Dansbury Schmansbury
The Danbury Try the Tri was this morning. From the title of this post, you can approximate how it went. For those readers who are into that sort of thing, I'll give you some details as well.Background: I have had the craziest week at work. The earliest I left was 7pm, and even then I worked after 10 for two hours. Most nights I've been here until between 10-midnight. I've been eating horribly all week. My only workouts were a pathetic bike ride on Sunday, a decent 5M run on Tuesday, and a short (~500m) swim on Thursday.
Yesterday I left work at 5pm. I grabbed a cab to Ultimate Triathlon in midtown, thinking I should get a real top for my first triathlon. I found a nice one by Zoot, and also bought a race number belt and speed laces. Whee! I was home by 6:30pm. I relaced my shoes, and assembled all my race stuff into a couple of bags (I know, there's a lot of stuff!). I loaded everything into Shiny (my friend Andrew's shiny Camry, which I borrowed just for the occassion - it was named by his 9-yr old daughter), and drove off to the Upper West Side to fetch Kari.
We were on the road just before 9pm. The drive to Danbury was uneventful, except for a brief moment of panic when we thought we were on the wrong highway. We arrived at our hotel just after 10. Our roomies, Nan & Eppie from TNT, hadn't checked in yet. Kari & I set our alarms for 5:30am, and went to bed.
We woke up this morning, got our stuff together, and went down to the car. A bunch of other TNTers were loading up in the parking lot, and it was raining - but gently. We drove to Dunkin Donuts and bought bagels and coffee, then drove to the tri site.
By this point it was pouring. Torrentially, you might even say. We stood in line in the rain to pick up our race packets and numbers, then ran back to the car to try to stay dry. Ha. It poured until about 7:15 (start time was 7:30). We took our bikes out and set them up in the transition area (which was soaked!), then learned that because of lightning the swim would be cancelled, and replaced with an additional 5k run.
At 7:45, off we went. I started a little too fast (as I am apt to do), but paced and finished the run in just over 30 min. My transition to the bike was pretty quick, and I headed out up the killer first hill.
I am unprepared to ride up big hills. It was incredibly difficult. I could see the crest, though, and knew I was close to the top, when I heard from behind me, "Fuck! I have a flat. Fuck!" It was Larry, a fellow TNT teammate. He pulled over, and I stopped to ask if he needed help. He waved me on. I asked if he knew how to fix it. He said he'd never done it before. So, in the interest of good karma (and in the spirit of the Special Olympics that is TNT) I stopped to help him. We fixed the flat, and I set off to continue the race.
Admittedly at this point, I was 10-15 minutes behind, and I had lost some momentum. Going up another rather steep hill, my chain fell off. I stopped, put it back on, and noticed at that point that my tires were both low. And my pump? In the car. At that point, Larry rode by and asked if I was OK. I told him my tires needed air, and he stopped to help. Go TNT! Moments later, Alanna (my swim drafting buddy) walked back to us. She had stopped a few meters ahead because her brake was rubbing against her tire. We fixed that, and set off again.
I felt terrible. I was way behind, the hills were hard, I wasn't mentally prepared, and I definitely wasn't physically prepared. I had treated the race casually, and I did not expect to have to bike AFTER running. Also, see above re: the week prior to the tri.
Larry, Alanna and I entered the transition area together. Someone yelled, "Great race, guys!" and we replied, "We're not finished yet!" She looked at first disbelieving, then surprised, then said, "Oh! Go! Good luck!" It was pretty funny.
The second run took 36min (we slacked a little).
Race times of course aren't up yet, but my own timing showed:
Run 1, 1st half: 15.43
Run 1, 2nd half: 14.47
T1: 2.36
Bike, 1st half: 47.54
Bile, 2nd half: 35.36
T2: 2.12
Run 2: 36.14
Total time: 2:35
Now for the math: Assume the tire change took 12 minutes. Subtracting that, the whole race would have taken 2:23. Not too terrible. And if I'd picked it up on the second run, I could have done that in 30min as well. Total: 2:17. Even that is pretty slow, I would have liked to finish closer to 2:05.
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