Biting Off More Than I Can Chew ... Part 1

In this case .... The American Triple-T held last weekend in Portsmouth, OH.

For the uninitiated this is four triathlons held over three days: a "super sprint" prologue on Friday evening; an Olympic distance race on Saturday morning with a second Olympic distance race in the afternoon; followed by a half-Ironman on Sunday. The organizer describes the hills on the bike course and on the run as "challenging" ...... and he's not kidding!

When I entered the race last November on the back of a decent triathlon season, this seemed like a great idea and a fantastic opportunity to get in a final big week of base training before starting my build phase.

By the end of April, it didn't seem like such a good idea! I'd broken a toe and my longest run had only been 12 miles. Furthermore, my longest bike ride was still only around 40 miles and there had been a few too many "weekends off" for one reason or another.

Still, I'd paid my money and it was time now to pay in other ways. I'd made the decision to taper by doing close to nothing the week before the race and Friday morning saw me throw my kit in the car and drive six hours in the pouring rain down to Portsmouth. About an hour south of Columbus, the terrain started to get hilly and I started to get nervous.

I arrived at the race site around 90 minutes before the race and, having checked in, decided to ride the bike course as a warm up. This isn't particularly heroic ... the prologue is only a 250m swim, a 5 mile bike ride and a 1 mile run. As I got the bike out of the car, it finally stopped raining and I decided that this was a good omen.

The bike course is in the form of a 'T.' You exit transition, turn right, ride half a mile to the park entrance, turn around ride a couple of miles to the top of the hill, turn around and return to transition.

Dead easy ...... apart from the bit "ride a couple of miles to the top of the hill," which involves about three hundred feet of climbing. Imagine the hill in Franklin from the Post Office up to the cemetery. It's a quarter mile long and you climb about fifty feet. Now imagine it's six times as long ..... and that's about the easiest hill you climb the entire weekend.

Once in transition, I started to feel a little bit left out as I seemed to be the only person without an "M Dot" tattoo or any other piece of Ironman regalia. It occurred to me that it was, in fact, 17 years since I completed my last Ironman and that my longest race since then was last year's Battle of Waterloo which took me a grand total of 4:30. I started chatting to the lady next to me in transition who'd done the race three times before and gleefully informed me that the race was "much harder than an Ironman."

That'll teach me to talk to strangers.

The races are all run in a time trial format: you line up in pairs, in race number order and each pair starts five seconds or so behind the pair in front.

Having had a quick paddle in the lake, I decided not to bother with a wetsuit. Yes, the water was cold but, it wasn't unbearable and I'd only be in it for three or four minutes.

After standing around on the beach for a bit, the organizers chivvied us into order and eventually my new friend, Deb, and I were off ..... which was the last I saw of her until the next morning as she finished about five minutes in front of me.

Basically, I did the race at a conversational pace: swam easy, jogged through transition; rode up the hill at just under my anaerobic threshold; rode down without falling off; put on running shoes; jogged across waterlogged field getting shoes really muddy; jogged back; job done.

I then put my stuff in the car and drove back to the hotel ..... via the pub. Or, more precisely, the Portsmouth Brewing Company. (The pilsner wasn't that great but the Vulcan was pretty decent ... so I had four more of them)

Back in the hotel, I cleaned all the crap off my running shoes and then hit the hay to be ready for Saturday.