Sam and I drove up to Vermont early on Friday morning, hit up registration, some free samples at the vendor booths and made or way to our hotel. I decided to skip the host hotel and go for one MUCH closer to the actual race. We didn’t need our car all weekend and I could see the whole swim course from my window. It was pretty sweet.

The swim course and the Adirondack mountains on the other side of Lake Champlain.

And yes, the sun looked EXACTLY like that streaming through the clouds in real life. Pretty cool, eh?

Click here to view the embedded video.

RACE MORNING
I was up and at ‘em at 5:30. I dressed, drank some EFS and took down a banana and some yogurt before heading over to transition. My swim wave went off an hour after the first wave and transition didn’t close until late, so I was in no rush. There was a lot of waiting around and sitting on the dock with Sam as we watched the other waves go off, but no real stress.

The minutes leading up to my swim wave is usually when the butterflies start kicking in, but nother this time. Despite being my biggest and last triathlon of the year, I was pretty relaxed. We watched about 5 or 10 waves go off before I even put on my wetsuit. I drank a flask of First Endurance Pre Race then lubed up my neck, shoulders, arms and legs with Tri Slide and I gathered with the rest of my age group to dive on in.

SWIM

We only had a few minutes to warm up in the water before our wave went off. Just enough to get the shoulders loose and do any last minute wetsuit adjustments before lining up for the gun. I warmed up the interior of my wetsuit, and just floated until they sent us off. Despite being in a pretty wide start line where our group was probably only 2-3 people deep at any one point, it was a pretty aggressive start. Elbows and feet were flying everywhere. I did my best to push through ‘em and keep on some fast feet without taking a heel to my eye or fist to the back of my head.

It worked, I managed to stay out of any brawls with other adrenaline fueled athletes and still push the pace. The course made a hard right turn. Due east and right into the sun. UGH. I couldn’t see a damn thing except for a group of splashing feet and elbows about 25 meters ahead of me. I followed them until they realized they were WAY off course and took a hard turn to get back on. Frustrating. While the water was pretty calm in the protected harbor, I think some of the waves in one section where there was a gap in the barriers helped throw me off course too. After some more diligent sighting, I was back on course, hugging the buoys and out of the water.

Going into the race, I knew that I had the fitness to set an Oly swim course PR as long as I stayed on course. I was right. Poor sighting and no PR. Frustrating.  Oh well. Onward and upward.

Time: 28:27

Pace: 1:54/100m

Bike

After a respectable, but not blazing fast T1 (1:33) I was off on the bike. The first third of the bike had some decent (short) climbs and was into a headwind. I kept pushing to try to catch up to some faster swimmers, but going uphill into a headwinds S-U-C-K-S. I felt like my brakes were dragging or something. If it wasn’t for catching up to people in earlier waves, it would have been easy to get down on myself, but everyone was stuck facing the same conditions.

Fortunately, on the back half was treating me much better and I fell into a good rhythm. Nice rollers, pushing hard and a little tail wind sent me home 3.5 minutes faster than my last bike course PR. Big smile on my face. Nutrition wise, I just took one 2oo calorie bottle of EFS.

Time: 1:07:39 (22 mph)

Run

What I did NOT know is that they were live streaming video from the race. My mom, Rachelle and Jill were all watching and cheering for me as one of the cameras caught me coming into T2. If I had known, maybe I would have picked it up a little because they were NOT very impressed with my speediness through transition. Then Jill and Rachelle proceed to heckle me over Twitter. Gotta love teammate support.

Out of transition and onto the course was the only real hill on the whole course, but it was a biggie. Half of the people were walking! Seriously people? Walking in the first 1/4 mile of Nationals? Let’s get this thing done!

I had a pretty slow first mile because of the hill (around 8:00) but after that I kept ticking off each mile at around 7:25-7:35. I kept chugging along and feeding off of everyone’s energy. People were laying it all out there and destroying their bodies just to get to the finish line, way more than any other race I’d been in. It was awesome to be around.

My final time was 46:19, which was 40 seconds faster than the stand alone 10k that I did at Beach to Beacon two weeks ago! Not too shabby, eh?

Edit: Rumor is that the run course may have been a little short, but I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that. 

Total Time: 2:25:28

Yes people, that is a HUGE 15 minute PR. I had never even broken 2:40 before. A good day, eh? I feel like this was the race where I was finally able to pull off the race performance that I was capable off. Other than a little zig zagging on the swim, it was just the race I wanted.

And I had expected some fierce competition, but NOTHING like what actually showed up. If I had been lucky enough to PR by only 8 minutes, I would have been dead last. I lucked out big time with not ending up DFL!

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying local beers, burritos the size of my face, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sundaes and laying in my hotel bed with Sam watching awful movies on TV. I can’t imagine a better weekend.

Enjoying the post-race beer garden. Cheap beers AND they didn’t need my ID. They just looked at my calf. Kinda awesome.

 Chipotle burrito from Bueno y Sano

Big B&J Sundae

One of my favorite beers: Switchback Ale

And It only took me about 12 hours to think “Damn that was a fast race! I wonder how much faster I can go next year?!”

I think I already have a goal for the 2012 season…

The Starting Line: Can you see me? I’m the one in green. 

Photo Credit: Kevin Morris

The Finish Line: The “Beacon” – Portland Head LightPhoto Credit: Kevin Morris

The Finish Line: From The Other Side

Photo Credit: Kevin Morris

The Awards Ceremony

And one of my favorites… Some shirtless Mainer with nipple rings and a crab hat inside a mini lighthouse on wheels. The results say he ran it in under an hour. I hope he ran it from inside the lighthouse! That would have been AWESOME. He flashed me a double shaka just after I took this picture once he saw me with my camera. Wished I got that on film.

And of course I hit up Wild Willy’s for a BBQ bacon cheeseburger, onion rings and a lime rickey before I headed back home. I showed self restraint and only at about 1/4 of the onion rings.

I rolled into Cape Elizabeth around 6:30, and hopped on a bus from one of the remote parking lots to take me to the race start. The bus driver had the heat BLASTING which only made the bus full of nasty nervous pre-race farts even worse! The bus was like I was in a giant fart oven. Not an awesome way to start the morning.

The only reason I’m smiling in this picture is because it is BEFORE everyone’s pre-race farts started. 

A 2 hour drive, a bus ride, and a half mile walk to the start line and I was finally there. I grabbed my number, ran into some old friends that were racing and moved out of Boston, warmed up, peed in the woods and waited for the gun to go off.

Waiting at the starting line

The race itself was fun pretty uneventful. I lined up somewhere just behind the 7:00 minute pace marker and waited for the gun to go off. I didn’t taper for this and the plan was just to train through it and test out my pacing strategy for nationals.

In the end, I was REALLY happy with how consistent my pacing was. Except for a hilly second mile, I held pretty steady 7:30 miles. I would have liked to be a little faster, but since my legs weren’t 100% fresh, I was fine with it. One thing I did notice is that compared to the average runner that was holding a 7:30 pace, I’m WAY better at running hills. At the start of even the slightest hill, every pack that I was running with seemed to slowly fade back as I kept a steady effort. I don’t think this is unique to me, but probably a triathlete thing. Looks like my cycling quads aren’t just dead weight on the run after all!

Does anyone else notice this when doing stand alone running races?

My final time was 47:03. Since I can’t remember the last time I did a stand alone 10k (at least 10 years ago?) I’m calling this a PR. Here are my mile splits:

Splits:
1 – 7:27
2 – 8:03
3 – 7:38
4 – 7:33
5 – 7:30
6 -7:23

After the race, I headed through through the food tent to suck down some chocolate milk, watermelon, and a fist full of mini snickers bars. They were hiding all the good stuff (chocolate and candy) at the END of the food line! Very sneaky.Then I hit up the massage tent, something I’ve never done post-race. Usually I’m busy regrouping with Sam after she spent the morning cheering me on. Since I was flying solo this time around, I took advantage of it and made some friends in the massage line before getting my butt rubbed.

Then, it was on to the beach for a soak! There was a little rocky beach just passed the finish line and only a few other runners took advantage of it for a cold soak. I was surprised more people didn’t dive in for a little cool down, but was happy to have it (almost) to myself.

I tried doing a video race report, and almost got got knocked over by a ninja wave that came out of nowhere….

Click here to view the embedded video.

As for the race itself, I was a little hesitant because I usually hate gigantic races. This one had more than 5,000 runners and sold out in seven minutes. In MARCH. For a TEN K! Fortunately, it was super casual and really well run. There were a TON of spectators lining the course and you can tell how proud the locals were of the race. Super well run, GREAT volunteers, aid stations and finisher’s area. If you can get in, I’d definitely recommend this race. Plus, Portland is a pretty cool little city to hang out in if you’ve got some time to kill after the race.

One more week of hard training then it is time to taper for what I’ve been building my whole season around – Age Group Nationals!

RACE CAMPING!

I convinced Sam and a bunch of friends to head up into the mountains to spend some time in the woods. We spent Saturday afternoon playing cornhole, grilling and enjoying some cold beers. 

Sam hanging out at the camp site. 

Our cozy pre-race accommodations. 

 Once the sun went down, we started up the fire and roasted up my new favorite pre-race snack. SMORES!

(I love the way the fire is lighting up Sam’s face in this pic.)

Sunday morning came and  the birds and the sun were our alarm clock. We broke down our campsite and headed up the road to the race.

I went through my morning nutrition plan with no major changes. The one new tip that I took was my teammate Jill – a flask of my power juice. Some First Endurance PreRace to chug as I am in transition and getting ready to head to the swim. This is my secret weapon.

 The most underrated triathlon supplement.

 Team Trakkers Pride

The view of the mountains over the swim start. 

Suited up in my TYR Hurricane. I freaking LOVE this wetsuit. 

Coach gave me a different plan (compared to my usual protocol). Kill the first 200m of the swim. One of my biggest mistakes at Quassy was lining up in the way back of the swim wave and playing it super conservative. This time around I worked my up to the very front and got amped up to try to hold on to some fishie feet. It seemed like a lot of other guys in my swim wave were playing it pretty conservative, so I had plenty of room up front. I didn’t even have to fight my way through the pack once the gun went off.

You probably can’t tell from the pic above, the swim course was kind of a disaster. There was a dock right in the middle of our route and one of the buoys drifted away (but we couldn’t even see it from the beach because a boat was in the way. The RD told us to skip the second buoy that floated away, but unfortunately, I couldn’t tell where the hell it was. I couldn’t see any of the damn buoys because my wave’s caps were yellow and so were the buoys. A yellow swim cap at 20m and a big yellow buoy at 200m look absolutely identacle.

Frustrating, but who doesn’t like a challenge? Right? Unfortunately, just about everyone around my wave didn’t skip the second buoy (because we couldn’t see the third) and ended up making the course a LOT longer. So much for that swim course PR I was hoping for….

Swim Time: 30:51 (75/236)

The bike course was AWESOME. Riding through the green mountains with some great scenery on either side. The route was a pretty simple out and back, but had some nice smooth flats with some light rollers and a few steep out-of-the-saddle climbs. I was feeling really strong and kept attacking, hunting down other guys ahead of me. A few other guys got the best of me, but overall I was climbing up the standings.

Then I looked down and realized I was averaging over 21mph and still felt great. I have never even averaged over 20mph in a training ride… I went with it. God DAMN I love riding my bike.

Side note, does anyone else get some extra satisfaction when passing someone on a disc wheel when you are rocking vanilla training wheels and no aero helmet?  Cuz I do.

Bike: 1:10:53 – 21mph (36/236)

The run started off HOT and only got hotter. I dumped the rest of the water from my bike over my head before I even left transition!

I tried to keep my pace in check for the first half, so I could unleash whatever was left for the back half. Despite the heat, I was actually feeling pretty good. I even passed a girl who complimented me on my turnover. Does that mean my running is actually coming back and improving this year?!

My second favorite is this panorama shot from the age grouper swim start. Click through to see the big version.

(click the pic to see the full version)

And lastly, I sliced up some clips from the camera that I had mounted to my aerobars. Rather than show the whole video (which is a MEGA big HD file) I just threw together some of my favorite parts of the course. It just happens to be that they are almost all speedy descents. It looks like I edited parts to fast forward through them, but it is all in real time. A few of the shots are of me hitting +46 mph. I even passed the USAT official on the motorcycle a few times.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy!

Remember last month when I thought I made my season goal of qualifying for age group nationals, but missed?

Yeah. I made up for that this morning and rocked it. Hilly course and NASTY cold and wet conditions, but I got it done. (I thought my wenis was frozen off on the bike!)

I am a very happy triathlete and am psyched to be racing with some good friends in Vermont this August.

Now i just gotta tweak my training plan to make sure that I am prepared.

A killer course, hanging out with my Trakkers, Rev3 and CREW friends and all is right in the world. I initially signed up for this race back in 2009 because it was a “homecoming” for me, just 30 minutes from where I grew up and where my parents still live. This time around, my whole family was out of town so I adopted the Trakkers/Rev3 crew as my family for the weekend and joined the slumber party over at Laura’s house.

With my epic +2 week cold last month and zero training during that time, I wasn’t expecting any miracles. I actually had NO idea how I was going to do. I couldn’t even give Sam predictions on when she should watch out for me to cross the line. I was just hoping to finish under 3 hours/not embarrass myself and have fun while doing it.

But let’s talk about the race.

Pre-Race

I woke up at 5:00 after a “meh” sleep and started mixing up my nutrition bottles and packing the car. Normally I eat cereal every morning as soon as I get up, and I do the same thing before races to avoid giving my stomach any surprises. Unfortunately this morning my stomach was throwing ME a surprise. It wasn’t happy. Instead of trying to force down milk and cereal that might not be so easy to digest, I went with my plan B. Race nutrition as breakfast.

I mixed up a flask of EFS, a serving of PreRace and threw a flask of Liquid Shot into my pocket. I slowly slurped on each as I drove to Quassy and got ready to race. My stomach was happy. I got some high quality calories and sugars in me. I was hydrated. All was right with the world.

Rev3 hooked me up with an HD video camera to film the bike course. It was a little added pressure, but it is a good thing I’m a (slightly) better cyclist than swimmer and figured I’d be passing a few fish out there on the bike course and I wouldn’t look like a chump. It was also a little added incentive to stay honest and not draft (not that I do that in the first place).  I checked out the rig that they set up on my bike over night and was more worried/excited about coming back with some cool footage than a solid race time.

I socialized a little with some of teammates and friends, lubed up on Tri-Slide, hopped into my wetsuit and made my way to the swim start. I was feeling completely relaxed. No pre-race jitters. Just ready for a nice hard workout with a few hundred of my closest friends.

The Swim

I was one of the first waves and made my way through the corral. I lined up on the beach in the very back of the pack, dead center, without a care in the world. Clearly I didn’t have much of a strategy for the swim start. I’m no fish, but I was faster than a lot of guys that lined up ahead of me and had to battle my way through them for the first third of the swim. It was nice having feet to follow and leapfrog, but these feet were to slow to follow and didn’t do me too much good.

Other than that, I felt great and was LOVING my first race in my new TYR Hurricane 5. I never had a complaint about my old suit, but this thing feels SO much better. My shoulders felt so free, unrestricted and speedy. Once I finally zig zagged my way through the packs, I made my way to some open water, fell into a nice pace and was able to dial up the effort a little. Towards the end of the swim course, I had two guys on either shoulder and we were battling it out. We were literally inches from each other (unfortunately I was in the middle) but managed to hold a straight line and not bash each other’s heads in as we approached the finish.

I crawled out of the water in a decent time. Not my best, but good despite my poor choice in starting positions. (What a rookie mistake.) I even spotted Sam as I ran up the grass through transition and gave her a big smile.

Time: 27:13 (1:52 min/100m)

The Bike

A speedy transition and I was off on course. It was a little cool to start, but easily warmed up. For the first 10 miles or so, my teammate Josh and I swapped places. It was good to have a friendly face out there. I knew that is a strong cyclist, so if I could stay with him for a while (without blowing up) I’d be in a good place. We even had a little parade for a while between Josh in front, me in the middle and another teammate Mark behind me (all legal distances). We swallowed up some guy who yelled out “Where is Trakkers from anyway?!” I just responded “EVERYWHERE! I’m Boston. Georgia is up ahead. New York is behind me!”

Triathlon is definitely an individual sport, but it is a blast racing with a team full of friends.

Despite a hilly course, my avg speed was +20mph for a while. Not what I was expecting, but I felt strong and went with it. My favorite part was some of the downhills. I hit +45mph at least three times and LOVED it. I was yelling out the speeds from my bike computer so that when I reviewed the footage from the HD camera under my aerobars I could see what it looks like to go that fast on camera. Eventually the fast descents wiggled away the spoke magnet on my front wheel so I couldn’t tell how fast I was going anymore. Bummer. I gotta glue that sucker in place.

A good ride. Not a major breakthrough, but I was REALLY surprised how much bike fitness stuck with me this year. I guess I’m a little stronger than I thought.

Time: 1:19:30 (19.38mph)

The Run

While in HIMs, I usually let my legs slowly settle into running again before I dial it up to my race pace, I decided to just not listen to my legs, stick to my race pace and let them adjust. I t worked too! I stick to low 7:00 min/miles for the first 2-3 miles and felt good.

Then the hills came. And kept coming. They were brutal. I cried. But just a little. And they were masked in sweat so no one noticed and it was okay. They definitely took a toll on my legs, but I still felt alright and kept pushing through. The one thing about both the Oly and HalfRev run courses at Quassy is that they both finish the same. One. Big. Nasty. Hill. You can just barely hear the music in the distance to motivate you up it, but it is KILLER. It totally makes you work for it. But after that, it is flat and wide open all the way to the finish.

Happiness.

Time: 51:25 (8:18 min/mile)

Total: 2:42:02

I was only :30 seconds off of my PR. And on the hardest Oly course that I have ever done! Clearly a major surprise given my expectations. A good time, a great race and I can’t wait to race it again next year.

Yeah, forget that.

Between me misunderstanding the USAT Age Group Nationals qualifying standards, misreading the race results and being a little bit of an idiot, I thought that I qualified and earned my spot to race in Burlington, VT this August. Once I double-checked the rules and with some friends that actually HAD put in the work to qualify, I realized that we were not in the same club.

I could have sworn that I read the rules dozens of times and I was SO confident that I understood how USAT’s crazy complicated qualifying standards worked, but I could not have been more wrong. For some reason I thought I just had to podium in a USAT sanctioned race, but in reality I had to get in the top 10% at my race yesterday. VERY different things. Since I came in third, but only 6 guys from my age group showed up on Sunday morning, only the top finisher in my AG earned a slot. At least he was far enough ahead of me that I know if I brought my “A” game, he would have still schooled me.

Based on the ACTUAL rules, my plan of qualifying by racing a short race with a small field was totally bunk since the less people in my AG that show up, the less people there are that actually earn a spot.

Now my premature celebration just makes me sad, frustrated, annoyed, a little heartbroken and embarrassed. I got a huge outpouring of friends congratulating me on my  accomplishment, which made me even MORE excited about the race yesterday. But now it only makes it harder to now have to turn around and say “Thanks, but JUST KIDDING!”

So what am I going to do now? I have no clue. I’m trying to figure that out as I write this…

Looking at the REAL qualifying rules, other possible qualifying races and last year’s results, I’ll have to PR the Olympic distance by about 25-30 minutes, not the 10 minutes that I was expecting. I’m thinking that is expecting a lot, especially since my training this season hasn’t kicked off like I’d hoped it would. Maybe I’ll just hope a pothole takes out some fast guys ahead of me on the bike leg of my next race and I can coast my way to Burlington…

Fuck. Having to face reality instead of my fabricated dreamland SUCKS.

Oh well. New game plan. Race with friends. Have a blast. If I happen to qualify without trying, enjoy it. If not, keep racing with friends. Keep having a blast.

I had hopes of qualifying last wekend at the New England season opener, but since I couldn’t even sleep through the night without coughing up goobers constantly, that obviously didn’t happen. Twelve days of sickness and zero working out put a cramp in those plans. The good news is that I recovered JUST in time for a replacement race. I’ve never done a race before with an AG placing goal, and it was really freaking me out in the days leading up to the race. I was all manic and checking the racer list to see how many people were in my age group, see if there were any speedy names I recognized, or make guesses on if they were random newbies or super fast MIT grad students or something. NOT fun. Even Sam noticed that I was getting testy and apparently I snapped at her a few times. (Sorry babe.)

I realized that mess wasn’t healthy, so I just focused on what I could control. Myself. I squeezed in quick check up spin on Saturday, stretched out the legs and realized I was good to go.

Obviously with almost two weeks of bed rest, I’m not exactly in peak condition, but I figured if I had another opportunity at qualifying, I might as well jump on it. I detached my tri bike from the trainer first time all year, loaded up the car and headed out to the race start.

I even noticed myself roaming around transition, scoping out really fit looking 2o-something guys and trying to size them up. I was freaking out. It was NOT awesome. I had to stop myself and just focus on my own game plan.

I knew that the race would need some seriously deep diggin’ so I loaded up on some First Endurance Pre-Race and about 200 calories of EFS Liquid Shot while I waited for the swim to start.

The sprint was a pool swim with a staggered start, with each swimmer going off 20 seconds after one another. Great for avoiding a crazy violent swim start, but it makes for a really difficult race in terms of racing and hunting down the competition. In the end, I just had to do my own race and let the beans fall where they may.

The swim: Super short 250 yards. I am not used to swimming that hard for that short. It was pretty awkward. I could have definitely gone faster, but oh well. It would have only saved me a few seconds anyway… I managed a 1:36 pace. Not spectacular, but good enough to get things started.

The bike: I had a good transition and immediately started hammering. I was hoping that all the time I spent on my CycleOps JetFluid Pro this offseason paid off and that my bike fitness was going to stay with me through the sickness. Thankfully, I was right. Not my peak performance, but I was able to hunt down plenty of people ahead of me without too much trouble and gain a few extra places. The course was really hilly and windy, but I was able to lay the hurt on some people and eventually caught up to Senator Scott Brown who started a few minutes ahead of me. (Thankfully he was wearing more clothes than this picture, but I did think doing a sprint tri in a sleeveless ankle-length swimskin was an interesting choice.) In the end, I knocked out an average of 19.92 mph. Not too shabby for just coming off a nasty cold, eh?

The Run: I laced up my my brand new Avia Bolts and was on my way. I love how comfortable they are to slip on without socks, tie really fast and be out of T2 in a hurry.

But the run is where I knew that the hurtin’ would come. And unfortunately it was on my end, not on the competition’s side. My run fitness definitely suffered a lot more than my bike fitness during my workout hiatus, but I kept on pushing. Scott was teasing me, staying JUST out of reach for the first mile or so until I finally reeled him in as he started complaining about his hamstring. I made a friendly joke as I passed, and tried desperately to leave him in my dust, but I know he was hot on my tail. One guy in my AG passed me, but he was WELL above my pace and I knew I couldn’t even hope to stay with him. I just hoped that I was now racing for second or third place, and not fourth. My legs were killin me, but I could feel the Pre Race pushing myself forward, so I went with it. I was able to hold off Scottie and held up a 7:28 pace.

I was nice and waited past the finish line for Scott and took the opportunity to congratulate him and shake his hand as he came through the chute.

I made some friends in the transition area as I waited for the rest of the competitors to roll in and tried not to freak out about who else was out there and how I did. I just tried to ignore it and hope for the best. I put it a solid effort, there was nothing else to do now.

Eventually the results were posted and I managed to knock out third place in my age group. Good enough for earning a place in Age Group Nationals! Burlington, here I come baby.

And this one is for the ladies…

I have been consistently coughing up a few pounds of snot for the last six days and was a no show on the start line yesterday. Even while medicated, I know that the race would have been a complete disaster and would have been really disappointed in my performance, so it wasn’t too much of an emotional hit. I do really wish that I was at least well enough to have gone to cheer on my friends that were out racing, but that didn’t make sense either.

As the gun went off, I was sitting at the clinic getting advice on what meds to take to keep myself from drowning in boogers. I did at least get a little smile when the nurse practitioner was impressed my my low resting heart rate…

I tried working out a few times too, but it just made me feel lightheaded and a lot worse.

At day six, there still aren’t any signs of improvement, but I have picked out a new replacement race to try and snatch up my AG Nationals slot.

Let’s just hope I can kick this thing before the next starting gun goes off.

I am going to try running and biking again with the new meds and am hoping for better better results. I am already starting to get twitchy from the lack of exercise.

I’ve decided that without committing to any 2011 races, I’m useless. So this is the list that I came up with so far. Not too much winter racing so that I can spend plenty of time on the ski slopes, focusing on shorter local races, but it only gives me two chances to race the olympic distance and try to qualify for age group nationals. Not too psyched about that. Any races that I’m missing here?

February – Hyannis Half Marathon
May – New England Season Opener (sprint)
June 4 – Rev3 Quassy Olympic
June 26 – Cohasset Triathlon (sprint)
July 9 – Nubble Light 2.4 Mile Swim Challenge
July 17, Massachusetts State Triathlon (olympic)
August 20, Age Group Nationals

Additional Suggestions:

June 25 – North Country Triathlon (olympic)
August (late) – Kennebunk FireMan Triathlon (olympic)

I used it as a training run since I am in NO shape to race a 5k. I’m getting back into the game very soon, but not just yet. I did the race with my camera tucked away in my costume and snapped some pics along the way as I cheered on the rest of the superheros.

It is pretty easy to not worry about pre-race jitters when everyone looks as ridiculous as this…

Starting Line

Running backwards, checking out the field.

The Incredibles

Thundercats!

Staypuff Marshmallow man. Yeah, he was the winner. Cuz he ran 3 miles in that thing.

Scooby Doo and the gang.

Then there was this guy. Good thing it was an unusually warm Fall day in boston!