Most of us in the triathlon community are used to seeing races of fairly standard distances, and by all\u00a0means, when I describe to the layperson what a triathlon is, I invariably have to make the distinction between the Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman, and Ironman events as they seem to make up the lion’s share of races out there.\u00a0 There is the Ultraman Triathlon which more-or-less doubles the distance of the Ironman, but it’s not well-covered, well-known, or well-attended.\u00a0 And the Sprint moniker to shorter races isn’t standardized much either; many of them feature swims that vary between a\u00a0quarter mile to three-quarters of a mile, from a 6 mile bike to a 20 mile bike, and a 2 mile run to a 5 mile run.<\/p>\n
All of this notwithstanding, there is no rule that states that a race organizer has to comply to any set of distances aside from perhaps those events run by the Ironman corporation or other large event companies.\u00a0 The NJ Devilman is run by a smaller, local race organization and it seems as if their idea was to put on a race that is truly different in terms\u00a0of lengths than any others in the local area.\u00a0 This past weekend, they held a sprint distance and a “Half Lite” distance triathlon simultaneously.\u00a0 The latter was measured to be a 0.8 mile swim (a third of the Ironman swim), a 40 mile bike (just over a third of the Ironman bike), and an 8.8 mile run (again, a third of the Ironman run).\u00a0 My Terrier Tri team was there\u00a0with larger numbers, so it was destined to be a fun day\u00a0full of hard efforts and camaraderie.\u00a0 And, it marked the debut of our\u00a0new Terrier uniforms!<\/p>\n
The swim, for me, was easy.\u00a0 It was two 0.4 mile loops around buoys and I had no stamina\u00a0issues despite not having been in the\u00a0pool for a couple of weeks.\u00a0 I swam at a pace of a 30 minute mile, and at that comfortable rate, I could have easily completed 2.4 miles.\u00a0\u00a0 T1\u00a0was again stellar; looks like I was 6th overall in that segment.\u00a0 The bike featured two loops of 20 miles on an out-and-back course.\u00a0 During the first leg on the way out, I couldn’t believe how easy it felt and the kind of speed I was maintaining.\u00a0 Once I made the turn-around, my suspicions of being wind-aided were verified as the headwinds came out to greet me.\u00a0 I didn’t have great power, to my surprise, and didn’t perform that well or consistently.\u00a0 At the start of the second loop, a fast teammate of mine named Dan passed me, so I decided to follow him but far enough behind him so that it wouldn’t be considered drafting, a strict no-no.\u00a0 We rode that leg very well and at the turn-around, I bid adieu as he and another fast dude hammered into the wind.\u00a0 I did as well as I could but still found myself unhappy with the overall performance.\u00a0 I also worked hard to take in a lot of calories as that’s the practice to employ for an Ironman, and after all, these races to\u00a0me are just prep for the big days in Germany and Kona.<\/p>\n
I headed into the run feeling strong and with good form and pace, but by the first mile marker, I\u00a0developed an abdominal cramp that would not go away.\u00a0 My pace dropped, and more importantly, my nutritional plan changed as I could no longer take in gels or fluids.\u00a0 I felt as if I was running at a grandma’s pace for most of the course on the way out, but at the turn-around, I got a sudden kick.\u00a0 The cramp was gone and my pace quickened.\u00a0 I felt as if I could finally employ some power and indeed, my mile splits showed it.\u00a0 But, like a loyal dog, the cramp returned and so did the slogging pace.\u00a0 Add to that a fair amount of energy depletion and I was not in a good way.\u00a0 With a mile left to go, I chatted briefly with another competitor\u00a0 and watched him slowly pull away from me.\u00a0 But, with a half-mile left to go, I noticed that the distance wasn’t increasing.\u00a0 He was only maybe 20-30 seconds in front of me, so I picked up the pace as best I could while gritting my teeth through the stomach pain.\u00a0 With a quarter mile to go, I pulled up alongside him and he said, “Great job.\u00a0 Keep up the strong effort.”\u00a0 See, it’s just another reason why I love this sport… the camaraderie.\u00a0 In what other competitive sport do competitors cheer the person who will beat them?\u00a0 Amazing.\u00a0 I thanked him and pressed on, eventually passing one other guy en route to a strong finish line effort.\u00a0 When I crossed, I was toast.\u00a0 My body was unhappy and it let me know.\u00a0 I bent over with hands on knees, panted a bit to recover from the cardiovascular effort, and eventually tried massaging my torso.\u00a0 Within a few moments, teammates and coaches came over to me and chatting with them made me forget about the cramp… and\u00a0that was a good thing!<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay and cheer on other teammates, nor celebrate that we had the first place female, the second and third placed males, and various other age group winners.\u00a0 With a wedding in Montauk at 6:30 pm, I needed to make the 150 mile drive from south NJ (near Cape May) to NYC, then another 150 mile drive to the eastern end of Long Island.\u00a0 The first leg of the drive was easy and I made great time.\u00a0 I got home, showered, changed, and got Roya into the car all within 20 minutes.\u00a0 From there, the drive to Montauk was most uneventful and fast.\u00a0 But with about 40 miles to go, the car suddenly bucked and began to slow down quickly.\u00a0 All power was gone and I was coasting with little control.\u00a0 I managed to get to the shoulder and popped the hood, but I’m no mechanic and other than verifying that there\u00a0seemed to be fluids in the various reservoirs (I checked the windshield wiper fluid too becuase I thought that it would be funny to be absolutely thorough!), I had no idea what was going on.\u00a0 So, the call went out to AAA and amazingly, a flatbed showed up within 15 minutes.\u00a0 We then developed a plan to have him drive us to our hotel in Montauk, then have the car towed to a Subaru dealership on Sunday (there’s one near me in the Bronx).\u00a0 Despite this huge snafu, we wound up at the reception at exactly the same time as the rest of the guests.\u00a0 Incredible!<\/p>\n
The next morning, Roya had to be in the city for work and our original plan was to leave Montauk early and drive straight there.\u00a0 But with no wheels, she was forced to take a 6:33 a.m. train.\u00a0 With only four hours of sleep after partying at the wedding, she got up and made the short trip across the street to the train station.\u00a0 How lucky that we were so close!\u00a0 A few hours later, she arrived in the city and went to work.\u00a0 I had still had to manage getting the car taken to the Bronx.\u00a0 AAA notified me that they couldn’t take the car to a closed service location given that it was Sunday, so they offered to have the tow company hold onto the car overnight and bring it Monday morning, thus alleviating my need to be with the car.\u00a0 Perfect!\u00a0 After they picked up the car, I made my way to the morning-after brunch for the wedding guests where friends just happened to have an extra spot in their car to drive me to the city.\u00a0 Perfect again!\u00a0 You can’t make this stuff up.<\/p>\n
Thereafter, we had Mother’s Day dinner plans in the city, so I asked Mom and Dad to come in two separate cars, one of them being Dad’s spare car.\u00a0 That eliminated my need to rent a car which I need to drive to work a couple of times a week.\u00a0 I love it when a plan comes together.<\/p>\n
In any event, the race on Saturday was triathlon #83 en route to my goal of 100, and event #168 overall.\u00a0 The big goals remain IM Germany and IM Kona, so the weeks ahead are daunting indeed.\u00a0 This Sunday, I’ll be riding with many teammates from Penn Station to Montauk, 145 miles, as part of the Montauk Century ride.\u00a0 I’ve never ridden that distance before, and expecting that it’ll take 10 hours with stops, I’ve never ridden that long either.\u00a0 I’m sure it’ll have wondrously good effects on the legs in the big picture, but with disastrous short-term effects in the form of fatigue and achiness… but c’est la vie.\u00a0 The following weekend, I’m running the Brooklyn half-marathon and hope to run it well.\u00a0 In all likelihood, I might run a bit more afterwards to make it 18-20 miles.\u00a0 We’ll see.\u00a0 Then, Memorial Day weekend, I’ll\u00a0be headed up to Lake Placid for an Ironman training camp run by a different NYC triathlon club.\u00a0 Hate to be disloyal, but the training will be invaluable.\u00a0 Finally, all of June will be dedicated to long distance training in all disciplines since most of July will be tapering for the first big day on July 24th in Frankfurt.\u00a0 Of course, there’s also the little matter of my wedding on July 3rd and all the particulars that are associated therein!\u00a0 We’ll see how the priorities flesh things out.\u00a0 Think Roya will be upset if I have my heart rate monitor on under my suit at the altar?<\/p>\n
This is it.\u00a0 The final two month stretch.\u00a0 Nothing but hard work ahead.\u00a0 It’s going to pay off, I know it… and that’s why I’m okay with it.\u00a0 The ultimate goal is to hear, as I approach and cross the finish line, “Gregg Gordon; YOU are an Ironman!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of us in the triathlon community are used to seeing races of fairly standard distances, and by all\u00a0means, when I describe to the layperson what a triathlon is, I invariably have to make the distinction between the Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman, and Ironman events as they seem to make up the lion’s share of races […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}