Rather than taking the time to organize a cogent, insightful race report, I’m taking the easy way out. Here are 10 race day experiences that are fresh in my mind and still make me smile.

1. It’s all relative. I saw Timex teammate Luis Alverez in T1, he looked at me and said “I had a terrible swim…..but you had a good one.” Funny (to me) but true.
2. Swim your age. Talk about great swims, Dean Harper swam his age (55) in Kona. Eat your hearts out golfers. Dean’s in my age group and it is not funny to come out of the water 18 minutes behind this year’s National Age Group Champion.
3. Just a training ride. 10 miles into the bike, my training partner, John Wilson, rolls past me. After riding thousands of miles with him, I know that it will behoove me to keep him in sight. As Dave Scott told the team at lunch “Everyone can ride 50 miles fast.” Smart pacing helps and we negative split the bike.
4. Jibe Ho! I watch the pros coming downhill back from Hawi tacking back and forth across the road, holding on to their bullhorns because of the wind. I resolve not to employ the “aero or die” position on this section of the bike course and survive to reach the bottom.
5. Perfect information.My wife, Joanne, is strategically stationed at mile 2 of the run to provide me with information of how I stand in my age group. All sorts of potential race strategies unfold in my mind as I run the first 2 miles. When I pass her I get no information. Later she tells me everyone over 45 looks the same. I don’t know if that means we all look 45 or 65.
6. UH OH! A little after the run turn-a-around at mile 5, I see Yves Tabarant, who is in my age group, running toward me. He is running faster than I am. I spend the next 2 hours and 45 minutes listening for his footsteps behind me. Not fun. I silently practice introducing myself in French for when he passes me. Not helpful. I try to stop thinking.
7. 60 year old guy. At the race meeting, head ref, Jimmy Riccitello, tells the men to swallow their pride and let the women who catch them pass on the bike. “You’re not racing them” he says. Reinhold Humboldt, who is 60, is ahead of me on the run. I foolishly ignore Jimmy’s advice and resolve to uphold the honor of 55 year olds by running past Reinhold. I don’t know any German, what do I say when he passes me back? I try to stop thinking again.
8. Cool Breeze on the Queen K. Usually, I hope it is hot during the run. I figure this makes the run longer for everyone and running is what I’m relatively better at. Since I’m being chased by a better runner, I welcome the cool breeze that’s blowing when we leave town on the Queen K and begin hoping for rain. I want the run to be as short as possible but I have 16 miles to go.
9. Screw the photo. I run across the finish line with someone else. I am worried about about getting caught from behind up until the last moment. It’s nice to finish first in the age group.
10. The Johnny Winter effect. I get about 2 seconds on the Ironman live finish video cam. My training partner, John Wilson, has a great day, finishes top 10 in the tough 50-54 AG and holds the camera’s attention well past the finish. The camera loves this guy, it won’t cut away. It’s the Johnny Winter (legendary albino blues guitarist), white hair effect. Next time I race, I’m getting a dye job.

I head over to the local high school track only during my taper period. Other times I can find some place more fun or convenient to run. Today was an hour run, jog over, 4 X 1 mi. at a little higher than Ironman effort and jog back. Looks like this:

See those 4 bumps, they’re sub 7 minute miles. I do them to remind myself what it feels like to run after doing all those Ironman jogging miles and to remind myself that I won’t be running anything close to that speed on race day.

“In the factory, we make cosmetics; in the store, we sell hope.” - Charles Revson, founder, Revlon

I concluded recently that there is a lot of hope being sold in the cycling business when I abandoned some of mine. I have come to terms with the fact that I will never need the top gear (53 x 11) spec-ed on my Trek Equinox TTX. And, unless their nickname is “colossal quads”, I question how many triathletes really need this intra planetary, over-drive, 126.6 inch top gear. ( See Sheldon Brown’s Gear Calculator for an explanation of gear inches.) There are no sprint bonuses in the Ironman and there is that activity called the run which usually follows the biking portion of the race.

Wouldn’t most triathletes be better served giving up the 11 cog and adding a easier granny or bailout gear? I think so and did last year when I added the largest cog that Shimano makes for a 10 speed (a 12 X 27) just before Ironman Wisconsin. (It’s So Easy Having An Enormous Cog) But is that the best way? I don’t think it is.

Compact cranks, which have smaller chain rings (e.g. 50/34) and a smaller spider hole pattern (110mm versus 130mm) offer another way to get some easier gears by giving up a hard one. There is an excellent analysis of the gearing options available with a compact in this Slowtwitch article.

To summarize, a 53/39 chain ring with a 12×27 cassette provides about the same gearing as a compact crank with a 50/34 with an 11×23 cassette. The compact gives you a slightly taller top gear, you can think of it as a 53 chain ring with an 11 2/3 cog if it makes you feel better, and the basically same size granny gear. The gear spacing with the 11×23 + compact crank is more even than spacing with a 12×27 and, all things being equal, it will be a little lighter.

By themselves these small advantages probably aren’t enough to justify buying a compact cranks . So how come I own a new one? Because I can see the day coming when I’ll need BOTH compact cranks AND a large cog. Despite it’s real world advantages, I don’t expect to see compact cranks spec-ed on the TTX any time soon; reality doesn’t sell.

You know you’re old when you’re assigned to the “seniors’ wave” at the swim start of the Eagleman 70.3 triathlon. (Or when your blog title references a song popular in 1976.) These ’seasoned athletes’ (M55+, W50+) got to start just 5 minutes after the first pros’ wave. And they got a huge 10 minutes lead on the following wave of whipper-snappers. And they got their own jet ski (4-stroke!) to lead the wave round the course. And the water was mill pond flat for this wet suit swim. And if that’s not enough to have you itching to age up, imagine a swim start free of the usual 200 yards of water-boarding instigated by those with broad shoulders and slow run splits. You’d have to be a stone with arms to swim 35 minutes with help like this, which is what I did. But I was happy because, since no one has combined swim goggles and reading glasses, I mis-read my watch and thought I’d had a :30 swim. I’ve swum :30 before, but less and less often since race directors began using GPS to measure the courses.

A secondary benefit of the seniors’ wave is an empty bike course. The pros are long gone and I biked alone with no one in sight for much of the course. I pretended I was Wolfgang Dietrich, the man who has spent more time in the lead of the Hawaii Ironman than any other, but never at the end. We have that in common. I was passed by a few of the young guys from later waves, but I was the first one to ‘represent’ the seniors’ wave when I started the run.

You know what’s important to have as you age into the seniors’ wave? Younger friends and training partners. And someone who is both, John Wilson, was racing behind me, having started in a wave later mine. Since he’s a good friend, I really didn’t want him to catch me on the run, as in, “I’m here with you but I’m really 10 minutes ahead of you”. Ouch! It was hot on the run, my heart rate was right where I wanted it and I still couldn’t read my watch; so I thought I was smoking the run. I wasn’t but neither was anyone else.

I won the M55-59 age group and guess who won the M50-54? Check out the photo! The winner is my friend and training partner John Wilson who I was intent on avoiding on the course. If you don’t know us, guess who’s 50 and who’s 55. HA! It’s hard for spectators too, who say “way to go, first gray-haired fininsher!”. I know, the lighting is bad in the photo, there’s a row of port-a-potties in the background and we appear to be holding chicken heads. But imagine what it would be like for you to win your AG and have the person you spend more training time with than anyone else also win. Well, it’s cooler than that and I realized that all this getting older and slower isn’t all that bad.

Eagleman Tip:

If you’re driving north after the race and crave a cheeseburger and fries, here’s the spot, in Bear DE. The Charcoal Pit. 10 oz. of angus beef, fries,and yep, we ordered fried onion rings too.

Another spring a long time ago, I traveled from home in snowy New England to a different triathlon in the sport’s Mecca, southern California. As I pulled on my wetsuit for the first time that year, one of the natives looked at my pale winter skin and asked,
“Dude, do most of your training at night?”

Ouch! This spring I spent the week before the Ford Ironman 70.3 California on vacation in the Virgin Islands working on my tan. I was brown when I toed the race’s starting line, but wondered if I’d feel the effects of spending 7 nights on an island where rum is cheaper than tonic. I was not to find out.

The swim wasn’t as cold as I’d expected, and I’ll give a shameless plug for team sponsor Blueseventy’s neoprene skull cap, these things work. Hey, how about this action shot?
And check out the guns and the tan as I’m justing starting the bike portion of the race.

And here’s a picture of my bike after 10 minutes of biking.
Crash! Not only did I bust the bike, bend a race wheel and DNF, all for the first time, but I left some vacation tan on the road. Ouch indeed.