Lowlight: I had to leave home even earlier than I did on Saturday.
Highlight: I took the new car this time, so I had heat.
Lowlight: Nearly three hours to get there, due to a few pit stops.
Highlight: It didn't matter, as it's too chilly to warm up anyway, so no point in arriving early.
Pre-race highlights: I'm assigned race number "2" - Nearly exclusive use of heated private faculty bathroom. Temps warm nicely as race time approaches.
Pre-race lowlights: No time to preview any of the MTB course. Low number yields a spot in the first transition rack, and it ends up being blocked by spectators and team entries meandering around where they shouldn't be.
Leg one, 5 mile "road" race
Lowlights: Start is on lumpy grass, with an off-camber turn onto a wooden bridge. This leads across more lumpy grass, with a run up to the rail trail. Footing is quite soft for the first mile. Locals on 4-wheel ATVs humor themselves by blasting through the pack of runners. Welcome to New Hampshire. No mile markers.
Highlights: Course must be short. My plan was to run this easy, taking 34 minutes, saving strength for later. I keep my HR between 150-154, and I'm breathing much easier than those around me. I finish the run in under 31 minutes.
More lowlights: I finish the run in under 31 minutes. Perhaps my HR was just low because I raced at my limit in Gloucester yesterday, and I was a lot closer to threshold than it seemed. More importantly, despite a suspiciously short course, the run should be approached as a six miler, as 300 meters out of transition you need to dismount and run up the friggin' ski jump before the start of the rideable singletrack climb.
Leg two, 6 mile MTB
This is all Lowlights:
This was my worst segment in 2006, the only prior time I've done the event. This year I vowed to prepare better, and to actually ride my mountain bike a few times in advance of race day. Maybe I'd even head up to Newport and ride the course. Maybe I'd get a new MTB... None of these things actually happened. I did buy new tires, and impeccably prepared my machine by wiping it off, tightening a few bolts, and pumping up the tires.
I wasn't feeling too good from the first pedal stroke. No charging across the field. Maybe the lack of warmup was hurting, maybe I ran too hard on leg one, maybe racing Gloucester had taken its toll, and maybe (certainly) all of the above. Making things worse, I ran the ski jump (yes, this is northern New Hampshire, and the high school has a ski jump out back) rather than take the wooden stairway. This may have been a mistake, as the footing was very loose and I struggled badly, even needing to stop part way up to regroup and avoid falling back down. Once at the top, I mounted (huh-huh) the bike, soldiering on, but soon found myself in the granny gear. I was sucking wind.
It probably should have been obvious this wasn't my day when riders began catching and passing me while I was still on the climb. While this may not be a "roadie" course, for the most part it's rideable/technical, as in not too tough to ride (in the dry anyway), but twisty and mogully enough where skills are required to ride it fast. I was cleaning almost everything, but there just wasn't much going on in the engine room.
By the first section of double-track I'd already been passed by four riders. I comforted myself by thinking I'd done a great run, and thus was closer to the front where the good athletes were. Besides, most of these people are on teams, not doing it solo. Then I lost my bottle of Gatorade trying to drink on a fast downhill section. The course sort of loops around the top of the hill. The organizer said he'd changed it and made it "easier" than last time. I don't remember it well enough to judge, but the new sections were rather technical. I was getting passed by everyone and their brother, and a few of their sisters too. That's right, girled on the singletrack. At least most of them were wearing the jerseys of the host club, and probably knew these trails well. This is a maintained mountain bike area, and this trail was fairly new. Eventually it led out to the older, more open trails that descended back to transition. I'd lost at least a dozen places, and as it turned out any hope of an age group podium, as even my geriatric rivals had ripped this in up to eight minutes less than I did.
Leg three, 13.75 mile road TT
Lowlight: As noted, people decided my transition rack was the place to hang out. I had to barrel through the crowd. In the confusion, I sat down to change my shoes before remembering that both bikes had the same pedals. Doh. I got up, drank some Gatorade from a spare bottle I'd left there, and took off, forgetting to take my inflator bag from the cage on the MTB.
Highlight: Despite my woes, all my transitions were among the fastest for solo entrants, with only a few athletes taking time from me. I'd put Yanktz on my Grid Excursions the night before, and this was fast.
Lowlight: I was still hurting on the road bike. My back and especially my hip flexors were sore as hell. This had to be Gloucester-related. Jumping the uphill barriers must have toasted my hip flexors.
More lowlights: I wasn't catching hardly anyone. This was especially disconcerting because in 2006 I blew by rider after rider.
Highlight: Upon reaching Loverin Hill, several riders appeared in the road. I passed both the women who'd girled me on the MTB. I think they were soloists.
More Highlights: I flew through all the corners. Finding a good rhythm near the end, I passed four or five more riders. I finished around two minutes faster than in 2006.
Lowlight: Since I hadn't hydrated much, and my body was super sore, I shut it down during the last mile to sit up, stretch, and drink a bottle of water. I found out later that a $$$ prize was offered for the fastest time of each split by solo riders. For the road TT, I ended up second, just 8 seconds behind overall winner Matt Boobar's split. Double Dohhh!
Leg four, 5k trail run
Highlight: This is the final leg! I took back six or seven spots on the overall.
Lowlights: Most of them were from teams. I felt like shit. Worst of all, I sort of forgot that you should totally empty the tank on the uphill portion of this run, as once you get to halfway it's literally all downhill. I was dieing, so I paced myself, and one guy passed me. He might have been a 50+, but it might have been for a podium, which would have meant a nice bottle of real maple syrup. Once I crested and started running downhill, of course I felt much better, and remembered the way I should have approached this.
More lowlights: Yanktz are not so great for downhill trail running. They are a bit too elastic, and the stress on the shoe is great enough that I lost support. This is a very gnarly run, and real adventure racing shoes would probably be appropriate.
Final highlight: I was not under pressure at the end of the run, and trotted in to just miss breaking 2:30. This was six minutes faster than 2006, with all legs faster except the final, which was 22 seconds slower. The MTB course has changed though, and both times I did this I was about 23 minutes behind overall winner Boobar.
Final lowlights: Man, was I wasted. Multi-sport is funny like that. It doesn't seem so bad when you're out there. Nothing like the hurl-inducing last lap at Gloucester. But once it's over you realize you've been racing fairly close to your limit, without any real break, for 2.5 hours. It's no surprise that most of the people who did well here look like MTB racing is their primary sport. That's fairly similar in the grueling aspect.
18th/52 for everyone, 8th/24 for solo entrants, 4th in age group. Thanks for reading.
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