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Bike and Run course

Swim course

I found this one at one point and just wanted to do it. It's a different distance and it has the same name as my first 1/2 Iron. Both are Patriots.

I tried to get some buddies to do it. Mapquest.com had it listed as a 2:10 drive into Penn and I did not feel like driving that distance, following directions in the middle of the night. No buds took the bait. Personally, I think Donald and Matt would have done extremly well as the field was small but whatever.

During the rookie tri, I tried to sell it to anyone from SunRiseTri but no interest there either.

Everyday I was scanning the entrants list just in case, someone would surprise me. Don kept saying "you never know - I might surprise you". Well, I saw 3 guys from Sunrise are signed up. Started digging and poking looking for their e-mail address. Found 2 and quickly shot them an email. Boom - got a response.

Erik's car was full and he was going to go to Brooklyn too. Matt is driving alone. Talked to Matt and decided he would pick me up at 4am which is when I was going to leave so all looks good.

Toward the end of the week I was tired. Monday I took off and did approx 44 miles on the bike, followed by a dehydrated 14 miles on the bike. Don't remember if I even swam. No run tues but wed was a 2525 swim. I was tired. The plan was to go to sleep early on thursday. Maybe small run too but the point is REST!

As I get on the train, thursday after work, I get a call from my mother. She fell in front of the house and broke her arm. Badly. Waiting for ambulance. There goes the plan. Lee and the kids met me at the train station with a sandwich and the car. I drove them back home and proceeded to fight rush hour traffic while eating, trying to get the Hospital. Finally made it. My mom was waiting for x-ray.

There's never a small trip to the ER. So damn inefficient. Finally got x-rayed. Finally the P.A got there and said that there should have been another picture taken. Back to x-ray. Then wait for an hour for the P.A. Then 20 minutes before he casted it and another x-ray and another reading of x-ray. She has a "spiral fracture of Humerous". Not that there is a good brake but this was a "bad" one. Eight weeks of cast/brace and then p.t.

Finally got out of there at 11pm and then to the pharmacy. Dropped my mom at her house and got home at 12. Then like an idiot I b.s-ed around and it was my normal bedtime (1:30am) with a 5:30 wake up. Oh well!

Went to sleep early friday and slept well to saturday. Kids let me sleep till 7. Felt good.

Saturday night again went to sleep early and set the alarm for 2am.

Matt was running late and got to me at 4:15. Still ok. Pitch black outside but made good time. Took a slight wrong turn and had to stop for directions. Now we got a little worried.

Here's where the fun started....The Mapquest directions toward the end did NOT match up to the partial directions given on the website. Had to ask again but eventually found the place. Initially we were hoping to get to race site around 6:15. Ended up there at 6:45 with Transition closing at 7:15.

Parked, unloaded and stood on line for packet pickup, body marking and got set up. Did a quickie set up and headed for the port-a-pottie line. Both of us were dying. Heard partial meeting through porta-potty. Ran back to transition for final touches as they were asking people to leave transition.

The order of the day was going to be:

The swim was going to be in Evergreen lake. Small freshwater lake. The canal ended up being very shallow (2 feet), full of gunk/junk and had an electrical cable through it. Obviously we were re-routed to do the 2nd lap.

Swim went well. Sighting for the most part was on the money. No going wild around. Only problems was when we were heading right into the sun and sighting was awful. Still I did not stray too much.

Swim was over and ran to T1. Had a little problem taking wetsuit off the leg with the chip but soon enough on the bike.

The roads were much better than MA. No major bumps. The "some gentle hills" turned out to be mostly hills with 1 really bad hill. It was long and not friendly. Too boot, we also had heavy winds. At one point, my bike actually shook a little bit and I was "forced" to move much closer to the shoulder then I wanted. That was dangerous as I was in the middle of drafting heavily. More on that later.

The bike went ok. There were some very technical turns - S turns. Make a left and an immediate right while you are going down-hill. Volunteers and cops were great in stopping traffic, for the most part, well ahead of us getting there.

A few things on the bike.....At one point this old guy came up on me (62) and we rode together for a little while. He then took off and I continued by myself. About 10-15 minutes later, he reappeared behind me which shocked me. I thought he managed to do the whole loop. OK, maybe I wasn't thinking straight. Turns out he took a wrong turn. Woke me up.

There was an area with 2 dogs in their yard and they were loose and barking. Initially I was thinking if they come chasing, then it would be a great incentive. I then realized with the heavy winds and hills, I would not be able to run away. They'd chew my bike and me apart.

Second time on the big hill, Mike came up. He's a 26 year old guy and we sorta decided to work together. Didn't know each other until then but made sense to work together. I never drafted so well. I was centimeters away from his tire and vice versa. Made it much better. Both up and down and flat. Other people tried to draft with us but we left them. YAY!

During the second loop, Mike was drafting when I went through a bad S-turn. I was worried about him and ended up like Lance for about 10 feet goinf through some grass. My off-road adventure. Lucky no flat or crash.

Another "little" incident was in one of these blind turns. The police woman saw me and motioned to the coming car to stop. He must have thought she meant slow down because he continued. I went flying through the turn narrowly missing him. As I left the scene, I hear the police woman screaming at the driver that "STOP MEANS YOU STOP!". God bless that woman. Told her that the next time I saw her.

One little disheartening thing that happened was on the 3rd loop on the bike. I don't sterotype but it's disheartening to see a vastly overweight woman, pass me on the big hill as I try to climb it with Mike. Mike was sure we would get her but I knew better. She soon disappeared on us. I eventually caught her on the run. Am I ever gonna get better? What's next, to be passed by an elderly, overweight, one legged with no prothesis, almost dying woman? Geez.

The last 5 miles of the bike, Mike died on me. I kept screaming at him but he was done. Left him. Had to do my own race.

Done with T2 and looking for a porta-potty. Hydrated well and had to pee. Real stupid but they put the porta-potties at bike in, instead of run out. I was not going to go back so onward. Found a nice tree in someones front yard and took care of buisness.

The run started with a nice 1.5 mile downhill. Then it was ups and downs with the turn around up a loooong hill. Hated that. After the turnaround I suddenly saw Mike. Somehow he got past me in T2. Weird. Hooked up with some girl and ran together through Mike, up the last 1.5 mile uphill and sprint to the finish.

The finishers medal was pathetic. Maybe MA screwed me and my expectations up. Imagine army dogtags that came out of a cereal box.

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