mim’s blog

Last Sunday I raced in the New York City Triathlon. It hurt, but was a lot of fun. It was an olympic distance race, so the swim was 1.5km down the Hudson, the bike was 40km up and back on the Henry Hudson parkway, and the run was 10km into Central Park and around the loop. My times were 19:03 for the swim, 4:37 for transition 1, 1:18:11 for the bike, 2:09 for transition 2, and 50:58 for the run for a total of 2:34:57. The results of all 2945 participants are available in a big pdf, and mine are available separately as well. There were also some photographers on the course and they got some good shots of me. There were a lot of other people from Columbia there, Graham did an amazing job, coming in 6th in our age group of 300 with a time of 2:14:52.

My race started at 5:15 in the morning, when I got to the transition area at to set up my stuff. I had almost enough time to get everything organized and fill up my water bottles at a water fountain. The transition closed at 5:45 and I commenced waiting around until my swim wave started at 7:45. I got to take a leisurely stroll up to the swim start and then listen to the announcer interview people about to jump in the water. He kept asking people, “What’s yer name? Where ya from?” and I wanted to shout out, “What ja wanna be?” Well, maybe I did shout it out once or twice.

The swim itself wasn’t bad at all. We were swimming downstream in the river with a 2-3 knot current at our backs. In fact, the current was supposed to be at its strongest at 8:30, so our wave got a particularly nice push. It was hard enough to wait for the starter’s signal once I got in the water, the water was pushing so hard. One guy apparently floated the whole swim in 35 minutes.

The bike also went well, until the end. I thought there wouldn’t be much wind since we were riding so early in the morning, but I was wrong. During the first part of the ride, the highway was right next to the river, and there was a strong headwind coming off of the water. After we got inland a little, the wind died down and I sped up a bit. The course was also hillier than I thought it would be, which actually worked to my advantage as I climbed past lots of people on their aero bikes, only to be watch them zoom by on the flats. I don’t know if I didn’t eat enough on the bike or the night before or what, but about 1 mile from the end my glutes and hamstrings seized up. It was all I could do to limp up the final hill and into the transition at 10 mph. That slowdown brought my average speed down to 19.1 mph.

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do the run at all, but after having a little trouble getting up after putting on my running shoes, I was able to start the run with minimal pain. I guess my running muscles were still intact, even though I couldn’t have biked another mile. The hills in central park usually kill me, but even thought I haven’t be running hills, I hardly seemed to notice them. Maybe I was just too hepped up on endorphins. My pace on the run turned out to be 8:12 per mile.

The race was also the physically challenged triathlon national championships, so there were lots of racers with prosthetic legs and arms. You wouldn’t think they’d be able to complete all of the events, but they were really fast. One guy in particular, Byron “Soulja” Breeze had no legs and only his upper arms, which he used to push himself on a skateboard during the run. I have no idea how he did it, but he finished the race looking pretty fresh. One of the other athletes shouted to him, “you’re an inspiration to all of us,” as we were running.

I left the race tired, but proud. I’ll definitely be back next year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 5:32 pm and is filed under new york. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.