It’s late and it’s brief, just like the race!

I woke up to the sound of thunder and pouring rain at 4:51 Saturday morning, and, for some reason, my mind flashed to my wetsuit.  ”Tim, where are the wetsuits?”

“Huh…  They’re drying on the hood of the car…”, and back to sleep he went.  Oh, for the love!  I knew I should have brought them in!  How in the good Lord’s name am I going to get a wet wetsuit on??  Ought to be interesting.  Whatever – time for breakfast! Spinney, Wheeler, Jesse, and I rendezvoused at the kitchen table for our pre-race meal and watched it rain cats, dogs, and guinea pigs.  As the thunder and lightening came and went, Jesse checked the doppler to get a sense of what the Big Man had in store for the next few hours.  ”Oh, it’s just a small cloud,” he reported.  I took a look for myself.  ”Ha!  Dude!  That ’small cloud’ covers all of New England.  It’s only ’small’ ’cause it’s on your computer!”  Didn’t look good for an open water swim.  This ought to be interesting. We packed up, put the helmets on, took our lives in our hands, and rode our bikes the 2 miles over to the race sight.  Just as we were coming up to the entrance of the park there was a flash of lightening at the exact same time as a crack of thunder.  I’m no meteorologist, but I know the old “one Mississippi” rule.  Crikies! As we made our way over to transition the announcement was made: no swim, bike course shortened by 10 miles, if the race happens it will begin at 9 (1.5hr delay), more announcements to follow.  Alrighty.  Let’s get comfortable! We all made our way over to the new team tent, and settled in.

A little before 8 the plan was announced: at 9 we would start the 17-mile bike/10k run duathlon.  It would be a time trial start with athletes leaving every 2 seconds.  Oh, geez!  This ought to be interesting! We hung out for another half hour and then began to disperse, heading over to our bikes to get ready for the adventure to come.  This is going to be absolute chaos – there’s no way that they got this re-organized that quickly.  We’ll see what happens!

We were lined up according to the location of our bike racks, and, sure enough, as we stood waiting our turns to start the sun came out.  It didn’t go away for the rest of the day.  Ha!  Cue Alanis Morissette.

So off we went!  Because the bike had been shortened so much, I just rode like a madman and tried to average the highest power and HR that I could, and ran (as coach JJK instructed) “like you stole something.”  What?  ’Cause I live in Brockton I’m a thief?? Well, I rode my brains out, and wasn’t passed by Jesse until we were leaving transition (he did start at least 2 minutes behind me).  He ran by me so fast I thought he was either kidding or going to explode by mile 2.  Neither was true.  Try as I might I could not catch him!  I did, however, have a great race, and must say that Keith Jordan’s team did an unbelievable job getting everything and everyone rearranged for the altered course.  If we hadn’t signed for an international distance triathlon we wouldn’t have had any inclination that things had not gone as planned.  Every corner was well manned, cones and signs were all in the right places, and the TT start went off without a hitch.  Amazing!

We followed up the race with a 3-hour ride, and finished the day off with a team dinner at BHOP.  What a day!!