Late April means triathlon season is upon us. I generally race a low key event about now to knock the rust off and see where my fitness stands after an off season that spans seven months. Predictably for someone who swims masters and rides the trainer all winter, the answer is usually: reasonably fit; not fast. Also: hairy, as I find a man's shaving his legs or wearing white slacks before Memorial Day to be gauche.
And so hairy and slow, but wearing season-appropriate pants, I dutifully went online to register for Lake West Point, for my annual triathlon kickoff. I've raced this every year but one since Jim Rainey founded it over ten years ago, know the course by heart, and can reliably finish in the top ten on off-season base mileage. Also, I can stay with my Dad, because my family is from Columbus, about 40 miles South of West Point.
Free bed, catching up with family, and dinner the night before at Deorio's: I am a creature of habit.
Been going there with my family and friends since I had to be carried. Columbus, GA's best restaurant.
Actually, my athletic ties to West Point, Georgia, go back to high school. Not that you'd know it to look at my gangly, triathletic frame now, but when I was sixteen I played offensive and defensive tackle on my high school team. My frame was not really any more impressive. We really sucked.
West Point High School did not suck. In 1985, they had a man-mountain offensive/defensive tackle named George Brewer, who went on to start as a freshman at UGA.
Three-hundred pounds before it was commonplace, Brewer lined up and self-fulfilled this prophecy -- "back to the creek you GO, boy!" -- first saying it and then doing it. See, there was this creek behind one end zone, and when the ball was snapped, his forearm to my chest lifted me up, and then George's dump truck body drove me backward until the whistle blew, when he deposited me about fifteen yards back from scrimmage. I was well on my way to the creek. After that, I stayed low.
George Brewer reacts.
George Brewer's legacy notwithstanding, I went online to register for Lake West Point Olympic Distance, which was on a Sunday, and noticed there was a competing race in Carrollton the day before, Tri-The-Parks/John Tanner State Park Sprint.
I reasoned that if one early season race knocks the rust off, then two would do it better. More is more: triathlete logic. Signed up for both races and drove to Carrollton Friday afternoon with two bikes, five wheels, an array of mix and match race outfits, and -- let's not kid ourselves -- about 12 pounds of off-season burrito weight that wasn't gonna win me any USAT points.
RACE # 1. JOHN TANNER STATE PARK SPRINT. TRI THE PARKS SERIES.
Saturday's race in Carrollton was hilly. I drove the course Friday night and decided on my pink Planet X, by far the lighter of my two bikes, for all the climbing:
 This baby: only with a shallower rear wheel, and an extra couple cogs in the rear cassette for cresting the hills. This bike, like all my bikes, has a name. Its name is The Pink Torpedo.
Race day arrived, and I christened the season in the appropriate manner:
This is a race day mandate for me now. A few years ago,it occurred to me that peanut butter and banana sandwiches on Ezekiel bread, sprinkled with wheat germ, and two cups of the fair trade coffee I packed with me and brewed myself in the room -- that was all a pain in the ass. I'm always up three hours before the swim start, around 4AM -- which means I had to get all this shit ready the night before so I wasn't comatose in the AM.
Then I noticed that since I race in the Southeast, there is a Waffle House near any race. Often two Waffle Houses, and maybe a bonus Huddle House if I stay someplace dangerous. If eggs and coffee were good enough for Lance Armstrong back in the tour, I'd manage too. Now Lance had a personal chef, whereas on Saturday I had a guy with unraveling cornrows named Lennell, but the principle is the same. Pay someone else to do the menial shit and keep your eyes on the prize. Lennell cooked the hell out of my 3 scrambled, grits, and dry wheat toast, and kept the coffee coming.
By the time I left, I was alert and ready to race, plus I had overheard the story of how the bearded guy at the next booth got the bleeding forehead and attendant goose egg lump. Police baton! He took one to the skull from a cop, but managed to stagger away while the cop was busy detaining another hooligan. This dude was George Brewer sized, if Brewer had really let himself go, so I know he didn't run fast, but he still escaped and was plenty relieved. The conversation at his table -- tired, woozy, happy iterations of the word fuuuuuck -- confirmed why I love Waffle House early on race day. It's the social shift change of America. I was clocking in, his crew were clocking out, and eyeing me not exactly disrespectfully, but distantly and dismissively and with an air that suggested getting up early to go play -- given a choice not to -- is profligate. Wasteful. Indeed irresponsible. Fight for your right to party and all. Lennell and I quietly reflected on how the big man's head was going to feel when he woke up. Assuming he ever did wake up.
At the race I was met by my friend Larry, a new training partner. Larry is younger and faster than I am, and lacking in body fat. It was dark and about 50F in transition, and when the announcement came over the PA that the lake water was 65F, I shuddered. We'd be cold all race. Wearing a wool kilt until moments before the gun sounded, Larry averred he was either going to keep his wetsuit on for the bike, or bundle up in the kilt.
Larry blitzed the swim, beating me by a good minute. I sprinted for the first buoy and got there with the leaders, but tied up quickly in the cold water, and swam slowly and noodle-armed for the remaining 500 meters. I was pleased to have a wetsuit, not just because of the added warmth, but because they float so well. Air-bubble injected neoprene helps out when your arms go all noodle early in the swim. Early season lesson re-learned: warm up abundantly for the swim. I had taken my bike for a spin and run it through all the gears, but didn't leave enough time to swim and get accustomed to the cold water.
My hands were stiff and I had trouble unzipping the wetsuit, but I got out of it.
The bike went okay, after the requisite first-race pratfall. I left the Pink Torpedo in too big a gear, downshifted on the nasty little hill out of transition, and dropped the chain. Trouble is, my hands don't function when cold. Putting the chain back was like mittened origami. I eventually got the chain back on, but it took a minute, as cyclists pedaled away from T1, and I stood and cussed and dropped the chain again. Eventually I roped it back in and grinded my way out of there.
The hills go long and gradual there, and I worked into a decent rhythm halfway through the 14 mile bike, but was chasing too many people after the lackluster swim and chain SNAFU. In these short races, the briefest mistakes cost you.
I worked my way into the top twenty. The sun was up and warming the roads though, and by mile 7 I was feeling good. Pretty rural course, good roads, and temps climbing -- the rust was coming off me. By transition two, I was top fifteen.
That didn't last. I ran a clompy-stompy 21:38 for the not-quite-5K, which is terrible for me.
Didn't care. By now there was nothing to be done but enjoy the day. A bad day at the races is still, after all, a day at play. There are worse ways you could spend your Saturday morning than biking and running with 455 similarly driven souls. Few better, really.
I went through mile 1 in 7:03 and knew I just don't have any spring in my legs yet. That's the deal when I sign up to race this early in the year -- some guys are going to kick my ass. And two females, actually. Getting chicked in a sprint distance race is how I know it's time to buckle down.
Two men my age passed me immediately on the run. Miles two and three were roller-coastery and I saw Larry cruising back down the biggest hill as I was climbed it. I ran myself from top fifteen back down the standings ultimately to a decidely mediocre 21st overall finish.
But the sun was out and I felt good on the run. My problematic hamstrings and calves of 2013 were quiet in 2014. My sporadic knee issues didn't make the trip either. Physically all systems go. The chassis was fine, the motor just needs work. No race gear to shift into yet.
Ran a warm down with Larry, whose race experience mirrored my own -- fun but slower than he'd like -- and chalked the day up to early season. Wait 'til July, bitches, we agreed.
Both of us placed in our age groups. Neither cared enough to stick around for the awards.
And so we went to Waffle House again, after we met a goat named Baby:
 Wearing an old race Jersey because this year's Go Tri Sports top wouldn't zip up around my thick self.
Because I could, I took a coma-nap at the hotel, which gave me a 2pm checkout. Then I drove to Race #2, picked up my packet for Sunday morning, and continued on to my dad's place in Columbus, Georgia for the night.
I was excited about Deorio's Pizza, but the place was packed and I was starving by dinner time. It had been a while since Waffle House. I was in no mood to wait for a table.
Recently, however, above Deorio's, someone opened a massive everything-that's-wrong-with-America restaurant called Hibachi Grill. When I went to its website just now to include a link so you would not think I was exaggerating, it incongruously started playing Imagine by John Lennon. Love the song, always have, but John Lennon is rolling over in his grave and tellin' Tchaikovsky the news right now. The sheer tacky commercial excess of this restaurant -- a twenty foot faux chandelier flashes different colors -- pretty well stands against everything that the Yoko-era Lennon was against. $9.99 all you can eat sushi! And hibachi grilled Japanese! Or -- why not -- fried catfish, fried chicken, and an ice cream buffet. And pizza.
http://www.hibachicolumbus.com/default.asp.
Look, I understand the place is a gross embarrassment. Thing is, I don't care. These last couple of years I have been steadily rethinking every life decision I ever made, ever, and have jettisoned some key ones that you'd think define me.
An example would be my strident vegetarianism of the last 9 years.
What a pain in the ass that was.
Yeah I was healthy, but I was pretty damn healthy before I became an ovo-lacto-judgemental-vegetarian. I suspect that many formerly religious people, or people who have that natural inclination toward religiosity, still have this space in them hollowed out where they crave order and rules,and dogma. A lot of vegetarians, especially the don't-kill-that-hornet-because-it's-alive-too variety, treat their simple dietary choices as an ersatz religion. It ain't. It's what you decide to put in your mouth. Period.
I was never comfortable around other vegetarians, incidentally. Even ones I dated.Give me Pentecostal crackers any day. They can judge me without being hipster-smarmy.
Anyway, I added fish back last summer for boring health reasons, and didn't wake up the next day any more selfish than ever. And didn't wake up tofind myself a chain-smoking obese tire re-treader. Then, I cautiously added chicken and, fuck it, beef. Drew the line at pork for the solid reason that I don't like it, and the God of my people apparently ordered us not to eat it a couple thousand years back.
Adding red meat back to my diet, with its attendant animal fat, along with the other meat I began eating again, drove my own body fat down to the leanest I have been in years last summer, and blood work showed my already stellar cholesterol numbers managed to improve.
And before you say it, the 12 pounds I gained this last off season is identical to the same weight gain I get every off season. Same weight gain as forever, when I was sworn off meat for health-moral-enviro-judgment reasons.
My off seasons are the low mileage, weight-lifting, take care of the rest of my life interstices between race seasons. Triathletes don't have four seasons, only two: on and off.
I digress.
So my dad and I went to Hibachi Grill, and it was awesome. The sushi was at least as good as supermarket sushi, and at 10 bucks for unlimited plates, it felt like theft. Not as good as an actual sushi bar, but about forty bucks cheaper for what I ate.
Catching up with my dad was worth the trip. My 75 year old father and I sat in this garish, neon-bright cavern of a room, and we didn't have anywhere else to be. It was about 6:30 PM, senior citizen's dinner time. No dinner rush here. No kids to chase this trip. Cell phones put away. Nothing pressing.
Dad is worth his own blog entry, or probably his own blog, so I won't divulge our discussions beyond remarking that unrepentant people are my heroes. My dad is immutable. The older I get the better that seems to me. It's refreshing to be around someone who gives less of a fuck what people think than I do, and whose concern for how others view him is diminishing further each year. I looked and suddenly dad was back behind the hibachi area, making the "chef" show him how he did something or other with an egg and a spatula, and turning the heater knobs.
After dinner I hung out in our kitchen visiting with Dad, his third and final wife, their spirit-calming cat.My brother made a cameo, between social engagements. Then I called it a night and slept the sleep of the righteous slept like the dead. The cat stood watch
Meet Max.
RACE # 2. LAKE WEST POINT (SPRINT)
Woke up before the alarm feeling better than yesterday, alert and spry, and looking forward to a better effort on a course I know. I'd opted to downgrade my race distance to the sprint from the intermediate distance because I did not relish 24 minutes (my standard 1500 meter swim) in the cold water, and because I wanted to compare my time over roughly the same distance to the day before.
Comparing races is inexact, because Saturday's race was far hillier, although Lake West Point isn't flat either.
Today I warmed up better, if a man can be said to warm up in fifty-nine degree water. Thank God, again, for my wetsuit. I got in early enough to swim the entire 600 yards languidly and then some, before the gun sounded. It helped. It also helped that the air temps were in the upper sixties, and would climb into the seventies on the bike. No more frigid hands today, and perhaps, I hoped, that dictated a more efficient transition.
I swam a 9:31 for 600 yards. Not blazing, really, but at the front of the field. Those who wore Garmins in the water later reported that the course was long. Whatever-- I felt great and was at the pointy end of the swim pack. I exited the water just ahead of the eventual winner, but he sprinted by me over the timing mat into transition. He and a couple other guys were gone in a flash and biking.
I wasn't too far behind out of transition, but then transitions are the bane of my existence, so exiting transition behind, but not too far behind, is a win. Even with practice, I consider a good swim-to-bike transition in a small race this to be about a minute.
Then there are the transition wiz kids -- guys who seem to slide down a Bat Pole and arrive fully costumed in the Bat Cave, ready to fight, while I am still getting my goggles off. These are the guys who are gone in 35 seconds.
To cut into their advantage, I grudgingly decided to try the gimmick of having my shoes pre-clipped into the pedals, taking off on the bike, and shimmying my toes into the shoes as I biked. It's tricky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCOSxZuSSQs.
For years I resisted this method, and just pulled my bike shoes on one at a time in transition, then kind of waddled to the road in my stiff, carbon soled bike shoes, pushing my bike. Then, straddling the bike, I clipped my feet in and began to pedal. It's slow and methodical, but dependable. You won't fall, but by the time you are moving, the Batmen are 200 meters down the road.
So today I tried the shoes pre-clipped in method.
It's a work in progress. Damn near fell over. Had to stop after about thirty seconds of coasting and fooling with one shoe and pull my shoe on the traditional way. A net loss of time, but not as bad as the chain dropping of yesterday,so there's that.
Leaving transition before me were, it turned out, five or six guys in Team USA kits. A surprisingly talented field for this little race.
I set about pedaling the Pink Torpedo after them, with decent success. I reeled in a lot of cyclists. Many were teenage boys on road bikes, not tri bikes. That's because they were junior development USAT athletes who race a lot of draft legal, ITU-style races. This means they can ride together in packs and do not need the aerobars that non-drafting triathletes consider indispensable. They are allowed to draft in their sub-species of triathlon, and ride together as teammates.
This idea is anathema to traditional adult triathletes like me. The one great sin in triathlon, for us, is drafting: riding within seven meters (two bike lengths) behind another rider to gain an aerodynamic advantage. Riding in another athlete's slipstream. Letting someone else do the work for you. It is illegal in our races and always has been, and you can get DQ'd if caught.
Moreover it flies in the face of what appeals to most of us about the sport: individual, independent, emersonian accomplishment.
I digress.
I caught a couple of these kids drafting today in our non-drafting race, and scolded them for it.
ME: DRAFT LEGAL RACE WAS YESTERDAY, BOYS!
THEM: WE RACED YESTERDAY! WHATEVER!
ME: VAGINAS!
See, West Point hosted a juniors draft legal race the day before, and all these teens had competed, then stuck around an extra day for our adult, non-drafting affair. What our exchange translated to was:
ME: YOU ARE CHEATING.
THEM: SO WHAT? THIS RACE DOESN'T MATTER; THE IMPORTANT RACE, FOR THOSE OF US WITH A FUTURE, WAS YESTERDAY. WHY DO YOU CARE?
ME: PUSSIES! [rides steadily away from the misguided youth]
I pedaled my way into the top three overall starting the run. Managed a 20:14 on an honest 5K course, which is a good 84 seconds faster than yesterday's run. While I am pleased with that improvement, I needed one more second. Late in the race, I did the math and figured I had an outside shot at breaking 20 minutes. Once, breaking 18 was commonplace, but I am 46 now, with knees more aged than that. So I got after it hard, but my watch turned over 20:00 in sight of the finish line, and I eased up. No one to catch,and it wasn't worth pulling a hamstring to sprint down the chute for nothing.
Or so I thought.
I was unaware of a diminutive runner clocking a 16:20 run split off the bike, which is sick. Had I known, I wouldn't have mailed it in once I reached the chute. The race announcer didn't say anything and the sparse crowd was not cheering,so I was alarmed when this guy materialized at the tape, in the chute, out of nowhere. It's not so much that I got out-sprinted, as I was oblivious. Had I known, even at the last second, I would have leaned across and blocked his ass. If you've been chasing me the entire race, but cannot make your move until the finisher's chute, fuck you, I am getting in your way. Well, assuming I know you are there.
He and I were credited the same finishing time to the second, but he definitely beat me. Hats off to him. I shook his hand and told him so and meant it. Shame on me. But I'd rather make all these mistakes in April, re-acclimating myself to racing, than to have it happen in the thick of summer.
And It won't.
I finished 8th overall, ran a faster 5K than the overall winner, and was actually in the hunt for the podium off the bike. I need to get my run down to 19 flat, get my bike speed back to scratch, and squander less time in transition. Same things I need to address every spring. And always do.
Knocking the rust off.
Results in all their ugliness:
Race #1
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