Have ye seen de white whale? Earlybird Tri Race Report

Before I go into explaining the strange title, I need to say congratulations to my lovely wife, Julie, for her first triathlon finish. I am truly happier for her finish than for my race results that I will get into below.

Now back to a bit of my rambling.

For those of you that were able to escape Moby-Dick during your younger years, that goofy beginning to this post was the question that Ahab would ask while seeking Moby. Seriously, it is a good book and worth the time to read. It is also a great example of being totally encompassed by something.

A lot of people that ask me about my triathlon training look at me the way other sailors looked at Ahab. They look at me like I am crazy and that I am searching all the world's oceans looking for one fish (back when Moby-Dick was written, they still argued that whales were fish-Now you know). Well every once in a while a goofy ship's captain just has to get his whale. Right?

Well for me today, things actually worked out.

The day started well. I felt OK, wasn't too nervous, and the weather was poor. "What?", you say. The weather was a little more than brisk and raining. Perfect to make sure that I really wanted to be there.

Jumped into the water and went out a my "all day" pace. I really don't try to kill myself on the swim. I know I just need to stay close to the fast guys without killing myself. A guy in my lane passed me at 250yds and I was OK letting him break the water for me. The last 250yds was great. I did open turns and just coasted along on the bubbles of my lane mate.

I had a little trouble in T1. My shirt just did not want to go on. I did get it onto my body enough to get on my bike and off I went. No glasses because they had been sitting out in the rain for an hour at that point, so I couldn't see a thing out of them.

Started to turn the pedal of my bike and felt pretty good. By mile 2 or 3 I could see Andy Mixel (Another great Emery's guy and overall fast guy) ahead of me. No one ahead of him and no one behind me. I just put it in my head to catch Andy. Pedal I did. Rolling the full disc in the rear and a deep front wheel was the right call. It was only for two or three miles of the ride that the wind made riding "interesting". I caught Andy after the turn around at about mile 10. I then proceed to lead him back into T2.

Andy beat me out of T2 leaving me 20 yards behind him. Let me tell you, he came out of T2 running 6:20min/mi pace according to Mr. Garmin 310XT on my wrist. I figured he was either trying to blow me up, or I was going to have to run faster than I normally would like to. But, with a little sigh to myself I resigned to suck it up (HTFU) and hang with him for as long as I could. Luckily for me, Andy slowed to a little more reasonable pace of 7:00min/mi. After the first 1/2 or 3/4 mile I settled in behind Andy and just let him lead me though the beautifully muddy cross country run course. After ducking a few low hanging branches, slipping on the boardwalk through the woods, and forgetting about how many twists and turns are on that course I made my move with about a quarter mile left. I picked up the pace to what I knew from training I could keep for a good 400m. At the time I knew that Andy had 10 seconds (due to the wave start in the pool) in hand and I hoped that I could pull those 10 seconds plus maybe a couple more. After, maybe, 15 strides I couldn't hear Andy's footfalls behind me, so I just kept going.

I was the very first person to cross the finish line. Let me write that again. I was the first person to cross the finish line. Andy was behind me. At the time I didn't know by how much, but it was really strange for me to be standing there. Here we were at the finish line, trying not to cough up a lung, and no one else was in sight. We had just had a really good race. We were not only racing the course, but we were racing each other. On the bike, on the run we were racing. Now, we both knew that there were many, many more waves of more than competent triathletes behind us. But, it was an interesting feeling to stand there.

In the end, our efforts were for 3rd overall for me and 4th for Andy Mixel by 5 seconds.

So, for now I have my white whale. I went into today's race looking for a solid top ten performance. I was also looking to validate the extra training I have been doing since January. Both happened.

The problem with catching the white whale is that now that my ship is full of all the whale oil I can hold, I need to do something with it. So, out the door I'll go tomorrow morning. Long before the sun is up, I'll be logging a few more miles on the bike. Because who knows, there just may be more than one white whale out there. I'll let you know because I'll be looking for another. By looking at today's results, it looks like the next white whale is three minutes faster than me.