SILVERMAN RACE REPORT: 70.3 Act II, or the Finish that Wasn't

The "Finisher" Medal

I had no desire to race in Henderson, Nevada, which is basically a suburb of Las Vegas without the glamor. The town looked like any recently built, sterile suburb in the western U.S.  The inhabitants of the smoke-filled, noisy casinos weren’t high rollers, but middle-class older people desperately seeking to fill a void in their lives with promise of easy money. I live in a desert environment, so why go 280 miles to race in the same type of place, only bleaker and drier? Since Tahoe had been cancelled and I wanted to do a 70.3 before Ironman Arizona, the choices were limited.

Silverman had 4,200 feet of climbing on the bike, so maybe all the hill training that I had suffered through during the summer could be put to use. The weather of course would be hot, so the run would be awful. The swim was questionable for being wetsuit legal, since the water temperature had to be under 76 degrees. I swim very slowly without a wetsuit, when I am not having a panic attack. Drowning is not appealing to me.

Still, I got in for $50 instead of the usual $300 plus and could drive there with a friend. Right from the time we got near town, the venture turned into a giant pain. We were stuck in traffic for an hour due to an accident; a harbinger of things to come.

We rushed over to registration an hour before it closed. Registration involved standing in various lines. They gave us a timing chip, a shirt and of course assorted plastic bags to put morning clothes, bike gear and run gear in.

Damn Bags

I was thoroughly sick of the whole bag thing, having done it two weeks before. Planning what to put in the bag required organization and a lot of thought about what would be needed for the race, which was too much effort. The bags had to be dropped off in two locations the day before the race. Hopefully, the items in it wouldn’t disappear, leak nor melt from the heat.

Bikes also had to be dropped off the day before the race. On the drive to the site, somehow a giant traffic jam suddenly materialized before the Lake Mead transition area. The park demanded $10 to be there for half an hour. We dropped off the bikes and I hoped my tires wouldn’t explode from sitting in the sun.

Swim course the day before

I was stressed about this race since it would be difficult. I had already decided I would wear a wetsuit even if it wasn’t wetsuit legal, since I couldn’t make the swim cut off without it. The uncertainty was nerve wracking. The forecast high was ninety degrees, so heat would be a factor. Mere survival was all that could be hoped for.

Race day dawned cool, but quickly warmed up. The swim was announced as being wetsuit legal, which cheered me up.

The swim start chute was horrible, with 1500 bodies crammed tightly into a small area. I felt claustrophobic and anxious. I had my wetsuit partially on and the sun was up, baking me. I oozed towards the fence to get some air. No space to crawl under it to escape. Some people couldn’t take it and jumped over it. This much body contact with strangers was unpleasant.

Finally, my age group of 50+ females got in the water. I swam off to the side because I knew the twenty-somethings behind would swim over me. This was not a good arrangement. Even worse is when they invaded my space. Get the hell away from me.

I always hated the swim. This one was no exception. The water was smooth, but too many bodies passed by me, churning up the water. I didn’t like the insecurity of being far away from the shore. Sometimes, weeds would drape themselves over my arms and I had to remove them. Time went slowly and the wetsuit was a little too warm. 

I got to shore, peeled off my wetsuit and put on my bike shoes and helmet in the empty transition area. I had no idea what awaited me, not knowing the course, but it would undoubtedly be an adventure. The sky was cloudless and the sun was hot on my skin.

The bike course had many hills to climb. Trucks passed me hauling massive boats. The scenery looked like a cross of the Arizona Painted Desert and a moonscape, with a touch of Death Valley desolation. The rock were sometimes splashed with red minerals. The vegetation was sparse with stunted creosote being the main plant that could survive the harsh climate. Crossing a bridge, a wetlands greenery contrasted with the bone-dry setting. This road was fun to ride, but I would have preferred cooler weather.

The heat was bearable, but felt like it could easily slip into heat exhaustion. Riders walked the hills and others were on the side of the road, perhaps contemplating their fate. About mile thirty, I realized that I had to hustle to make 1:30 bike cut off. Stops at the aid stations were still necessary to get water and ice, but I couldn’t linger. 

T1. It looks like a lot of Porta-potties, but it wasn't enough

Picking up speed, I passed more people, who didn’t seem in a hurry. Fear was a good motivation to go faster. My heart rate kept rising. Heat and a high heart are not a good combination and I would pay for this later.

The route turned off of the park roads and proceeded back to Henderson. The hills weren’t done and an evil big one smacked me at the end. I neared transition and of course most of the racers were way ahead of me and already out on the course.  

I fumbled through transition and started on the hilly run, which was three loops. The first part of the loop was shaded, but the last one mile uphill section wasn’t. The run had to be finished in three hours. This time limit would have been doable normally, but in ninety degrees was very difficult. 

Luckily, the aid stations had lots of water and ice. I constantly sucked on the ice cubes from a cup and held them in my hands. I ran under some sprinklers. My speed wasn’t fast enough, but I kept moving with the hope of finishing. The end got farther away.

By mile eleven, I gave up finishing under the cut off. My energy was gone and nausea and weakness had crept in. No one pulled me off the course, so I continued. 

Other people were struggling as well. I saw one person sitting on the curb, holding his head in his hands. A symbol of this run. The sun burned my skin, so I splashed water on it. The turn-around was in the far distance. I couldn’t run anymore, so I walked. Maybe on the downhill, I could run. 

A volunteer asked how I was doing. I said “marginal.” She asked if I wanted a ride, but I didn’t have that far to go, if I could hang on. Two more miles. 

Finally, the turn-around. I attempted to run, but cramps seized my calves, so I walked.  After repeated attempts, I ran about a quarter mile to the finish line. The announcer had to mention how old I was. People think that athletes my age are an oddity, though it was nice to be cheered. I go from fifty-nine to sixty and suddenly my competitors disappear and I am “geriatric”. I don’t like being old.

Not feeling that great, I was escorted to the med tent to get an I.V., to treat dehydration. That was a first, but probably not a last. 

I was okay with the race, until I saw later in the results that I got a big, fat DNF(Did Not Finish) for almost nine hours of racing, since I didn’t make the cutoff. No points, no age group awards, no credit for racing. That was a mood deflator. The people in the 35-39 age group with the same time were considered finishers, since they started earlier and had more time. That was unfair and  hard to accept, but it made my DNF more arbitrary.

They gave me a medal anyway. Maybe they didn’t want to mess with a cranky old person. No one else in my age group finished. Perhaps I was a freak. 

I have mixed feelings about the race being a failure or a success. The total time was one of the worst ever for me, but it was also one of the hardest half irons I have done. The med tent sucked me in. The bike and the swim were decent, but dehydration set in before I even ran, despite my attempts to avoid it. 

I may not have “finished,” but I did finish.

 

Deuces Olympic Race Report

This year's "metals." This picture doesn't show it, but, I have a
giant blister on my third toe for my race effort.

I had done so many triathlons that I assumed that they would all be predictable. This turned out not to be the case with Deuces, except for the weather, which was always hot. The unexpected was not always good.

Deuces had evolved over the years, but not always for the better. It had a half iron, Olympic, Xterra and sometimes a sprint. A huge raffle used to occur on Saturday evening along with a dinner. The raffle and dinner disappeared. The Xterra this year was cancelled due to forest fire danger. I never wanted to stay late anyway, so it didn’t matter to me. The less time in Show Low the better. I couldn’t really explain why the town makes me want to leave as fast as possible.

Last year's metal.

I was nervous before the race because high altitude makes breathing difficult. The swim had  the danger of panic attacks. I usually felt alone on the bike course because it’s remote and everyone was ahead of me. The run, which was half trail was an ordeal.

The temperature was warmer than I expected at dawn. This did not bode well. I struggled into my wetsuit and tested the water. It felt chilly at first, but tolerable. The lake level was down nine feet, due to the water being used for fire-fighting. The channel out to the start was much narrower than usual.

The swim start was the typical struggle due to the lack of oxygen at altitude. My chest felt tight. I couldn’t see the far buoy because it was partially deflated. I had to ask the kayakers where it was. I turned the corner, went across to the next one, then started down the lake. I aimed toward the next yellow buoy, but the kayaker said I had to go around the orange ball buoy. 

This confused me. The race organizers had said all we had to do was right turns, but nothing about navigating randomly placed balls. At times, I actually saw the bottom of the lake through the murk. Time dragged on and I contemplated my inadequacy in this event. At least the water was smooth and I could breath. As I was going back past the start, I heard the announcer say “three minutes” for the sprint race. Great. I was taking forever and was soon going to be run over by sprint swimmers.

 I rounded the last far buoy, then the final one to come in and hit a thick jungle of weeds. The patch was enormous, the largest I had ever seen, and it extended all the way to the shore. The long plant tendrils clung to me, trying to drape themselves over my arms. I panicked, flailing my arms to escape their grasp and groaned. The only way I was going to get away was to keep moving. The swim exit was beckoning. The sprint racers had caught up, but passed by without slamming into me.  

I staggered out of the water through six inch deep muck and walked up to steep hill to be stripped of my wetsuit. I ran into transition, which of course was empty. I was last or near last out of the water, which was depressing. At least my bike was easy to find.

On the bike, it was hot already. Tall pines trees that lined the road did not provide much shade. The white sun seared my skin and sucked the moisture out of my body. Sweat salt crusted my face. Once off the main highway, Lone Pine Dam Road was empty past the sprint course racers. An out and back had been on the route last year, but none was marked this time. I worried that I had missed it, but all I could do was go on. No volunteers were out in the remote area to guide us. The sign I had gone past said “Olympic straight”, but I still felt lost on the lonely route that stretched on and on and seemed to go nowhere.  

The run was a reminder of race misery past; almost ironman level of deep despair. I knew it would be problematic since my hamstring was injured, but to run through soft sand resulted in sharp hip pain with every step. It eased off  to a bearable stabbing when I got to firmer ground. The path wound through the campground, then entered an out and back road. The slight uphill made it mentally a dark place. My legs were dead and merely plodded through the uneven ground. An unwelcome hill marked the turn around. I grabbed some gummy bears for quick energy. The sticky layer adhered to my teeth.  

On the back half of the run, the aid stations were out of water. I had my own bottle, but it was low and lukewarm. The threat of heat exhaustion worried me with three aid stations in a row lacking water and cups. I grabbed some vile-tasting Heed-laced ice, which made my water foamy, but cooler. The run ended up being 6.78 miles instead of 6.2.  

They managed to even run out of water at the finish line. I lurked around the water containers and poured some in my bottle whenever they re-filled it. Some athletes, unhappy with the situation, berated the volunteers, but they had no control over the ineptitude of the race organization. 

 I was hot and considered the kiddie pools that they had set up, but the water was dubiously cloudy. God knows what was floating around in that water with the many sweaty butts that had sat in it. I saw surprised to see some one actually wash her face with it. She might regret that later. I  jumped in the lake instead, and pushed aside the weeds. At least the bacteria would be diluted. The coolness of the water refreshed me, despite the hot furnace air.

I chose this race, not because I liked it, but mostly because it was good training for a half iron at altitude that I was doing later in the fall. I didn't  expect to do well, so I didn’t worry about it.  I had merely survived the lack of oxygen and water, the weeds, the running injury and the desolate bike course. 

People don't understand why I put myself through this kind of ordeal  Sometimes, I don't know, either. Maybe, the discomfort makes me tough. A little less pain, however, would have been appreciated.