Another Perfect Weekend

This past Sunday the New York City Triathlon hosted the the Paratriathlon national championships for the seventh consecutive year. I, too, was there for a seventh go at it. As one my expect, everything over the weekend went perfectly and life was enriched because of it.

The notables started, as they often do, at the airport on the way out of Denver. I took advantage of the technology Expedia offered and downloaded my itinerary—which my prosthetics provider A Step Ahead of Hicksville, NY provided me—directly to my computer’s calendar. This made it so easy to keep track of my departure time and, hence, show up with plenty of time to spare. Nevertheless, I missed yet another flight.

Let it be a lesson to you all that despite a departure from the Mountain time zone, the downloaded version of your itinerary could be on Eastern time.

The nice lady behind the counter at check-in actually remembered me from my flight to South Africa a couple of months back. She kindly checked, free of charge, my bike and bag a healthy 14 hours before my newly scheduled 1:00AM flight, making it a breeze to head back home and cook up a delicious kale soup to enjoy with my family and neighbors in our driveway—the kids played on bikes and scooters while the day’s light dwindled. After dinner and toddler clean-up, I snuck in an hour of shut-eye before heading back to DIA for the red-eye.

Airline sleep is typically difficult to come-by so I did something completely novel for me: I brought my own pillow! And it worked perfectly. I had a whole row to myself, laid my head upon my personal bedding and slept so well they had to wake me up on the tarmac in NYC after everyone had already deplaned. Perfect.

It was then 6:30AM EST and the nice people at Delta ensured me that despite my luggage’s alternate route to Minneapolis, it would be in by 2pm and delivered to my hotel by 6pm. This would make my trip into the city so much smoother without having to lug that bike with me. Perfect.

At 6pm the nice lady at Delta’s baggage counter informed me that my stuff had been noted as “Departed,” but just to make sure she’d check it’s progress toward Manhattan. “Looks like it never left the deck. It’ll got out on the 8pm delivery, you’ll have it by 9.”  The mandatory bike check-in would close at 9PM. Wow. How perfect.

At 9PM, with the delivery remaining elusive, Delta assured my things would be at the hotel by the wee hours.

I slept well, perhaps as good as I’ve ever slept before a race, knowing that my machine would be with me when I awoke.

The wake-up call came at 4AM and I immediately proclaimed, as I’ve done many time before, “Rrrrrace Dayyyyyy!” I headed right downstairs to put my bike together so as to arrive at the race start no later than 5AM. But it wasn’t there…

I pulled out my iPhone to make a few calls, eager to come up a bike somehow. The first couple calls provided nothing; the third call was a winner: Justin Modell, a local triathlete and the organizer of the paratriathlon division, had a bike for me and, since he was already at the race, he made the call to his doorman to let me in. I cabbed it over, grabbed his bike and his right shoe and peddled my way to the race, arriving at 5:15AM, in the clothes I’d donned 36 hours prior.

(I would later learn that my bike and wetsuit arrived, in perfect timing, the moment I jumped in the water to start the race at 7:10AM, by a company aptly named, no joke, Perfect Delivery Service!)

Surprisingly, without the wetsuit, I swam one of my faster races there and exited under 17 minutes, ninety seconds ahead of the fastest one-legged triathlete out there: JP Theberge. That 90 seconds turned hard into a seven minute deficit. I had a tough time riding crunched up on a too-small road bike with my bike leg unable to clip in on the mismatched pedal/cleat combo, i.e., I was unable to pull up with the prosthesis or get out of the saddle—JP blazed by me about a third of the way through the ride.

Without my speed lace race shoe I was forced to sit and tie the lace of the race shoe I’d traveled in (probably doesn’t mean much to most of you) and stopped twice before exiting transition to stretch my aching crunched-up back, making for a very slow T2.

I knew I was at least seven to eight minutes off pace of JP when I saw him coming the other way from the 180 turnaround near the bike finish. So, with no hopes of winning, and with the thin skin from the recently-healed blister from the previous weekend’s race, I sucked it up and pre-emptively rebooted a few times on the run. This, I’m happy to say, resulted my first blister-free finish of seven there. More perfection.

(I must note that JP had a fantastic finish time of 2:19, edged only by the ageless and legendary One Arm Willie Stewart. Wingers Joel Rosinbum and Tommy Knapp also had great races and I wrapped up the top five. The top five on the women’s side were visually impaired Robin Caruso, below knee amp Meg Fisher, VI Yvonne Mosquera, wheel-bound Carly Waugh and in fifth was my very good friend and one of my worldwide favorite people, above-knee amp Sandy Dukat.)

So don’t let this photo fool you. I wasn’t stomping mad at Mile 1 as I ran straight at Erik Shaffer, my prosthetist and sponsor from A Step Ahead. I was, atypically, just having a little fun on the run.

The last little bit of perfection relative to the race transpired a couple days later: my customer service experience with both the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission and Yellow Cab was so much more satisfying than that with Delta. After a series of phone calls placed by myself and the lovely Dr Sharon Wetherall, FedEx delivered my iPhone I had dropped in the back of the cab at JFK!

(Regarding the photo, that was kinda how I felt sitting on the tarmac for two hours, waiting to depart, when I discovered the missing phone…)

Love Thy Competition

Sunday morning at 7AM I sat on the 95th Street pier jutting out in to the Hudson River, thinking I knew how the NYC Triathlon/ParaTriathlon National Championship was about to unfold. The only one-legged man to ever beat me in a triathlon was sitting 15 feet to my right, five years older than he was when we last raced. That’s only meaningful because that makes him 50, presumably a bit slower that he used to be. However, his comment just minutes before we entered the water, strategically placed perhaps, that he just won the 50-54 age-group (able-bodied) at Brazil’s National Championships left me thinking he hasn’t lost too much.

Historically, he’s always buried in the swim and it’s a flip who’d beat who on the bike and run. This year I figured swimming with the current would deflate his lead some and perhaps I could better him on both the bike and run and we’d have an exciting sprint to the finish.

My 16:34 swim was solid and I came out not too far behind him, in stride with Jeff Glasbrenner and just a few seconds in front of J.P. Theberge, who’s been creeping closer and closer to my finish times over the past several years. For the first time in our many matchups, I was in transition along side Rivaldo, who took longer than I would expect to get out on the bike.

As I’m leaving T1, my aero bottle was all but falling out of its holder, which required me to stop and waste about 30 extremely frustrating seconds trying to fix it. I knew if I didn’t I might potentially suffer far worse losses from dehydration. In the meantime Rivaldo pulled away and both J.P. and Jeff joined me simultaneously in the chase. This was shaping up to be an exciting race. Never before have the first two, never mind the first four BKs, been so close to each other in any world-class triathlon, ever.

In the 12 miles that took us out to Yonkers, I relinquished about five seconds to Rivaldo. After the turnaround I didn’t see J.P. coming the other way, but presumed I had been opening up the gap as he has yet to match me on the bike. No sooner do I wonder just how far back he is, when he passes me! I was sincerely impressed and sincerely appreciate the competition. Rivaldo remained in our sites as the two of us exchanged leads over the next few miles.

Then he opened up a gap that kept getting bigger. His slightly inefficient body English told me he was working very hard, harder than me, it seemed. I didn’t have too much more power to provide and I opted to let him go and chase both him Rivaldo down on the run, which has been pretty good to me lately.

I entered transition after a 1:08:06 ride (not my fastest nor my slowest of my six consecutive NYC Tri’s) as JP exited and was out about five seconds behind Rivaldo when crossing the T2 exit mat (like in T1, he wasn’t so speedy in T2). I passed him before too long and kept up the best pace I could—not a terribly fast one but the best I could muster. Even on 72nd St, where athletes could see a good stretch in front of them, I didn’t see JP and wondered just how fast the guy was running!

Along that stretch the four inch long rubber tread on my run prosthesis became nearly completely unglued and was flapping underfoot, not tripping me but on every step it would drag across the pavement, and occasionally I’d step on it as it folded underneath, leaving me terribly frustrated. Beside the course I saw my prosthetist and Amy Winters, our Team A Steap Ahead manager, about a mile later. I barked out my issue hoping they might have an answer. A couple minutes later Amy pulled up next to me on her mountain bike, pulled a couple hair bands out of her ponytail and temporarily secured my tread. That only took 15-20 seconds and I was right back in the hunt. (I acknowledge that this would be considered “outside assistance,” reason for disqualification under USA Triathlon rules, I believe. If anyone reports me, so be it.)

Some of you might recall that in T2 of the last triathlon I raced, I forgot to switch my bike liner for a fresh run liner and PR’d the latter discipline. This gave me all the reason I needed to purposefully forgo the liner change in pursuit of J.P. Whether or not replacing it would have made a difference I really don’t know, but the leg got a bit lose and Stumpy began to moan about Mile 3, and I didn’t stop until Mile 4 for a reboot. Nice big pink open blister looked up at me. With the liner and leg back on securely I got back at it. By Mile 5 I had to stop momentarily for a leg dangle as both the blister and gimp-side calf cramp called for it. I hadn’t seen J.P. in a couple of the longer stretches I could see in Central Park and all but bowed out of the quest for first. Just then Rivaldo passed me, which gave me all the motivation I needed to tough out that last mile as fast as I could.

My 46:27 run (again, I’ve gone both faster and slower here…and I was expecting something faster) was almost two minutes slower than J.P. and I crossed the line 20 seconds ahead of Rivaldo.

The close battle with my former nemesis—seems I’ve got a new one now—was very much expected. Getting schooled by J.P. was a little bit of a surprise, but not totally. The man’s been strong since he entered the scene several years ago and has been getting faster every race. And every ear I hear “J.P.’s fit and looking fast this year.” I believe we last raced in 2007 when I got him by a 13 minutes.

So, all due respect Champ, but it wasn’t you I was worried about. I can honestly say that I’m impressed as hell by your commitment and dedication to training—with a real job and three kids—with the goal of taking that top spot. Furthermore, I appreciate the fire you’ve stoked not only under me but also my wife who has just granted me two hours of training each day to catch you at Worlds on September 12!

PS - I’d like to thank Affinia Hotels for providing phenomenal accomodations for my family over the weekend.