American Triple T 5/25-5/27/2007, an Epic Race Report for an Epic Race
Subtitle: I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends
By Sheila Plemich, composed 5/29/2007-6/5/2007
Copyright © 2007 Sheila J. Plemich
 
INSTALLMENT 1—Preamble
 
Warning: If you think you’ve read a long race report, prepare to be dazzled!  The report is in 6 installments; once they are all published, you can read any single one by itself, or all of them.
 
Cast of Racers:
Sheila—me
Cindy—my friend and Triple T teammate
Lori—friend who drove the van from Illinois full of crap for 4 racers
Marc—Lori’s SO and Triple T teammate
Kevin—friend of Lori and Marc who raced Triple T solo division (now that’s hard core)
Mark (a.k.a. Moonpie)—friend of Cindy who raced only Little Smokies ½ Ironman.  Mark will also be making an appearance at Miami Man ½ Ironman in November, which we shall rename “Revenge of the Flatlands”
Erik—friend of Mark who raced only Little Smokies ½ Ironman, taking first place in his age group
Jaret—man from Slowtwitch who raced Triple T solo division
Shelley—woman I first met at Ironman Lake Placid 2001 (our first Ironman), and who I’ve trained with. 
 
Racer Rankings:
Team Crackheads (Cindy and Sheila): 2/3 female teams; 39/52 all teams (includes DNF’s, of which there were many)
Team Batwood Rocks (Lori and Marc): 1/11 coed teams; 24/52 all teams
Team Flatliners (Shelley and Dennis): 3/11 coed teams; 36/52 all teams
Kevin: 16/20 Male Master 40-49
Jaret: 6/20 Male Master 40-49
Mark: 10/12 M30-34; 33/79 overall
Erik: 1/1 M15-19; 34/79 overall
 
Crew:
Rich—my coach and friend
Jovan—Cindy’s husband, and awesome chef/photographer/gopher/chauffeur/voice of reason
Matthew—Cindy and Jovan’s son, head cheerleader and budding baseball player/football player and probably triathlete (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree)
 
The Venue:
The event takes place in the Shawnee State Park near Portsmouth, Ohio.  Most of the racers and support crew stay in either the main Lodge, cabins (that can hold an unlimited number of triathletes based on our neighbors) or campground.  The Lodge has a restaurant and I’m told a 25-meter pool, so it would be a great place just to go and train for all the great biking and running possibilities.
 
The Lodge and cabins sit at the top of a big hill, and the transition area (the same one is used for all the races) is at the bottom of the hill.
 
Who is Cindy and How Did we get to be Teammates?
 
Cindy and I go way back.  We met while training for our first marathon with Team in Training.  We were the first 2 of that crew who decided we wanted to do Ironman.  Here I had just started running (1999), and already I had stars in my eyes!  Cindy has way more of an athletic background than me (I honestly have none—I was and still am a geek of math, computer science, music, physics, etc.), so it didn’t surprise me that she figured she had the goods for Ironman.  We became joined at the hip, as we lived about 2 miles from one another and could travel to training and races together, and we have the same tastes in many areas, even though we are 14 years apart in age.  Cindy moved away to Ada, Michigan (near Grand Rapids), a few years ago, but she still has family in my area (Downers Grove, Illinois), and we try and get together when we are racing the same event or she’s in my area.
 
How did I know that Cindy would be the perfect teammate?  For one thing, she’s the only friend of mine that can “check” me.  For example, let’s say I’m doing something really stupid—she has this way of letting me know that doesn’t make me feel stupid OR mad.  She and I have spent many training and racing weekends together, so I know what it’s like to be with her all day.  The first time we roomed in a hotel together, we both had a good laugh because she had all the typical female “products” spread over the bathroom counter, and she commented that all I had was “a toothbrush and soap.”  So in that respect, we are complete opposites, but it works.  When it comes to getting ready to train or race, though, we are on the same schedule.  The other thing that I love about Cindy is that I am able to express my inner bad girl around her.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether we are cracking more jokes or cutting down everything and everyone under the sun.  All in good fun, though.  We are both 100% certain that there are many colorful things being said about us behind our backs.  When we are together, it’s like some secret switch has been activated where we can unleash aspects of our personalities that don’t get out quite often.  Yikes, reading this back I’m sure it sounds like we are nuts!
 
More importantly, I know Cindy’s capabilities, sometimes more than she does herself.  I have this bad habit of making friends do crazy stuff with me (what are friends for?), but only when I know they can do it.  And she has put up with my initially slow development into a triathlete.  Way back when in the year 2001, we took Total Immersion swim lessons together.  Let me tell you how much I sucked when I started.  To me, Cindy didn’t even need the lessons!  But she put up with me not “getting” it (I have my own way of acquiring knowledge where I can appear really dense and then all of a sudden everything clicks), and I can still remember driving together after work down to the UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago) campus for lessons. 
 
I also started out as a crappy runner and biker.  Right from the get-go, Cindy could run faster than me, but we were pretty equally unfit bikers at the start.  To this day, I think Cindy’s a better swimmer, but I guess we are more equally matched now, only because I spend so much time in the water, and I have a boatload of endurance, if nothing else.  On the biking front, I’ve been a bit more methodical about my training, and again, I put in a lot of hours, so I generally shine on that front.  When it comes to running, though, Cindy will beat me at any short distance up to maybe ½ marathons.  I’ve done more open marathons than Cindy (5 to her 1, I think is the latest tally), so I’m better at that, but I think if Cindy trained more for that, she’d be well ahead of me.  Periodically, it irks me how much I train, and Cindy is right there with me on much less.  Cindy is just a naturally talented athlete, and I am happy for all the success she has.
 
I conned Cindy into doing Triple T with me 11 months ago.  I can’t believe it’s been that long from when we signed up, which means that registration for 2008 should open up within a few weeks, and I want to be prepared, because we’re in for 2008.  The same day I asked Cindy to join me in this madness, she told me she was registering for Ironman Lake Placid, so of course I had to reciprocate the favor by registering for it.  We are such needle pushers!
 
How did I get roped into this?  I must be on some email distribution list comprised of “people who do crazy s***.”  Because I got an email from nowhere telling me that early registration was going to begin, and whenever I see the magic words EARLY REGISTRATION, I just know I have to get in on the action.
 
It was a no-brainer that our team name would be Crackheads.  I was given the nickname Crackhead by a guy in honor of the high-volume, high-intensity training that I do (all very controlled and under the direction of my coach, Rich, although I basically pick crazy things to do and we build a training plan around them) a few years ago, and it has stuck.  I really didn’t want “team” in front of it, but that was added by HFP Racing, so we became “Team Crackheads.”  Once it was official that we were registered, it became something to just mentally put away. 
 
Near Christmas, realizing that I hadn’t bought anything for Cindy, I happened on some Crackhead gear on Cafe Press.  So I got each of us a hoodie:
 

 
I got the below shirt for Cindy, that looks really great on her, especially since she has actual boobs, unlike me: 
 

 
I got the below shirts for myself:
 

 
What did Cindy get me for Christmas?  A freaking BONSAI tree: 
 

 
As you can see, it needs some pruning.  The big leaves have got to go!  I leave the little snowman ornament on it all the time.  It’s from my sister, Carla, and it says *Sheila* on it.
 
I had been without pets for about a year, and Cindy sends me a relatively high maintenance indoor plant.  I have one of the world’s greenest thumbs when it comes to my yard, but I generally shun indoor plants because the only places I can put them to get any sun means they are in my way.  At one time I had this 6-foot tall indoor plant stand, complete with greenhouse lights, and I’d grow stuff on there (and by “stuff” I mean legal stuff).  I gave that away, though, once I got heavy into triathlon, and in its place are cases full of Gatorade!  I’ve managed to keep the bonsai alive, and it even bloomed this spring.  If I’m gone for more than 3 days, though, I have to hand it to my neighbor to sit, because it needs daily water and light.
 
I remember Cindy telling me that the Crackhead gear was going to get her motivated to get on her training a little earlier than she normally does.  I wasn’t worried—I knew she’d prepare herself.  Funny thing was I didn’t wear my Crackhead stuff until 2 weeks before the race.  I sported my pink shirt one day while I was in Colorado Springs on business.  I got a few funny looks from people, but I really and truly don’t think I look like an actual Crackhead (no offense, Whitney, Kate and the others), so I’m sure they would know it’s a joke.
 
 
My Winter 2006-2007 Training
 
As part of my winter training, I did Goofy Challenge (1/2 marathon and full marathon in Disney World back to back on Saturday and Sunday) for the second time (and I am NOT doing it in 2008), so I was a busy beaver building up my run base.  Then I had scheduled the entire local 4-race series of indoor triathlons in February and March, and me being the idiot that I am (for Ironman Lake Placid, I listed “Idiot” as my occupation), I told Rich that I should do a long run after each race to help prepare me for the rigors of Triple T. 
 
Yah, well, I DID all that s***, and let me tell you it beat me up.  In race weeks (there was one every other Sunday over 8 weeks), I’d ride 2:30 HARD and then run for :30-:40 off the bike on Saturday, and on Sunday I’d do the sprint race (1 hour—we all went the same time and were scored based on distance covered) and then run 1:30-1:40 afterwards.  Mondays after the races were not much fun, but I’d manage to swim at least 1 hour in the morning and run for :50 in the afternoon.  I did pretty well at the races, taking 2nd place overall in my age group, losing 1st place to a short course track coach, but I beat her on the bike every race, which made me happy.  Actually I was first on the bike for my wave in each race, beating all men in the same wave.  In between race weeks, I would do the same brick workout on Saturday, and then on Sunday I would swim at least an hour right before doing my long run, again 1:30-1:50 in duration.  I started to crash from this training near the last race, but all I did was shorten my long run a bit for 2 weeks, and then I got right back on schedule with my training.
 
My Spring 2007 Training
 
In early April, I got a new manager at work, and I took an instant liking to him.  He asked if I’d like to take a lead role in the group in a highly technical area (which I love), and I said yes, and he asked me to pick a week to come out to Colorado Springs.  I chose the week 2 weeks before Triple T, and so Rich and I decided that the week before I’d do a heavy bike week and make the business trip just swimming and running, since I didn’t want to take a bike with me.  Believe me, I wanted to take a bike, but didn’t want the airline hassle or needing to find an escort to ride with me.  So I had almost a full week at about 8,000 feet of altitude at the foot of the Rockies (where the first 3 days of run workouts sucked, let me tell you—I didn’t have too much trouble swimming except for needing to breathe every stroke rather than my normal bilateral) where I put in about 5 hours of swimming, 6 hours of running and even about an hour of strength work, all while managing to get some good business training and other work and fabulous food to boot! 
 
My coworkers out that way laughed at how much I was eating, but I had absolutely no guilt about it.  I figure I needed close to 4,000 calories per day while training there, and my daily objective was to not wake up in the morning hungry, but I never achieved that goal.  The third night I was there, my boss took me and 3 men out to dinner at this wonderful restaurant near Garden of the Gods.  The restaurant specializes in wild game.  We ordered wine, appetizers and main courses.  I also got a rather large salad, and the men watched in amazement as I polished it off and even took tastes from their main courses.  I still woke up hungry the next morning!
 
The running I got in that week was awesome except for the first day, when I had to run on a treadmill and had to stop about every 2 minutes to catch my breath.  This was at the Pike’s Peak YMCA, and I am sure everyone in the room thought I was some huge poser, looking all fit and everything, yet gasping for oxygen!  All the other runs but one, though, were on the Santa Fe Trail, which connects up right to our office building there, and the trail is decently hilly and incredibly scenic, at the base of the Rockies.  The Thursday evening I was there, I met a group of crazies that regularly run up and down Pike’s Peak for about an hour, and that was going to count as a tempo run for me or whatever it turned into.  As it turns out, I went up for :30 and I even beat a few of the local runners (not that I’m competitive or anything)!  The next day I ran for 2 hours on the trail by myself before getting on an airplane home.
 

Here I am during my 2-hour run on the Santa Fe Trail.  The woman I got to take it didn’t know how to zoom a camera phone.  Oh well.  That’s Pike’s Peak in the background.

Here’s a shot of the Santa Fe Trail.  Really nice place to run!
 
 
One Week before Triple T
 
The week before I went to Colorado, I did 4 brick workouts, one after each ride, and 2 of them were on consecutive long ride days.  The week after I got back from Colorado, I squeezed in 3 brick workouts, with 2 of them on consecutive long ride days.  During the run after the second long ride, I was smart enough to execute a practice bonk (it was not planned, but even still it was BRILLIANT!!!).  My blood sugar crashed 1.5 miles from home, and I needed sugar NOW.  I guzzled the remains of my Gatorade, but that didn’t fix me up, so my brain went into food acquisition mode.  I had no money with me, so my first thought was to flag down a car to get them to drive me home, because I knew I would pass out if I didn’t get something in me soon.  Of course, while this is happening, I’m still running, because my muscles are just fine—it was my brain that needed the sugar.  Luckily, I passed by a park where several families were picnicking, and I saw tables laden with food.  SCORE!  I ran up to one where a young mother and child were sitting, watching a baseball game and the conversation went like this:
 
Me (said at near light speed): Excuse me, miss, but I have a strange request for you.  I’ve been working out many hours in the last few days, and I’ve run out of calories, and I’m bonking, and I need some food RIGHT NOW or else I am going to pass out.  Could I maybe have a handful of chips or something?
 
Her (looking at me and probably figuring I’m pretty skinny and she should go ahead and give me something): Sure, go ahead, take what you want!
 
Me: Oh, chocolate chip cookies.  Those aren’t my favorite, but they will do.  Oh—what are these?  Peanut butter?  My FAVORITE.
 
I snarfed two 3” cookies, thanked the woman, jogged over to the water fountain to wash them down, and I felt fine, and even picked up the pace to home!  Funny thing was, the incident got me to thinking that I would probably be in a similar situation at Triple T, and so I began plotting my calorie needs for race weekend.  I was also so proud of myself for being able to continue running even while I was running out of fuel. 
 
Now we are finally at the week of Triple T, and I’ve got a few more projects to finish.  One, I have a boatload of perennials in my yard, and I needed to do some cleanup and plant some annuals.  I like to try and get my yard shaped up by June 1.  Two, I wanted to finish sewing matching nightshirts for Cindy and me.  It was a secret project, and I kept debating whether or not I had time to finish them before the race weekend and whether I could keep it secret.  Well, not sleeping much took care of the time, and I managed to keep the secret as well!  On Sunday, 5/20, I put in an hour before riding.  5/20 was the same day our 17-year cicada invasion began.  See http://www.cicadamania.com for details.  Until the end of June, I can’t stay outside in my back yard very long because the noise level is deafening!  On Monday-Wednesday 5/21-5/23, I put in about 3 hours of sewing each morning before swimming or working or whatever to get the nightshirts finished.  I was so pleased with my seamstress work, that it put me in a great mood to actually race.  I really enjoy making things for other people.  Here’s the finished product:
 

 
The fabric is hot pink with tiaras all over it.  Cindy and I both like the color pink a lot!
 
Those of you who know me well know that I rarely taper unless it’s for a truly meaningful race.  Which Triple T was not.  I mean Triple T is and was meaningful, but I couldn’t treat it as an A race, since I have an Ironman coming up.  Triple T would need to be a train through, recover on the back side event.  Besides, I’d been doing crazy weekend training anyway, so what was another weekend featuring just a bit (OK, a lot) more? 
 
There were some loose ends I needed to tie up before leaving for Triple T, and one of them was housing for the 3 people I was traveling with—Lori, Marc and Kevin.  The week before, I’d been notified that the Lodge at Shawnee State Park had a room for me, and then I located a cabin on Slowtwitch that had space for a few people.  Then, Cindy let me know that she was able to snag a cabin last minute on the HFP Racing forum, and that I could stay there with her.  I then wrote numerous emails playing travel agent getting the other 3 people housed, which worked out well for everyone, I think.
 
As I began to aggregate stuff needed for the race appearing on my incredible Triathlon Packing List spreadsheet (email me if you want a copy—it’s *FREE* and I will add anything to it that you think of that’s not already on it), I realized I’d need some throwaway bike bottles, since my road bike, La Gazza Ladra (LGL for short):
 

 
only holds 2 bottles, and I’d either need to take race-supplied nutrition (which I avoid if possible) or keep washing and refilling bottles.  In the process, I laid out a nutrition and activity checklist, in, surprise, A SPREADSHEET (I am nothing if not organized), that revealed I’d need some throwaway bike bottles of Gatorade to empty halfway and replace with Ultra Violence in order to make one of my favorite concoctions that I like to call Voodoo Mix (½ Ultra Violence and ½ Gatorade—blue flavors work best), and then since I’d calculated how much Coke and Ultra Violence I’d need for all the races (some for the Voodoo Mix and some for my Fuel Belt bottles for the runs), I had to get busy defizzing everything.  Now, I can drink the pop with full fizz without ill effect during training and racing (hey, burping and farting feel GREAT!!!), but if it’s fizzy, it will find a way out of whatever bottle you have around your waist or in your hand (bike bottles aren’t as big of a problem).  So on Wednesday, I opened up (5) 12-oz. cans of Ultra Violence and (2) 24-oz. bottles of Coke so they could all have a defizzing party in my refrigerator.
 
I also decided that I needed to get a tiara for Cindy (I already have one, thank you very much) to go with the nightshirt, some stuff for Cindy’s husband and son, and somehow I had latched onto the idea of some sort of dangly things to put on our race belts.  I had T-shirts made for Jovan and Matthew at I Love Anything:
 

 
I had the shirt below made for myself, and intend to wear it to other races this season:
 

 
I had the shirt below made for Cindy—she lived up to the statement many times in the course of the race weekend:
 
 
 
And I had thongs made for Cindy and I in *pink*.  You WISH I had a photo of us modeling them.  Not this time!
 

 
I managed to score a bunch of stuff at Walgreen’s on Wednesday night.  For Cindy, I got Barbie perfume.  I found gummy food candy for Matthew—one package was called “lunch,” including gummy French fries, and also a big hamburger (this stuff is pretty gross to me, but to a young boy it’s great).  I got a Stewie dashboard doll for Jovan that says stuff—our favorite line became “I’ve got a gift for you in my diaper and it’s not a toaster.”  I bought myself 2 bike bottles of blue Gatorade for the Voodoo Mix, Fiddle Faddle, and surgical masks for my massage therapist who had a cold that I did NOT want to catch.  Finally, I got pink wind chimes to hang outside the cabin to announce that the Crackheads are in town.
 
On Thursday morning I headed to Target before taking my car to get emission tested (another thing on my “to do” list, which, big surprise, is stored in a SPREADSHEET—BRILLIANT!!!), and scored a tiara and Hello Kitty purse for Cindy, pink cubic zirconium earrings, pink rhinestone bracelets, Barbie Post-It Notes and temporary tattoos for each of us, and of all things, pink and silver sparkly streamers that are supposed to go on a kid’s bike, but in this case, they’d go on our race belts.  I was on some sort of crazed pink hunting expedition that was turning out quite well!  Cindy and I both love pink stuff, so I figured that pink would be part of the Team Crackheads signature.  Cindy has a pink Elite tri bike and is getting an Elite road bike build that will also be pink—with sparkles.
 
One last thing—I’d heard a cut from Ozzy Osbourne’s new CD called “I Don’t Wanna Stop,” and just had to go buy it.  Trust me, it’s great.  The chorus to the song goes like this:
 
All my life I've been over the top
I don't know what I'm doing,
All I know is I don't wanna stop
All fired up, I'm gonna go till I drop
You're either in or in the way, don't make me,
I don't wanna stop
 
Sounds like the Crackheads theme, doesn’t it?
 
With all these things acquired, I could get a massage, and then go home and finish packing.  I also checked my email, and was happy to find out that we were going to leave ½ hour earlier than originally planned.  During all this gardening, sewing, shopping, planning and packing mania, my only concern was not making it to the first race on time!