I said after last year’s Guntersville Olympic experience of
43 degrees and rain that I would not be back.
Not to mention the 7.1 mile eroded trail run that kept me out of running
for almost 2 weeks after the event.
However, when I saw the announcement of a Festival (aka Festivus) I was
unable to resist the temptation to participate in another epic Parker Edmiston
extravagahnzaaaa!
The morning started with the early wake up, picking up Doug
Wright for his first Olympic distance triathlon and arriving at Guntersville
State Park at 6:00 a.m. I racked my bike
in rock star parking and commenced to stand around trying to convince myself to
go for a warm up jog or bike ride. I
eventually rode a short distance to mechanically check my bike and then back to
standing around. The next decision was,
“Is it really cold enough to justify a wetsuit?” (I think the announced water
temperature was 72 degrees). I’m
convinced that I swim slower in my wetsuit.
It feels like I have giant rubberbands wrapped around my shoulders. I ultimately caved to peer pressure and the
chilling idea of treading water waiting on the start horn and donned my wetsuit.
I started in the 2nd wave with the League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen. Look at the
results and you will see that of the approximately 8 of the Top 25 male Olympic
racers were in the 40 and older category.
Another interesting statistic was that the Top 5 male finishers were
from 5 different age categories. I
mention this to show that this sport truly is for everyone and age does not
have to be a discriminator. Swim was
1500’ish meters, and I knew after the first 200 meters that it would be a slow
time. My shoulders were getting a much
heavier workout than should be expected.
My swim time was just under 33 minutes and proved to be a weakness in
the overall race. It is usually my
strongest event (relative to my age group) and provides a few needed minutes
versus the guys that are running sub 7 minute miles on the 10K. I will have to
give a sleeveless wetsuit a test to see if this will improve in the
future. 
T1 was unremarkable and off for the bike. The rolling hills going out of the park and
on the first portion of Hwy 227 kept things at a slower pace for the first 5
miles. The course isn’t difficult, but
can be deceiving if you fail to respect the climbing portions. I felt good coming off the bike and T2 was
pretty quick. I did choose to run in my
Hokas and wear socks due to the expectation of a tough, hilly, and graveled run
course. This added a few seconds to T2
trying to get socks on.
I headed out on the run dreading the big gravel hill. I kept a 8:10 pace for the first 2 miles, up
to the start of the big hill at about mile 3.
I was reduced to speed walking the last 25 yards or so of the hill. Walking was faster than my run pace. I ended up with an average of 8:31 min/mile. The
good news is that this year the 10K was actually “only” 10K. I finished the day at 2:45:17 with a 4th
place finish in my age group for the Olympic Triathlon.
The day was still young. Next up was a 3’ish mile trail run. Marty Eaton was the course director and he
did not disappoint. I’m not an
accomplished trail runner, but I venture to say that this was a relatively
challenging course. It started off the
gravel hill from the Olympic 10K course and made a giant loop around a pretty
large hill. It felt like most of the
course was uphill, but somehow I ended back up at the start point. This was a lot of fun, but around 2 miles in,
the woods were getting hot and there was absolutely no wind. I was praying that 3’ish was closer to 3 than
the “ish”. It ended up being 3.3 miles
on my Garmin and was advertised as an “active recovery” by Marty. Ha! I say to whoever believes in the myth of
active recovery within 3 hours of completing an Olympic Triathlon.
What next you ask? Of
course, a 2.1 mile King of the Mountain (KOM) hill climb with an average grade
of 7% and the maximum grade at 19.5%. steepest
.25 mile section gaining about 200 feet in elevation. It began at the campground store with a time
trial start. The first section was nice
climb, but manageable. The second half
was a BEAST! It was great that the crowd
of family supporters were all stationed at the steepest part, yelling and
ringing cowbells. I resorted to the
serpentine technique (aka “delivering the mail”). Thankfully this concluded day 1 and my legs
and lungs were both ready for a break.
Sunday morning started with a quick trip to the buffet and
Guntersville Lodge. Then Festivus Event
#3 was the dip and dash. This was a
1500’ish meter swim and a 3 mile run.
Again, I fought the wetsuit idea, but decided I just wasn’t comfortable
having not completed any cool temp open water swims this season without a
wetsuit. At this point (to borrow the
phrase from Suzanne Erickson) I had become more of a "completer" than a "competitor". The run felt good considering the "fun" that
my body had endured on Saturday. After the run I gladly
retreated to my camping air mattress in the shade to recover before the next
event.
After a very short rest, the 5 mile individual time trial
commenced and brought on the leg burn.
It was from the beach parking area to the park entrance and back. I don’t remember the hills being such a
challenge during the Olympic Tri, but I suppose the cumulative effects of the
Festivus events were now entrenched in what remained of my physical will
power. I have never participated in a
time trial. This being my first, I just
tried to hit the wall in 5 miles and not pass out. I must add here, that as the number of events
progressed, the level of competition was still very high. It seemed that this type of sustained torture
attracted the elite triathletes, as well as a few non-swimming runners and
cyclists with fresh legs as they were only participating in a few of the
events.
Last event of this epic weekend was the Team Trial. It consisted of a 10 mile out and back. The "SOB Squad" team had some minor
adjustments and supplemented the roster just before race start. Considering that Josh Pierson and I were on
our 6th event of the weekend, I think that we had a great
“completion” of the team time trial.
In closing, this was a very different experience than I
could have imagined. It was much more about
the experience of testing your body’s ability to push a little harder even
though fatigue has a firm grip on every muscle.
I was unsure how to approach the multiple events, so I elected to race
each one as though it was my last. I
don’t know how to evaluate this strategy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the
weekend. And for what it's worth
(nothing) I was the only 40-44 year old male that completed all the
events....so that makes me 1st Place in my age group. Lots of thanks’ish to Parker
Edmiston, Dawn Edmiston, Doug Tinkham, Marty Eaton, and KatieBeth Pierson and the host of volunteers for putting
together this event. Another thanks to
Gregg Gelmis (http://www.werunhuntsville.com/) and Katie Beth (http://katiebethpierson.smugmug.com/) for the great photos. Shout out to Fleet Feet Huntsville TriathlonRacing Team for a great race day.