Timberman... Ten Years Later

This past weekend was the annual Timberman 70.3 in Gilford, NH.  I was actually able to participate for the first time in several years.  They've gotten at least some of my money the past couple of years but last year I was unable to participate thanks to a broken foot and the year before it was decided that I was in such a bad place as far as training went that really no good could come from my racing, so I watched instead.  The year before that I participated on the bike as part of a relay which was a lot of fun.  I believe they took away relays for a couple of years after that, but they've since been reinstated.  Probably because the race has failed to sell out the past couple of years. 

It's crazy to me to think that it was ten years ago I did this race for the first time, as my first half and second triathlon ever.  I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.  My training consisted of, "I'll just swim, bike and run sometimes," my bike was my dad's old road bike with no aero bars and which I even wore bike gloves and socks to ride, I took a camelback on the bike because I didn't understand bottle hand-ups, and my race nutrition included, among other things, Wheaties for breakfast (how can you go wrong, right) a banana, a little bag of gummi bears (sort of like those Gu chews, right?) and a Rice Krispie treat.  I remember thinking I was very clever about all of that.  I have no recollection of where I got those ideas from, I probably read some random stuff on the internet.

I know I signed up two months before when I discovered there was a half in New Hampshire and thought, why not?  Uh, why not?  Maybe because you have no idea what you're doing?  And it's not like the concept of online coaching was so wide spread back then.  Not that I could've afforded it.  At the time they still allowed you to sign up for a first-timers wave, which went off last.  The sprint was also held on the same day, so I came out of the water with mostly people from the sprint because me, the terrible swimmer with a terrible sense of direction on a swim course (had to be redirected toward the finish by a kayak) and without a wetsuit, took about 45 minutes to complete the course.  Once I had biked past the sprint turnaround, I felt like I was on a training ride all by myself.  Definitely not like the course is now. 

The bike went pretty well and upon my return I'm sure that people were finishing the race as I headed out on the run.  Did I mention it was about 96 degrees that day?  The gummi bears cannot save you when it's that hot out.  I'm sure I ate all sorts of random crap from aid stations like cookies and chips and pretzels, in the hopes that things would get better.  I still spent most of the run wanting to curl up in the shade under a tree and take a nap, but I kept going.  Somewhere around mile 9 I remember hearing a car honking on the road going the other way and discovered through the haze of late-race confusion that it was my cousin and her boyfriend (now-husband) who had already completed the race and was going home.  That was not encouraging. 

I remember reaching the finish line and thinking that was by far the most difficult thing I had ever done but at the same time was already wondering how I was going to do better next time.  After a dip in the lake where I swear I heard my skin sizzle, I took a look in the food tent that was devoid of pizza and left with mostly a few abandoned bagel halves and some empty jars of peanut butter and instead my parents took me out for ice cream.  I think that brownie sundae at Sawyer's still sticks out in my mind as top five ice cream experiences.

You know, that stupid race probably ruined my career in the film industry?  Two weeks later I moved to Los Angeles and at the age of 23 I had what I thought was going to be my dream job, working on movie sets.  Not that it's super glamorous to be a production assistant, whose jobs included things like standing in the background of a scene making sure nobody walked through while they were shooting, writing down when the gaffers went to lunch, supplying wetsuits to the production staff for the water scenes, watching crap get blown up or trying to stay out of the way of the cattle they are trying to get to stampede through the fake South American town re-created north of LA (tip you may never need in life: cattle really don't want to stampede, even with ranchers chasing them on horses with whips while yelling, "Yee-haw!") or getting blueberries and yogurt for "The Rock" for his breakfast. 

The point is, I had become hooked on the whole, stupid triathlon thing and working sixteen hours a day was vastly cutting into my training time.  I'd run during the week and go ride the Pacific Coast Highway on the weekends, but I didn't want my life to be all about work, so I eventually left.  Timberman was my favorite race for a long time and is probably mostly responsible for my falling in love with the sport.  I did it seven years in a row, and the last time I completed the whole course was in 2008, when I hit what was at the time my lowest point in triathlon.  It is I think the only time I have cried on the course. 

Okay, that was a long enough tangent, so why don't we talk about this year?  I was not excited about the race.  I wasn't not excited, either, as in I wasn't sitting around thinking that I didn't want to race at all, I just wasn't thinking much about it.  For starters, I had three people I coach racing Ironman Mont Tremblant.  Two were going for their first Ironman and the third has completed a few but had suffered from DNFs lately due to nutritional issues.  I'll just skip to the end there and tell you that they all had great races, one got a Kona slot on his first try, and I got to watch them finish online. 

The other strange thing was that I was alone before the race.  That was usually the case in the beginning, but Timberman had become a big event with some of my friends and we'd all race and yet for some reason this year there was just hardly anyone I knew who raced.  I was staying at my mom's on the lake, but since one of my cousins was visiting at my grandmother's from out of town, there was nobody at the house.  All that alone time and not training gave me a bit too much time to think and I had a bit of an emotional lead-up to the race based on things that had almost nothing to do with the race at all.  Among other things I had remembered going out to dinner with my dad the night before the race, two weeks before he died.  Or a couple of years before that when all of my friends stayed at the new house and the night before the race was the first night we ever had dinner on the big dining room table my parents were so excited to have found.  So, Timberman has a lot of memories for me. 

Anyway, enough about that and let's get on with the race and stuff, right?  I went to bed nice and early and slept really well.  My alarm went off at 4am as I had decided to leave nice and early to get a parking spot right at Ellacoya.  My friends used to make fun of me for wanting to get there so early to get a parking spot since you could just take the shuttle from Gunstock, but let me tell you, having your car right there and not having to deal with that stupid shuttle plus getting your bike back to the car afterward is definitely worth it to me.  You have to get up early that day anyway, right?  Might as well get a good parking space. 

I arrived just after 4:30 and had gotten a bit of a head start on my breakfast on the drive over.  It's at times like these that it's a good thing applesauce is basically drinkable.  Ugh.  Of course in the dark I felt as though I'd gotten most of it down, only to park the car and realize I still had at least half to go.  The other nice thing about early arrivals is the clean porta-potties with no lines.  Fortunately I had also remembered that in the middle of August it's kind of dark that early in the morning so I remembered my head lamp.  It was also pretty darn chilly. 

I got my transition set up at #890 (the first time I did this race I was #892 - so close!) and then actually went and hung out at my car since there was nothing better to do and in a strange twist really nobody I knew around to talk to.  I had run into my friend Lauren a couple of bikes down from mine, but that was it for the morning until I finally lined up with my swim wave and saw a couple of other people.  I finally put on my wetsuit, then had to take it off for one more bathroom stop, and then it was time to eat my gel and get in the water. 

I was still not excited, but not dreading it.  It was just like, a process I had to follow.  I lined up toward the front and told myself I was going to have a good swim.  I have always been notoriously slower than normal on that swim.  Not quite the 45 minutes of that first year, but always about two minutes slower than I felt I should've gone.  I had nothing to lose, so I decided to go in with the mentality that things would go well.  It was a bit crowded to start but I was on the inside and stayed there and followed the course easily.  It got a bit rough at times with some boat wakes, but not as bad as prior years.  And there was one spot about halfway through where it seemed every wave in front of me had bunched up to collide into one massive human obstacle course, so things got a bit slow there, and then again on the way in when I tried to follow the feet of someone who seemed insistent of going off course, but then I could see the exit arch in the distance and had no trouble following a straight line in to the finish.

I exited the water in just over 33 minutes, which again, for me on that particular course, I was very happy with.  I think that's the fastest I've done that one and at 5th in my age group out of the water, definitely not a normal spot for me.  So in spite of the ups and downs of the past couple of years, my swim of all things has actually improved some, so I was glad to see the day begin on a good note. 

Transition was way too slow but now it was time to bike.  I had no crazy aspirations of blowing the bike course away or riding as hard as I could.  Lately, the focus has been on staying in control so that I actually have the tiniest chance of having a good run.  Normally this would mean me holding back on the bike to the point where it was almost painful not to be pushing harder, but my legs were not cooperating and for some reason I just didn't feel that great, so staying "in control" in this case kind of meant pushing as hard as I could under the circumstances.  But with zero goals going in, I just took it for what it was, did what I could and ate and drank like I was supposed to while being occasionally annoyed when little groups of 2-3 guys from the waves behind would blow by, quite obviously working together in their little draft packs.  There wasn't a ton of that, but it's just annoying that you can't do a race without seeing it. 

I tried to pick it up in the last ten miles which was good and finished in a decent time, though probably about ten minutes slower than I've done on my best years there.  Given the circumstances I'm all right with that.  But, then it was time to run.  Do you know what it's like to get off a bike in a triathlon, put on your run shoes and just expect imminent disaster?  I do.  It's like waiting for the time bomb to go off, but you can't see the timer.  You don't know when it's going to blow, but you know it will at some point.  Of course this wasn't always the case, but I've gotten quite used to this feeling in the recent past.  It's almost disappointing when it only takes me thirty seconds to put on my run shoes and take off my helmet, sort of like, wait, now I really have to go try and run?  Crap.  But off I went. 

Amazingly, I didn't feel too bad as I set off on the run course.  I held my head up high and tried to at least look like I knew what I was doing.  I changed my watch so I could only see the heart rate and had been instructed to keep it stimulated, basically anything higher than what it was on the bike, and I was at least succeeding at that, doing my best not to look every mile when it beeped and would show me how slowly I had just run that one.  My tendency over the past few races is to hit that, "Oh, crap, this is going to be really rough," feeling sometime within the first mile and a half.  I'd already be thinking about walking aid stations... and pretending those aid stations went on for at least a quarter-mile, or risk not being able to "run" at all. 

Somehow, the feeling didn't creep in.  I ran through the first aid station thinking, maybe I'll walk the next one.  But then I still felt okay at the next one, maybe just thanks to some snow they were handing out, so I ran through that one, too.  Well, then there's this nice, big downhill so that's easy to run down, and then you're almost to the first turn around to come back and hey, this isn't so bad.  Maybe I'll walk up that really big hill I ran down, but, well, I don't feel that bad so I'll run slowly up.  This sort of thing continued and before I knew it, I had run the entire first loop. 

Okay, this may not sound like a big deal to anyone, running a whole six-and-a-half miles or so, especially for someone who used to have zero issue with that sort of thing and blow through it at a pace I currently probably couldn't run a 5K race in.  But based on recent memories, this was by far the best I've felt on one of these in a long, long time.  To venture a guess, I'd say the last time I felt any better for a half was Mooseman in 2009.  But I still started that second lap expecting to fail.  A good first loop had built up the confidence a little, but not enough to completely erase the nagging doubt and the expectation that eventually I'd fall apart. 

Regardless, of course I didn't feel as good heading out on the second loop, but I was still running and only slightly discouraged that my Garmin seemed to be telling me I'd hit another mile about three tenths before I'd see that mile sign on the road.  I think it was around mile 8 when I finally decided to walk one of the aid stations, but I didn't feel the same sort of thing where I wasn't sure if I'd be able to run much anytime soon or I wished the aid station went on another half-mile so I'd have some sort of excuse.  It was just like, ok, walk a little, hydrate some and... well, I guess I'm fine to just keep going again. 

I won't say I felt fantastic the entire time, but that feeling of totally falling apart that I'd been fearing all day never seemed to materialize.  Three weeks ago I did a half where that feeling arrived within the first three miles, so this was definitely a surprise.  I actually think I got a bit too cautious with the aid station walking and the walking the last big hill because after mile twelve I decided I still felt pretty good and could pick up the pace, so I did.  That has literally never happened before, even when I was running really well.  I might say, hey, let's pick it up to the finish, but even if I felt like I was running harder, it wasn't really any faster.  Well, not the case on Sunday.  So in truth, I probably should've run a bit harder from the beginning. 

I got 13.4 miles on my Garmin and crossed the finish line feeling pretty good.  Astonishingly, I only lost two places in my age group on the run.  Sure, the run was far from a good time, but I think I can finally take it for what it was, a step in the right direction in the name of progress based on where I'm headed and not compared to times in the past when I've run nearly thirty minutes faster or whatever.  It went well based on where I am right now, and that's what I need to keep in mind, so I was very happy with the outcome. 

I saw a couple of people I knew afterward but eventually it became apparent that there wasn't much reason to stick around, so it was probably the earliest I've ever gone home after that race, but I didn't really feel like sitting around by myself for at least another two hours waiting for awards or whatever.  So that was my weekend.  Timberman is always a bit bittersweet because I know the end of summer is coming.  The weather has been absolutely incredible so it's going to be sad to see it go.  But I did get home in plenty of time to watch some people finish their first Ironman in incredible times and I'm happy to be able to say I can be there to coach someone through their first experience there. 

I'm still sore and sunburned but there were no blisters and now I've got Vermont QT2 camp this coming weekend.  Then there will be a sprint race Labor Day weekend, a couple of weeks later a training camp in Tempe, then a race in Orange County, a trip to Hawaii and finally an Ironman in Arizona.  It's going to be a busy couple of months but I can say that the big step in the right direction this past weekend has given me a much better outlook as far as how it's all going to go.