a buoy. Things get really tough after the second and last turn buoy when people start pushing for the finish. When I do get to the beach, I check my watch: 42 minutes!!! What a great start! I had hoped - but hadn't thought possible - to do the swim under 50 minutes, figuring I'd get 47 minutes at best. But this is awesome! Bonus: my new swim goggles didn't fog up and were really comfortable.
I run to transition with the world's biggest grin on my face. Getting the wetsuit off my ankles is a bit tougher than I had expected, the consequence of not putting BodyGlide around my calves earlier. It's also chilly in wet clothing! Anyway, grab the bike, join the flood of athletes heading out and hop on. Off to my left I hear my sweetie cheer me on, and I start down the small road that leads out of Ellacoya. My ankle had picked up some sand in the mount area, so it starts to chafe and I try to swipe some off while riding - disoriented after the swim - in a crowd of hyped athletes going uphill. I really should have put that BodyGlide around my ankles this morning. We climb a long hill just outside the park; all that I can remember is that I was awfully wet, chilly, and just starting to get my bearings after the swim. The course swings left at a major intersection and heads off onto a quiet rural road.

Then the hills begin

Other cyclists are passing me as if I'm sitting still, but that's fine: the faster waves started behind me, and I know from experience that things will slow down an awful lot in two or three hours. Actually, things start slowing down right away as we climb and climb. I remember that the course description mentions that the worst hill is at Mile 10. I watch the odometer closely, and sure enough at 16km a hill comes out of nowhere, the kind that looks painful. A woman beside me tells me it's the one the locals refer to as "the New Hampshire Monstah." Oh, did it hurt! And when I got to the top, another guy said that there was worse to come! He was right! Another hill, not quite that bad a grade, but much longer. The only thing that I can say so far is that the scenery is beautiful and there's a nice quiet to the morning. But my legs are already building up lactic acid (I shoulda warmed up, I shoulda warmed up.) There are police and volunteers at every intersection; there are spectators cheering us on everywhere and they're all so positive. It's downhill and uphill after Mile 10, to an aid station with people dressed up in the oddest costumes, and then we're on the flat (relatively speaking) for about 30 miles. The road is busier and has wider shoulders. Every once in a while I give in to the temptation to go a bit harder, but I play The Unbreakable Chain or Magnet (the song on the Lance Armstrong commercial) and my discipline returns. It's a long ride, I tell myself, I've got hours to go. This won't be over momentarily. There are people I pass and who pass me over and over again. It seems that every mile there's someone on the side of the road with a flat tire. I'm grateful for my expensive, Kevlar-reinforced Hutchisons. Training for one race for months on end only to end up with a flat tire seems like something so frustrating merely because it's entirely preventable.
Anyway, I get hungry earlier than usual but not thirsty. What distracts me is the leaders heading back on the other side of the road. They look like they're having a hard time: a headwind has come up and the hills have probably taken their toll. I keep an eye out for Ironman legend Karen Smyers, who is competing today. It's an honour simply to be on the same course as her. Looking at the returning athletes distracts me from the fact that I'll be dealing with a headwind on the way back AND going over those hills again. There's no real turn-around point; we just do a loop that goes around and gets us back on the highway in the opposite direction. The sideroad is much quieter and nicer than the highway, and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been passed by so many cyclists. My wrist is also getting sore from shifting on the Marinoni, which has the old-fashioned downtube shifters that have stiffened with age.
After getting back on the highway I eat a little more. There's a guy on a 2003 Cervelo P2K who passes me. Then I pass him on an uphill. He passes me on a downhill. I pass him again on the next uphill. Finally I joke to him that he'll get me in the next two minutes. We both laugh and it relieves some of the tension. After about 20 minutes he hops off his bike to, um, visit Mother Nature, and catches up with me just when Istart the same game with a woman on a Cannondale 2000 who looks like she should be in Athens on the Olympic Team. We veer off the highway after the funky aid station, and go right up the first of a series of tough hills. The guy in front of me high-fives a woman standing on the side of the road. She looks at me and I yell that I'm not as good as him. Again, more laughter. It really helps on those hills. They actually don't seem as bad as the first time. although the woman next to me is a having a really hard time with them. Olympic woman is passing me in the hills, and I'm passing her on the downhills (which basically means I'm fatter than her.) My wrist is angry with the Marinoni. The hill at Mile 10 turns into a 64km/hr downhill. We're back at the major intersection with lots of cheerful spectators and parallel to the run course. It's pretty discouraging to watch them, knowing that so many people are ahead of me. Finally the long downhill to the park, into the park, and off the bike. T2 goes well, although I find a bunch of ants crawling around in my shoes and cap. Doh! Obviously my sweaty, stinky white cap that has never been washed hasn't deterred anything. I whack my cap a bit and head out for the run, my favourite part.
The run isn't as easy as last year. I think that's because I haven't been running as much this year, choosing instead to do exactly what the training plan recommended for mileage. Just like the bike course, the run course starts with an excrutiating two mile uphill. Bike for just over three hours, then start running uphill for just under 20 minutes and see how you feel. I wasn't feeling all that great and my legs were stiff, but I was so happy to be running that my smile wrapped twice around my head. Heck, even the athletes on the other side of the road were staring at me. Olympic woman was just ahead of me. How strange! After all, isn't someone THAT fit, thin, and with such a great bike supposed to be kicking my butt? I catch up with her and we run together for a few miles, but she's finally a bit too slow for me and I drop her around Mile 5. There are aid stations everywhere offering all sorts of stuff: water, ice, Pepsi, Gatorade, Heed, pretzels, cookies. Occasionally I grab some ice and do the Lori Bowden thing (pour it into my sports bra.) Water goes over my head. Heed and Pepsi don't go down well at all, and Gatorade is still the best thing out there. The crowd at the start of the second loop is phenomenal. I spot my sweetie by the car, returning from his twenty mile run, and I yell at him and he waves back. The second loop is a bit quieter and my hip flexors aren't cooperating. But I still feel great (the amazing scenery out onto the lake definitely helped; so did smiling all the time.) At the 10 mile mark I check my watch: 5:30. If I keep running at a steady pace, I could actually get under six hours! My hip flexors protest, as do my very stiff quads. But I know I can do this. I pick up the speed as much as both muscle groups will allow, enjoy the downhills as much as I can. The final stretch to the finish is lined with cheering, supportive people and the announcer calls my name. The sprint to the finish feels great (so does the fact that I can actually sprint at this point.) I try to cheer on a sullen competitor beside me, but he doesn't respond. Final time: 5:57!

Place

Guntime

SWIM:

Transition 1:

BIKE:

Transition 2:

RUN:

Music. The MP3 player during transition set-up helped create a set of songs to choose from to set my perspective when things got long or tough.
I should have warmed up before the event, either by running a little or doing some swimming. I'm now fit enough where bonking later in the race is no longer a concern.
Eat less than usual the day before the race.
Spending this summer in the pool rather than at Killarney Lake and focusing on technique rather than endurance really paid off. I was able to focus on technique during the race and not succumb to the temptation of just hammering, something I've never been able to do in previous events.

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Last updated October 1 2004 by Helen Rooney