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Race Result

Racer: Erik Melis
Race: Tupper Lake Tinman Sprint
Date: Saturday, June 27, 2009
Location: Tupper Lake, NY
Race Type: Triathlon - Sprint
Age Group: Male 50 - 54
Time: 2:33:33
Overall Place: 49 / 114
Age Group Place: 3 / 7
Comment: Hardware is always a nice treat ** long reprot **



Race Report:



Race Report – Tinman Sprint Triathlon, Tupper Lake, NY, June 27, 2009

Pre-race and race morning activities

This race was a last minute addition to the race calendar. While vacationing with my wife in Lake Placid, we decided it would be fun to race together once before she has to return to Afghanistan next week. Since I just did the Eagleman two weeks ago and since my wife’s training has been VERY limited in Afghanistan for the past 8 months, we decided the sprint distance at Tinman might be well suited for both of us. Now, this race is classified as a Sprint but has in addition to the 0.6 mile swim, an 18.6 mile bike (longer as measured by myself as several other competitors) and a 6.2 mile run. I think we’ll reclassify this race as a Sprinternational.

We did registration and packet pickup on Friday before the race. The race director was kind enough to let us into the race even though the registration had closed. I opted NOT to take advantage of being body marked the night before since we feared we’d ruin the bed sheets in the rental house we were occupying.

Friday night we were treated with some serious rain, wind, and thunderstorms. The rain was reminiscent of the rain we had last year during IM Lake Placid. Little did we know that this was an omen.

We left for Tupper Lake around 5 am on Saturday, stopping briefly at Dunkin donuts to get a couple of bagels and coffee to go with our bananas and peanut butter. I wanted to get there early not knowing how crowded parking might get. Word to anyone doing this race in the future – you don’t need to get there THAT early. We were there about 5:45 and that was too early – my apologies to my wife for dragging her out early into the rain that was already falling.

We got body marked, picked up our timing chips, racked our bikes and then went back to the car to eat our pre-race breakfast and relax a bit. I decided to agree to my wife’s request that we wait a bit to set up our transition areas and just chill in the nice dry, warm car for a while.

As race time drew closer, and the rain showers abated a bit, we went and set up the transition areas (we were across the rack from each other which was convenient and gave me something nice to look at as a pre-race treat).

We went back to the car until about 30 minutes prior to our swim wave time and then put our wetsuits on and headed to the swim corrals and the beach.


Swim (21:37 – 3:37/100m)

We took the opportunity of being among the first in the swim corral area to get some warm-up time in. The water was actually a pretty decent temperature which was a nice treat. The entire Sprint group (about 120 of us) was scheduled to go off as the first wave with the full Tinman waves not starting for 10-minutes after us. This was a enjoyable given my recent late wave starts. As I warmed up, I noticed some leakage issues with the new tinted goggles that I had bought for the race. I did some adjustments and thought I had them fixed and headed to the corral. Five minutes before wave start we were allowed to wade into the water for an in-water start. I looked around and found I had seeded myself in the front, a place I do not like to be. Now, common sense told me to move back, but testosterone or something made me stay. (I thought my testosterone was going to be held in check during the swim by my hot pink swim cap but obviously there was leakage there too.) The “GO” was given and off we went. I immediately began to get pummeled by the other swimmers at the front but took their humility-check beating in stride. What I didn’t anticipate was that my goggles started seriously leaking on the left side almost immediately after the start. There’s nothing I find more annoying than having water in one of your eyepieces sloshing back and forth across your eyeball while trying to sight a straight line in the swim. I tried unsuccessfully reseating the goggles while swimming and even while stopping and even tried swimming with one eye closed. Finally I just had to grin and bear and do the best I could with the wardrobe malfunction. I think my swim would have been a bit faster had the goggle issue not occurred. Lesson learned- don’t try out new gear on race day – duh…

T1 (2:33)

Since the water was not as cold as the last couple races, I wasn’t quite as wobbly coming out of the water. The runout to transition was a little long but gave me the chance to start removing my wetsuit. The rain had started to fall more steadily so that made transition all the more fun. A little faster transition than Eagleman (by 2 minutes) so that’s good.

Bike (1:04:22 – 17.3 mph)

The bike course at Tinman for the Sprint is definitely full of decent rollers and some nice little climbs. The trick to this course in many spots is to pound the downhills and try to maintain as much momentum on the subsequent ups as possible. My weight assisted me greatly with momentum building on the downhills and then betrayed me on the ups. I’ll have to work on that one in earnest. The rain at times was falling very hard and stinging. The shoulder on the road in many places was too dicey to ride on so folks took a path in the right portion of the regular lane which made passing a little trickier since the roads were not closed to traffic. I tried pushing the bike as much as possible since I like leaving my running legs on the bike course – not really but it’s a lesson that I just refuse to learn. One descent, which was during our return to town, I hit 43 mph in the rain and while the rain stung, the speed was sweet. Passed more folks than passed me during the bike but figured they’d catch me on the run to pay me back so what the heck. Saw my wife near the turnaround and she was looking strong. I was very proud of her for doing this race given the little training she’s had while in Afghanistan for the past 8 months and because the only swimming she’s done has been while she’s been on leave and because she had to ride a rented bike that wasn’t fitted quite right, was significantly heavier than her own bike, and had no aero bars. Got back to the transition area just as the rain let up a bit and felt the pain in my legs that I knew I’d feel for the next 6.2 miles.

T2 (3:17)

The run in with the bike was very short. Because my feet were soaked and because my feet are very sensitive to running wet, I took the time during T2 to change socks. This would prove to be time I could just as easily have saved myself. T2 much faster than Eagleman (by almost 2:30), despite changing my socks.

Run (1:01:46 – 9:58 pace)

We had scoped out the run course the day before and had seen the elevation profile and knew that the first three or so miles of the run course had a definite upward trend so I tried to pace my tired legs accordingly and tried to be conscious of how my neuromas were feeling. I no sooner started the gradual climbing than the “you needn’t have bothered changing your socks” rain started. At points in the first three miles the rain was as heavy if not heavier than that we experienced in Lake Placid during the Ironman last year. I just kept moving along reminding myself of the lesson learned last year – you can only get SO wet, everything else just rolls off. Finally got to the gradual downward sloping portion of the course and just tried to keep letting gravity help me get to the finish line. Got near the finishing line chute and turned on the afterburners to sprint across the finish line and get my finisher’s medal (an unexpected treat since I thought they’d only give these to the full
Tinman finishers).

Post race

After cooling off and getting some grub, I checked out the posted results and was shocked to see that unofficially (barring the application of any USAT penalties), I had finished 3rd of 7 in my age group. I also saw, and this was even more impressive to me given what I already mentioned about my wife’s training, that she was 4th of 9 in her age group…she’s a little studette…

Summary and lessons learned

Swim: make sure my gear has been well tested and adjusted prior to the race…no new gear for race day

Bike: learn to rein in my inner biking beast to save something for the run or else switch to racing as a relay team member; drop some weight to increase the power to weight ratio for hilly races (like Timberman coming up in August)

Run: my neuromas felt amazingly good (as pain goes) during and after the run – I think a combination of gel insoles combined with metatarsal pads combined with switching from forefoot to midfoot dominant foot striking may be the key to our living together in peace.

Transitions: keep practicing

Overall, it was a PR for me at this distance, the Sprinternational distance, and I got hardware so I’m thrilled with it. I’m definitely hoping to improve on that with Timberman in August and with the Patriot’s Half in September.