The big race!

We arrived in Washington, D.C. around noon on Friday and spent the rest of the day checking in to the hotel, attending a briefing for the race, and registering. The hotel was awash with Team in Training athletes. There's something really cool about seeing a bunch of grown kids lugging gear and bicycles around the lobby of an upscale Washington hotel, the Hilton. Most of the 585 Team in Training members who were registered for the race were staying in the hotel. The day before I had started saturating my body with vitamin C to combat an incipiant cold.

On Saturday, we took the bus to the race start/finish/transition area to get our bikes, which had been shipped earlier that week. I fastened my number, 5396, to my bike and found my spot on the bike racks in the huge transition area, which was big enough to hold the over 4,000 bikes which would be ridden in the race. By shear luck, I had been given a spot at the edge of the route I would be running through the transition area. I would be able to position my bike and equipment right along that path! We then collected for a short Q and A with Dave Scott, 6 time Iron Man World champion. While he was speaking I noticed that a boat on the Potomac, which was a short distance away, seemed to be drifting fairly quickly with the current. Since we would be swimming about half of our 0.9 mile distance going upstream on the following day, that made me a little nervous. So, I was keen to test the water when we entered the Potomac for our warmup swim a short time later. While I was swimming, I stopped a couple of times to see how quickly I drifted with the current, only to find that I was barely moving. That gave me a big boost of confidence for the swim. Now, if only it will be "wetsuit legal" tomorrow.

My Sunday started bright and early at 4AM. We loaded onto buses at 4:30 with all our gear to ride to the transition area, lay out our gear, and wait for our race starts, which were from 7AM to 8:33AM. At 6:45AM we left the transition area and collected in the "swim pen", all 4,000+ of us. The race was wetsuit legal, so all but a very small number of us had wetsuits. It was a surreal sight in the shadow of the Washington Monument as 4,000+ "penguins" watched the sunrise and waited for their chance to jump into the Potomac to begin the race. I waited for an hour and a half as the crowd of penguins gradually thinned and it got closer to my race start time.

Finally, 8:30AM came and I jumped into the water with the rest of my "wave". The gun went off and we were on our way. In my two other triathlon experiences, the initial "crush" at the swim start thinned within a short while. In this case, however, since waves of people had been starting every 3 minutes for the previous hour and a half the crowd never really did thin out. For the next 37 minutes I had to swim around slower and dodge faster swimmers. Finally, I completed the circuit and was making my way out of the water, stripping off my wetsuit and heading for the transition area.

I easily found my bike at the edge of the path through transition, removed my wetsuit and continued out onto the bicycle course. The course was a beautiful combination of rolling hills with plenty of shade. But, my cold was beginning to sap my strength. I could tell this immediately when I began riding. For the next hour and a half, my energy would wax and wane as I struggled to maintain my pace.

I finally returned to the transition area to begin the final run leg of the race. I felt strong when I began the run with no sign of muscle cramps. Walking through the water stops to make sure I remained well hydrated was proving to be a good strategy. At about mile 4, however, my cold was again sapping my strength. I had to slow down a bit and walk for maybe a half mile at a time to save something for the finish. My overall time for the race was 3 hours and 26 minutes. Not my best effort, but reasonably good given my struggles with the cold.

It was a great weekend and an amazing experience. Our group of 10 from northern Ohio raised over $58,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Most impressively, the 585 TNT participants in this one triathlon raised over $2.4 million for the Society.

I am hoping to join Team in Training for the Wildflower Triathlon in California next May.