INSTALLMENT 3—Saturday, May 26, 2007; Race #2 Individual Time Trial
  

Race 2: Individual Time Trial

Saturday, May 26, 7:30 AM
1500m Swim (it was at least 1 mile, but flat) - 24.8 mi Bike (approx., no drafting) - 6.55 mi Run

Bike Course Profile:  Nice, huh?

 
Saturday morning dawns, and I even awoke before my alarm clock, and I was the first awake.  While it would only take 5 minutes to get to transition from the cabin, I still needed time to get calories in and um…take care of business.  So first I got some coffee started.  Only the spastic coffeemaker decided to overflow in various ways and generally make a big mess until I discovered I hadn’t REALLY SLAMMED THE STUPID LID DOWN.  Then it was fine, and we still got nearly an entire pot of coffee out of the batch, but I spent as much time cleaning up after the mess as I did actually drinking the coffee. 
 
I ate my usual Power Bar Triple Threat, and then prepared to down 300 calories of Ultrafuel, orange flavor.  In the past, I’d used the fruit punch flavor, but for some reason I ended up with orange this season.  Let me tell you the orange makes me gag as much as the fruit punch; only a little more, because it reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom would put medicine into orange juice.  YUM!  Maybe some vodka would have helped…
 
I had a bike bottle filled with Voodoo Mix and a 12-oz. bottle of Coke for the run, and 1 gel for the bike, and that was my first Saturday race nutrition.  Eventually, everyone else in the cabin got up and got motivated.  I would have loved a video of us getting ready and then running it at fast speed.  In and out of rooms, from counter to table top to refrigerator, etc., times 4.
 
Cindy and I rode our bikes down to transition and I’m an idiot because I didn’t pump my tires first.  So I’m hunting for a pump, and like nobody has one (because everyone rode down to transition), so I finally find someone with one, and the pump promptly breaks the stem off of my front tube, so at least we were there in plenty of time to put in a new tube.  I wavered for maybe 15 seconds before I decided to not risk riding without changing the tube, even though I had put in full pressure. 
 
Along comes Jaret, and I decided to play dumb blond on him and ask him for help with the tire, even though I know how to do it myself.  Jaret gladly obliged, and did it in style, without benefit of tire levers.  But then I needed to find a pump to get the full air in.  I had to walk like A HALF A BLOCK to get to the support area and then wait for the ONE PUMP.  Some guy was pumping his tires in what appeared to be slow motion.  Those of us in line are a bit hyper, as we want to get the job done.  Finally, the guy is done, and then we start on mine, only it won’t hold air, and you know I’m like, “F***, what if this is a bad tube?”  But then I ask someone to hold the pump to the stem and voila!  Tire full of air!
 
I’m so happy with my pumped up tire (at least I wasn’t dumb enough to take the whole bike over to pump just the front wheel), and I put it back on my bike and then it occurred to me that the whole tire incident had occurred in the space of maybe 5 minutes.  Which proves to me that time is truly elastic, sometimes taking forever, and other times speeding up.
 
Saturday morning’s race was the individual time trial.  We would still go off in number order with the teams first and together, but we were on our own.  I had a pretty good swim, and so did Cindy, but she took off on the bike a bit ahead of me while I spazzed out removing my wetsuit for the first time this season.  I guess I really wasn’t in that big of a hurry!  I figured I’d catch her and we’d stay in each other’s sights or something.  Whatever, I wasn’t concerned. 
 
I barely remember that ride, but as you can see from the profile, it was hilly.  Funny thing is neither Cindy nor I studied any of the courses beforehand, because it wouldn’t have made a difference in our strategy.  I just made sure to drink all my stuff, eat my gel, watch my power on the climbs as best I could (which basically meant ignoring it since there’s not much you can do if all you can go is like 6MPH without falling over), and then be happy to get to transition for the first long-ish run.  The run course for both Saturday races was allegedly 6.55 miles.  All distances are approximate, you know!  It was funny driving back that Marc, an awesome runner turned triathlete, who is used to USATF races that are precisely measured, was commenting how we should pay more money for triathlons so they can measure the courses better.  The other 3 triathletes in the van, me included, were just shaking our heads.  I mean is any Ironman exactly 2.4 miles of swimming, exactly 112 miles of biking and exactly 26.2 miles of running?  Maybe the running is spot on, since you can qualify for Boston in a sanctioned Ironman race, but not so much on the swimming and biking—the RD’s aren’t going to cut the course short just to exactly make some distance, so it’s “close enough.”  So, yeah, maybe you can’t compare your time on Course A to Course B even though they are both ½ or full Ironman distance.  Who cares?  A good triathlete always establishes their PR at any given standard distance based on the race that was done on the fastest possible course anyway.
 
Cindy and I ended up back in transition after the ride pretty much together, so we decided to suit up and do the run together.  There were numerous times when we were running over the weekend where we would quote Barney from “How I Met Your Mother.”  There were a lot of “wait for its” together and I had a lot of virtual “awesomes” in my head and I am sure there were hypothetical High 5’s that we just didn’t talk about.
 
What the hell???  Here’s that hill they talked about on the run.  Straight up, my friends.  But it didn’t feel that bad since we hadn’t done that much racing—yet.  The Coke I had was awesome, as always, and I supplemented with water and was fine nutritionally and hydrationally (is that a word?).  This was the first time we sported the streamers on our bibs, and we got plenty of comments.  Somehow a lot of people got wind of our team name, and when they’d see us, they’d say, “GO CRACKHEADS.”  That was really encouraging, you know?  And it also cemented the fact that we were a team.  And that we were having fun.
 
When we were nearing the grass at the finish, I asked Cindy, “Sunglasses or not?”  And she knew exactly what I meant.  For the finishing photo (which Jovan would be there to take).  Cindy says, “I was thinking the exact same thing, and I’m glad you said it.”  Hey, we gotta look stylish, right?  We are, after all, Team Crackheads!  Cindy made the decision that we would go with the shades, and then she mutters under her breath (but loud enough for me to hear), “Prepare to finish.”  I about died laughing.  I remember some race car video game I used to play back in my drinking days that flashed PREPARE TO QUALIFY when you did the qualifying lap of the track.
 
After we finished the individual time trial, we had to get our s*** together and “eat” and get ready for the second Saturday race, the team time trial.  We opted to just leave our bikes in transition since we’d only be gone for about 3 hours, and we heard other athletes were doing it and the bikes would be watched.  I must admit, though, I had a minute or so of thinking, “What if someone steals our bikes?”  But the realization that we had to do ANOTHER Olympic-distance triathlon sunk in, and the focus shifted to refueling, rehydrating and a costume change.
 
Back at the cabin, I mostly drank nutrition—2 servings of Endurox R4 and 300 more calories of (gag me again) Ultrafuel, and I managed 1/8 of a Subway foot long turkey sub.  The Subway was just to get the sensation of eating real food, because I knew my stomach was not going to do too well digesting with so little time between races, but I wanted something that resembled actual food.  Too much chewing, though, would be unnecessary exercise!
 
At some point, I notice a program on the TV (which had like 3 channels) with a map of an Internment Camp.  I said to Cindy, “That’s where we are.  AS LONG AS YOU ARE HERE YOU WILL KEEP RACING TRIATHLONS.”   And then periodically throughout the rest of the weekend, Cindy would say, “The racing will continue until fitness improves.”  That will become the 2nd Crackhead motto—the first, in case you didn’t already know is: “Harder, longer, faster, tougher—REPEAT.”
 
I walked over to visit Kevin at the cabin where he was staying, and man those boys had a FEAST going—fruit salad, macaroni salad, burgers, you name it.  I was offered some, and part of me wanted to just sit down and lay into it all even though I had just gagged down about 1,000 calories, but knew better than to take anything else that would require chewing or too much digestion.  I didn’t want to be barfing off the bike or in the water or on the run.  One of the guys in the cabin racing, I believe, did get the pleasure of revisiting this lunch, though.  Judging from all the colors in the fruit salad, I bet it was quite spectacular!
 
I felt pretty nonchalant considering I had to tee it up again shortly.  There was no time for a nap; just a really short lay down where my stomach tried valiantly to rebel at all the calories I was dumping in.  I managed about 1,200, and that would have to be enough.  I think there were some chips involved (which basically dissolve in your mouth, so more like liquid than solid), but with all the moving around, it’s tough to account for everything that passed over my lips.  Have I used the word “blur” yet?
 
Photos from this race can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/8737154@N04/