For the uninitiated, the Navesink is a tidal estuary in Monmouth County, New Jersey. I swam in it last week for Red Bank tri and can't say it was the best part of the day. The water was cloudy and black. I got grit in my teeth. On entry we landed in two feet of mud covered by a half foot of water. There were razor clams.
So I didn't go into today's race with high hopes.
But this race was slightly closer to the Oceanic Bridge, where the Navesink meets up with the open ocean, and it was high tide. The starting area at Victory Park was lovely, and after three straight days of rain we got a beautiful clear morning.
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| Patti, me and Tom. The three Bassman Badasses. :) |
Usually I'm all signed up for races well in advance. I put them up on my wall calendar and set my training goals, but for Navesink-or-swim I did none of that. As late as yesterday morning I still wasn't sure if I felt like doing it.
But somewhere around midday I finally made up my mind to give it shot, and if I was going to bother getting all the way there to race, I figured I might as well sign up for the longer course (2.4 miles rather than 1.2).
I got to bed late last night, and I didn't sleep well. I kept getting up to look at the clock, thinking "I only have 5 more hours to sleep." Then, "I only have 4 more hours to sleep," and so on. This happens to me from time to time. It used to happen on the nights before I got up at 4:45am for masters swim practice. Now I'm used to that Tues/Thurs routine.
Around 2am I woke up suddenly, startled as if by a dog barking, and I began to feel panicky, thinking I had made a bad decision to race at the last minute. I never like anything last minute. I lay awake trembling then got up. In the dark I fumbled my way over to my desk and found a black Sharpie pen. Then I went into the bathroom, and by the eerie blue glow of the nightlight, I wrote the words "Peace be the journey" on my left arm. After that I just crawled back in bed and went back to sleep.
When I saw the words in the morning I had to laugh. They are a line from a silly B movie about the Jamaican bobsled team. Still, I like the sound of them. "Peace be the journey." Why not?
When we got to Victory Park I got on line for race day registration. Up to this point, 1.2 is the longest distance I'd done in competition (Bassman), but that hadn't taken too much out of me, so I wasn't particularly worried about the distance. I signed up for the 2.4 miler and figured it would take me less than an hour and a half to finish (ultimately I was done in 71 minutes). I quelled my jitters by reminding myself that I do an hour and a half of swim at masters practice three times a week.
Race start was delayed because there were more than 200 people doing day of registration. The short course racers went out first. I hung with my pals until their waves were called.
After Patti and Tom were off on their swims, we had about 25 minutes before they were going to start the long course, so I got in the water just to test out my wetsuit (which I hate, by the way), make sure I had enough rotation in the shoulders, get a feel for the temperature. I don't know that I will ever grow to like swimming in a wetsuit, though I recognize it has a place in the world of endurance racing. I always feel constricted and miserable in the suit, and as I've put on a few pounds since last year, I feel like I'm in a sausage casing. I think I'd like to get a sleeveless suit, try that out, but it'll have to wait til next season (my sport gear budget is straining as it is). Fortunately I don't have anymore races in the suit for this year.
Once my wave was called and the signal was given for us to start, the field was very close together and there was an unusual amount of contact. I am pretty impervious to that for the most part, and it makes drafting easier, but it also slows me down when I'm trying not to swim over people, or smack their feet. My experience in triathlons is that the field usually thins out pretty quickly, but here we seemed to be bunched up until at least the mid-point of the first of the two loops. Even in the second loop I had people bumping into me. I worked on improving my sighting, which felt pretty good, although my stupid suit chafed at my neck and now I have this red raw spot that will take several days to heal.
The conditions were good, the course was reasonably well marked and well staffed with support personnel, temps were fine. There were a few minor surprises like the baby jelly fish (no stingers) that felt like slimy clumps sliding through my fingers, and the fact that the turn around buoy was on a sand bar and it drifted in the current so the rope connecting it to its anchor nearly decapitated me and everyone in front of me as we rounded it. I knew to give it more room on the second pass, which solved the problem.
The only thing I really struggled with was knowing how much gas I needed to leave in the tank for the second loop. It reminded me of how hard it is to judge how much I can push on a bike section of a triathlon and still leave enough power in my legs to post a good time on the run. In the end, I think I may have been too conservative. My finishing time was 1:11:10, which was good enough for second place (out of 9) in my age group, but I got out of the water feeling like I could go again. So I definitely could have gone much harder throughout.
I just need to figure out where I can throttle up. I need to find that sweet spot of a pace that is hard but sustainable for that distance. I'm not going to have much chance to find out anytime soon, though, because my races are all either 500's or 1,500's for the rest of the season. Jersey Shore sprint is the third weekend in June (my next serious race) and the swim portion is only 400. It is known as a very fast course. I'm hoping I won't be in the water even 8 minutes.
Overall, I'd say Navesink was a good race. It was a beautiful day, I had friends around me, I posted a reasonable time even though I think I could have gone harder if I'd known more about that distance and that course.
Heading for the finish. That's me smokin' that beefy dude who had a 10 minute head start! :)
question: is it just an added bonus that the name of your blog looks a lot like triton when you take the spaces out (considering your swimming prowess) or was that intentional?
ReplyDelete@Kathy -- It's a happy accident. :)
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