Ann Arbor Triathlon Club

Insanity is a relative term.  Most people would think that signing up for an Olympic distance triathlon in May in the Midwest is insane because lake temperatures are almost always frigid.  This year, eager for an early season race, I gambled with fate and signed up for the Pokagon Triathlon on May 22, 2010.  I enrolled in early May during a spate of unseasonably warm temperatures and it seemed like an easy bet that the clement weather would continue and the lake temperatures would quickly warm.  Shortly after signing up for the race, though, the weather turned cold and stayed that way for two weeks.  The specter of racing in a sleeveless wetsuit in cold water hung like a pall over my days causing imaginary head-freezes until I gave in and purchased a neoprene swim cap to protect my delicate noggin from the subarctic waters.  Perhaps it was coincidence but shortly after buying the cap the weather turned and we were treated to an ardent summer sun for several days.  I was beginning to take heart again, believing that I had a chance to win this particular gamble, when it turned cold and rainy again just days before the race.  Would I win or would I freeze and race in the rain?  It was touch and go up to the last moment…

I awoke at 5:15am on Saturday to the surly light of day and contemplated staying in bed and sleeping through the race; I could see from my cozy bed that it was cold and drizzly outside.  There had been a spectacular thunderstorm the night before and the heaviest rain had only ended a couple of hours prior.  After my sleep-addled mind cleared, I realized that sleeping in wasn’t an option because Jürgen Kreß was already on his way to pick me up for the 1.5 hour drive to the race site in northern Indiana.  I duly pried myself out of bed and got ready, eventually finding myself on the back stoop with my bike and transition bag in hand.  Fortunately, I didn’t have long to wait and wonder if I was stupid for agreeing to do this race; Jürgen arrived right on time and within minutes we were heading down to US 12 on our way to Pokagon State Park.

As the morning wore on, the weather alternated between looking promising and spitting rain.  I was feeling pretty confident that the weather would clear until we approached the park entrance and I saw that everything was soaking wet.  Hadn’t the weather report said that there was no rain in the forecast?  So much for weather reports.

The road wended into the park through a bewildering series of turns until we arrived at the toll booth.  Despite the race website telling us that we would have to pay the entry fee to the park, we were pleasantly surprised when the attendant told us that we would get in free because we were race participants.  Apparently, insanity has its benefits.
The parking lot was already filling up when we pulled in and we quickly headed to the open-air lodge to pick up our packets.  It was still sort of drizzling, but I could tell that the park was actually quite beautiful and well-kempt, a testament to the durability of the Indiana parks budget in this time of slashed public funding.  We also got a good view of the lake and the transition area.  It was difficult not to notice the fact that the transition area was located on a hill far above the lake and there was a flight of broad cement steps leading down to the water.  We would be running up those steps on our way out of the water.  What could be more fun?

The volunteers handing out packets and doing the body-marking were quite positive about the weather, telling us emphatically that it would not rain.  I couldn’t help but think that it’s easy to be emphatic when you’re under a roof in front of a roaring fire.  (The lodge was primitive but did have a very large fireplace.)  The volunteers proved to be correct, though; it didn’t rain (much) during the race.

Each time I pick up a race packet, I wish that race websites would include a checkbox to opt-out of the commemorative t-shirt.  I only participate in five or so races each year, but after several years my clothes drawer is filled with tech shirts mostly sporting quite hideous designs.  (Are good graphic designers that expensive?)  I have already donated so many of these shirts to charity that I expect to see a local proudly sporting one on my next trip to the wilds of Paraguay.

Our packets contained the obligatory race numbers, t-shirt, and—unexpectedly—a pint glass.  How novel!  I do appreciate it when races break from tradition and offer something unusual to their patrons.  Even though I’m not a beer-drinker, I’m definitely in the minority in the tri community so I’m sure this little gift in our race packets was popular among the other athletes.  I carefully wrapped mine in the nylon bag provided by Waste Management, one of the gold sponsors for the event.  Offering a reusable bag was ostensibly an effort to cut down on waste?  One could only hope that it was constructed from recycled plastic…

Before getting our gear out of the car, we headed down to the lake to check out the swim course.  The beach was sandy but still quite sodden from all of the rain.  Fortunately (?), the long run up the stairs would give the mud on our feet plenty of opportunity to be stomped off.  There’s a positive side to every travail, I guess.
 
Now was the time to see whether my gamble with fate and water temperature was a winning one.   A whiteboard at the packet pickup said that the water temperature was 62 degrees.  That sounded cold to me, though apparently this was the warmest that the water has ever been in the four-year history of the race.   Curious to know what 62-degree water felt like, I dipped a toe in the lake.  It was actually a lot warmer than I expected, but I knew that the water is usually warm close to shore.  Settling the bet would have to wait; I wouldn’t know how cold it was until I jumped in for the race.

It was nearing 8am by then and we decided that it would be a good idea to get our gear set up in the transition area.  Back at the car, we were happy to see that a third tri club member had joined us:  David Riggs had stayed overnight at a hotel in Angola and was pulling into the parking lot after a warm-up ride on his bike.  David’s presence at the race guaranteed that the points our club earned for the race could be counted toward the Mideast Regional Club Race Series competition.  Given the number of other clubs present, though, all three of us would need to place in the top 10 in order to stand a chance of winning the race for our club…

Hauling our bikes and gear to transition, I was disappointed to see that the area was already at capacity; the race planners had failed to set up enough racks.  I wished fervently that they had at least numbered them so I wouldn’t have to fight for a space.  No such luck; after being muscled out of several spots, I was forced to rack my bike in a space reserved for bike teams.  I prayed that no one would notice that mine was the only place on the rack with running gear lying next to it.  If anyone noticed, though, they didn’t say anything and I discovered that the cramped conditions offered an unexpected benefit:   My rack was located conveniently at the very end of the transition area.  It’s always nice to have an easy spot to remember during the fog of a race; more than once I’ve wasted valuable seconds running around looking for my spot in transition.

While I was setting up my bike, I was glad to see that Ralf Mielke had joined our fair contingent from the Ann Arbor Tri Club.  He is our MERCRS rep this year and had mentioned that he might do the race, but as the race day approached, I hadn’t heard anything from him and assumed that he decided not to do it.  It was really nice to see his smiling face.  We now had four people from Ann Arbor participating in the race!

We managed to finish our setup in time for the pre-race meeting in front of the rustic lodge.  Before getting down to business, the race director wanted to thank everyone who helped with funding and preparing for the race.  And I do mean everyone.  It took forever for the guy to thank everyone!  I kept wondering if there was a faster way to do this.  It was past 9am by the time he finished and we were all chafing to get down to the water.
At last, the interminable speech done and we traipsed down to the lake.  I was nearly to the water when I realized that I’d forgotten my swim goggles back at transition.  I struggled with this dilemma for a few moments:  Do I run all the way back up to get them and risk getting in the water after the swim starts or do I just swim without goggles (I’ve done this a few times before.)  I finally decided to run back up to get them because I didn’t feel like swimming a mile without them.  Also, I had purchased a pair of fancy new Blue Seventy goggles just for this race and was eager to try them out.
I ran as fast as I could against the crowd coming down the stairs and fumbled around in my backpack for the goggles.  Since the transition area was closed, I breathed a silent prayer of thanks that I’d remembered to leave my backpack on a picnic table just outside of transition before the race started.   Running back down the cement stairs to the lake was a pain, literally.  My poor bare feet were sore from the scouring!  (Oddly, though, I didn’t notice any discomfort running up the stairs after the swim.  The power of adrenaline!)

I received a few quizzical looks as I darted into the water just before the starting horn, but I was in!  I even had time to go under and test the fit of the goggles.  When the race director blew the starting horn, I dove in with the rest of the 60 or so guys in my wave.  This was the moment of truth:  Was I going to be warm enough in my sleeveless wetsuit and neoprene cap?  The answer, dear reader, is yes!  I was perfectly warm in the chilly water, though I did notice a slight cold ache for the first few minutes on my brow below the cap.  Overall, though, I was pretty comfy.  Given the hot weather since the race, Pokagon is probably the only time this year that I’ll be able to wear my wetsuit, much less my neoprene cap.

What can I say about the swim?  It was the first triathlon that I had the use of my new Garmin Forerunner and I’d been warned by Jon Woodard ahead of the race that the Garmin doesn’t guess your position very well during the swim.  In order to get around this, it’s possible to get a kit to remove the device from its band and affix it to a new band that is easy to remove.  This allows a racer to put the Garmin inside one’s swim cap, thereby avoiding submerging it with each stroke and forcing it to make bad guesses about one’s location.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have such a kit (yet) and therefore had to wear the device on my wrist.  Sure enough, after less than a half mile, it buzzed, telling me that I’d swum one mile.  By the end of the .9 mile swim, it said that I had swum over two miles.  A map of the swim makes my path look like a particularly jagged lightning bolt.  I know that I’m an erratic swimmer, but I’m not that erratic.

Like most triathletes, I find the swim annoying because I always seem to pace next to a flailing swimmer.  No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get around said swimmer and end up getting clubbed repeatedly for the duration.  Quite noisome.

This is the point in the report where I have to make a confession:  I’m a perpetual dilettante when it comes to racing.  I work hard in my professional life and therefore treat working out and racing as relaxation, not work.  Given this, I tend to set a very leisurely pace and don’t really push myself very hard.  I guess it’s no surprise that my results are pretty middle of the road.  I’m usually in the top half of my age group and top third overall.  Not bad, but certainly not as good as I’m capable of doing.  I’m not willing to trade off the enjoyment I get from being a tri dilettante to seriously improve my time, though.

Surprisingly, I finished the swim in record time (for me), pulling out of the water in less than 26 minutes.  Even with the transition area (and thus the timing strip) being located atop the hill, my swim leg was a PR.  I virtually danced up the cement stairs.
The weather was still quite overcast by the time I jumped on my bike and began pedaling.  It was cool and mostly windless, though; always welcome conditions for biking.  I’m always surprised how much faster I go on race days than I do when I’m simply working out, even if I feel like I’m really pushing it on the workout.  Someday, someone will explain the psychology of this with empirical data, but for now I’m just happy it happens.  I had no trouble maintaining an average speed over 20mph.  Considering how little I bike and that I don’t own a tri bike, this is pretty good.

The course wasn’t hilly but it was still one of the most confusing courses I’ve ever ridden on and I was very glad that they had plenty of volunteers on the course to keep us from getting turned around.  I was able to concentrate on biking without worrying about where to turn and when.  If only they had replicated this volunteer presence on the run course…

I’m accustomed to getting passed by tons of riders on the bike portion so I was surprised when only a couple of riders passed me.  Ever the realist, I took this to mean that I had been really slow on the swim and therefore most of the fast bikers who normally would zoom past had already done so in the water.  I wouldn’t know until viewing the results if this were true or not.

Overall, it was a very pleasant ride.  The rain held off and the temperature stayed cool.  Due to the strange nature of the course, we enjoyed a tailwind for much of the race.  I managed to pass quite a few riders.  Only one rider that I passed early on was able to pass me later; however, he quickly exhausted himself getting around me and I was able to leave him behind a final time without much effort.

I got back to transition in just under 1:15 which meant that I stood a chance of finishing the race in under 2:30 which would be a PR.  I started out on the run with my quads screaming, though, and after about a quarter of a mile I knew that it would be extremely unlikely that I would finish the run in less than 48 minutes—which I would have to do to finish in under 2:30.  To make matters worse, before the first mile was behind me I took a wrong turn on the trail and added about a third of a mile onto my race.  Cursing, I backtracked, consigning myself to at least a 50-minute run.

The run was completely on trails and it followed a course of decent rolling hills.  It was by no means the Potawatomi Trail, but it was challenging for my tired quads nonetheless.  I was surprised when serveral people passed me on the run because usually I outpace the other runners since it’s my strongest leg.  There also seemed to be a great distance between runners so I didn’t pass nearly as many folks as I had hoped.  I kept expecting to pass one of the other members of the Ann Arbor Tri Club because I knew they were all faster than I am on the bike, but this didn’t happen until the last mile of the run when I managed to slog past David Riggs.  I never did catch up with Jürgen.
About halfway through the run, I was running by an aid station and noticed a triathlete sitting in a lawn chair.  ‘Odd’, I thought to myself, ‘Is he taking a break from the race?’  Then I noticed that he was holding an ice pack against his ankle, an intense glower darkening his otherwise handsome face.  I learned later that he had been in fifth place when he twisted his ankle at the 5k mark.  Poor guy!  No wonder he was glowering.
About a mile from the finish line, I passed David Riggs.  He had enjoyed a very good swim and bike and I was amazed to catch him on the run since usually he finished a few minutes ahead of me.  I hailed him as I went around and he said that Jürgen had passed him several miles back.  This meant that Jürgen had already finished.  He was having a great race!  (David said later that several people yelled back, ‘Nice bike!’ as they passed him.  At first, he didn’t think much of it, but after the fourth or fifth time, he realized that it was actually a backhanded compliment.)

Not far from the finish, I heard another runner coming up behind me.  Against my better judgment, I looked back at a curve in the trail to see who this was.  To my consternation, I saw a rather portly, older gentleman pacing about fifty feet behind.  ‘WTF?!’ I thought to myself, ‘I must really be taking my sweet time if he’s catching up with me.’  I consciously pushed myself a bit harder and managed to extend my lead on him, though I never lost him completely.  In fact, he made a heroic bid to pass me just before the finish line.  (I didn’t see this because he didn’t actually pass me, but I heard about it later.)  Fortunately, I had enough left in my reserves to keep him at bay and finished with a time of 2:34:18.  Not record-setting, but decent considering that this was my first race of the season and I took wrong turn on the run.  I do plan to break the psychologically significant 2:30 barrier this year, though.  Stay tuned.

Ah, the post-race convocation; it’s always so anticlimactic.  I congratulated the racers who finished just ahead of me (I would have been ahead of them if it hadn’t been for that pesky detour) and discovered that Jürgen had finished over five minutes ahead of me.  He consequently had the good fortune of finishing in the top five of his age group, thereby earning extra points for the club.  He had completed the swim in 22 minutes and had virtually flown on the bike.  I was lucky enough to finish in the top half of my age group which also earned the club some extra points.  It was close, though:  I was 9th out of 19 in my age group, 29th out of 94 overall.  This wasn’t my best race (I finished 5th in my age group out of 13 in 2009 at the Traverse City Triathlon), but my time was statistically the same, especially when the difficulty of the trail run is figured in.  Since Olympic triathlons tend to be more competitive than sprints, I was happy to finish in the top third of racers overall.

While we were waiting for David and Ralf to finish, I was reminded that one of the reasons that I love triathlons is also one of the reasons I hate them:  It’s called the ‘Cult of the Body.’  Sure, it’s delightful to ogle at the hot, sweaty guys dressed in Lycra, but it’s also bit of a turn-off.  There seems to be an unspoken hierarchy of egos that emerges with those who think they are the most beautiful strutting around at the top.  This kind of ‘tude’ gets old rather quickly.

David finished with a very respectable time not far behind me and Ralf came along not long after.  I don’t know yet how many points we earned for the club for MERCRS, but we did well, especially considering that there were only four of us.  It’s unlikely that we took the race, but that was never really the goal.  The goal was to have fun and enjoy a challenging race early in the season and we acquitted ourselves quite well on both counts.

All in all, it was a fun race and I was glad that I pried myself out of bed for it.  It was fun riding with Jürgen, having spirited discussions on wide-ranging topics on the car ride to and from the race.  I also learned that even 62 degree water can feel warm if you have a neoprene swim cap.  And I was happy that I started this race season essentially at the same level of fitness as at the end of the previous season.  I have three more Olympic-distance triathlons on tap for the summer and will let you know if I’m able to break the elusive 2:30 barrier.