From XL to XTERRA

About a year ago, I scoffed at the notion of running the 4.2 miles from the Lower Base Beach to the top of Mount Tapochao during the Turkey Trot because the night before Thanksgiving is traditionally the biggest party night of the year.

I had plans of calling it a night and rolling into the driveway at about the time the misguided runners would be showing up to register for the uphill sweat fest.

How things can change in 12 months time. A few weeks ago John and I nailed down the Trot, and two weeks ago we earned our mettle when we competed in our first duathlon. We’ve come a long way from acting like a couple of turkeys—even if we still tend to monkey around.

Since we began our quest for zest about a month and a half ago, we have logged more hours running, swimming, and biking than either of us have in the last nine years.

Coming off our success in the MTEC Tank-2-Tank Aquathon, we decided to make a light week of our training in preparation for the second event in the Northern Marianas Triathlon Federation’s Enticer Series.

A couple of weeks before, we decided to skip over the 300-meter swim, 9-kilometer bike, and 2km run of the Enticer and jump into the sprint distance. While we have each taken on further distances of each of the three sports individually, this was by far the most of each that we had combined in one session.

Not wanting to be undernourished, I had a carb-friendly meal and plenty of water the night before the Enticer to ready myself for the 600m swim, 18km bike, and 4km run.

The only thing that I was lacking come race time was a decent night’s sleep. I was both anxious and nervous while I lay awake in the hours prior to the race, and I managed only about 90 minutes worth of shut-eye.

Looking back on it, I really had nothing to worry about, but that still didn’t keep me from my futile counting of a herd of leaping lambs.

When it finally came down to race time, I was fine, but when the whistle sounded to start the swim, I had a flashback to the congested splash fest that was the Aquathon swim.

About 100m into it, I noticed that I was taking a more direct route to the large orange floating buoy, and with all of the room in the water I had managed to get ahead of a lot of people.

I was further energized when I found myself alongside a couple of seasoned veterans—In fact, I was even worried that I may have been over swimming the race.

As stoked as I was about my progress, I looked back when I made the turn to see that my partner in crime was about 30m behind me.

John was a champ for competing in the sprint distance alone, but he was moving through the water at one heck of a clip.

From the water, I ran on the beach to my bike, toweled off the feet, strapped on the sneaks, and pedaled away.

Besides that the distance in this race was triple that of the November race, the first difference that I noticed was that my legs felt a lot heavier when I started the bike course. After a while it got better, and though it was a little discouraging when three of the stud bikers flew past me, I was instantly juiced when my turn to pass arrived.

Nothing feels better than singling out the closest person to you and overtaking him. The closer I came to them atop my finely tuned two-wheel machine from Romey at Saipan Bike Pro, the more I felt that I was stalking my prey. I just hoped that they didn’t try to keep up with me and tire me out.

Toward the end of the bike course, I remembered that since we were growing up in the world of tri that there would be no volunteers to take our gear through the transition point this time around.

About 200m out, I began to take off my gloves, and when I got to my rack I dropped off the bike, gloves, and helmet, donned my XTERRA cap from last year, and started running.

I felt great! There were no jelly legs this time out, and I just kept “picking ‘em up and putting ‘em down” for the next two and a half mile or so until the finish. Being as this was John’s first triathlon, he had yet to experience the power of the jelly:

“I managed to catch my breath and eke out the 11.2-mile ride to the Marpi landfill and back, and I knew which event in which I needed the most improvement when front-runner and all-around triathlon ‘Bad Mutha’ Chris Fryling was lapping me on the bike before I hit the half-way point.

“After I finished the bike, I managed to belly-flop myself onto the pavement, but nobody tells you that after you bike ride a bunch of miles, then try to run immediately, your legs protest and stage a coup against the rest of your body.

“Somehow, my legs of strawberry preserve didn’t buckle under my tremendous girth, and I managed to balance to stay upright, and finish off the 4K run.”

Back to me. When I was in the home stretch of the run, I saw the winner of the November Enticer ahead of me, and after a brief mental argument with myself about picking up the pace; I took off at a sprint to pass Wayne Bramlet.

Arms and legs a-chugging, I went as fast as I could to catch him, but fell one second shy at the finish line. I really wanted to pass that one last person at the end, but I was still pretty happy with my overall performance since his time was some four and a half minutes better than mine in November.

John was also pretty pleased with his performance, and he made mention to a continuing trend of support that we have been experiencing since we started a month and a half ago:

“All griping aside, I finished the triathlon with no major problems, and when I finished there was a grand reception for me. Even though I didn’t win, I felt like a winner. I still can’t get over how sincerely nice all of these athlete-type people are! I should’ve been hanging out with the healthy crowd for years.

“Now that I actually completed a triathlon, XTERRA doesn’t seem all that impossible. At the same time, I’m starting to get the idea of how much harder I’m going to have to work to compete in this race.”