Point Pleasant Triathlon

Payton MacDonald

Point Pleasant Sprint Triathlon Race Report


600 meter swim, 10.5 mile bike, 3.1 mile run

Swim: 9:37; 1:31 pace
T1: 3:35
Bike: 31:19, 20.1 mph pace
T2: 1:10
Run: 23:17; 7:46/mile pace
Total time: 1:08:56
Place: 23 out of 98

Pre Race
Point Pleasant. This is where it all began for me. I’ve written about this elsewhere, so I’ll skip the details, but I did my first triathlon here in 2007 and then again in 2008. Both times I trained on my own. Since I don’t have an athletic backround I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had fun. And most importantly it set me on a path to a more active lifestyle that has been a profound change in my life. But this time it was different. Last year I placed fifth from last and it took me 1:39:40. This year I placed in the top quarter and it took me 1:08:56. Big difference.

But I almost didn’t make it to the race. I got directions to the town of Point Pleasant and figured once I was there I would remember how to get to the race site. Wrong. I stopped three times to ask but no one know how to get there. By this time it was 8:15 and the race started at 8:45. In a panic I called home and thankfully Jessica answered and was able to guide me to the race using Google maps. She had decided not to come because it was raining, but was still the most effective director of Team Payton ever. If it weren’t for her I would have ended my season in frustration rather than victory. From now on I will ALWAYS bring directions.

I got to the race site at 8:30, checked in, did my best with getting my transition area set up, pulled on my wetsuit, and was down in the water at 8:44. That warm up run and bike ride I had planned? Nope. That nice arrangement of my stuff for transition? Nope. Oh well, at least I got there. I had also been sick all week, coughing and hacking, and as of the day before I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to race. In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best choice to race while sick (and for the record my coach wisely advised me against it), but I knew I needed to test out my new race skills on this familiar course after 10 months of dedicated training or I would forever regret it.

Swim
This was my best swim yet, both in terms of comfort and time. There weren’t that many of us and the path was wide, so I had no trouble finding a nice clean line. I passed a lot of people from the first wave, but still never had to fight traffic. 1:31 is a PR for me. I plan on making that my average race speed next season.

I mostly remember feeling surprised at how short the swim was and inevitably a tinge of sadness when I got to the end of it. Many triathletes dread the swim, but I actually like it, especially when it’s smooth like this one was.

T1
I have no idea why this took me so long, but I think mostly it was because my transition area was messy. I really need to keep working on my transitions, though. The fastest guy did his in 1:29, so my 3:35 is really slow. It doesn’t take any superior level of fitness to have fast transitions, just practice and planning. If I had trimmed off just a two or three minutes from my two transition times combined I would have placed five or six places higher in the final results. Lesson learned.

Bike
No problems here, I just cranked and cranked. I love riding my bike, even in the rain. I’m surprised that my pace here was only 1 mph faster than last year since this year I was on a road bike and last year I was on a big old cruiser bike, but it wasn’t pouring rain last year and that cruiser bike was actually pretty fast once you got used to it. I passed a lot of people and was only passed by two guys, but not by much.

T2
A little slow, but otherwise fine.

Run
My best yet and another PR. I was hoping to average a 8:30 pace so coming out at a 7:46 pace was a pleasant surprise. I’ve only run that fast during speed work runs, so I didn’t know I had it in me, but I guess I do. I’m a little tall and heavy to ever reach elite levels of running but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to eventually get my pace down to, say, 6:30 for short races, and 7:00 for longer ones. It will take a few years, though. Running seems simple but is actually very complicated and it’s easy to get injured if you do too much too soon. I didn’t really run as much this season as I should have because I suffered an overuse injury earlier in the season that sidelined my running for almost a month, but still this was huge improvement for me and gives me confidence that I can do even better next season.

Post Race
I’ll never forget crossing that finish line. I wasn’t wearing a watch or heart-rate monitor during the race, so I had no idea how I was doing. I was hoping to break 1:15 and secretly really wanted to break 1:10 so when I came in at 1:08:56 I was elated. The feeling of finishing a race successfully is a lot like turning in a great performance on my instruments. I was flooded with feelings of joy and goodwill and I felt so happy to be alive and to have these kinds of opportunities. In fact, I was in such a great mood that I couldn’t even take a nap later in the day!

The past year has been life-changing for me. I never used to think I had any athletic potential. And frankly, I never really liked the world of athletics. My memories of athletics from high school and college are pretty negative. The athletes always got special treatment, were not always that gifted academically, and seemed overpaid and useless to society. I realized that the games provided entertainment for a lot of people, and entertainment is certainly a necessary release from the pressures of working life, but I just didn’t see the fairness in athletes getting millions of dollars a year while many of best artists and intellectuals were struggling in poverty. It’s not like Michael Jordan was solving our energy problems or writing great symphonies. He was just throwing a ball around!

My feelings about the distribution of wealth between the arts, sciences, and sports still hasn’t changed, but I have a new love of athletics. I realize now that Michael Jordon wasn’t just “throwing a ball around,” but he was demonstrating human physical potential, and he was doing it with grace and humility. The human body is an incredible work of art. From the structure of the skeleton to the harmony of the organs, to the way the muscles work, to the interplay of mind and spirit—it is truly remarkable. And even more remarkable is that most of us have a lot of potential. Unfortunately some of us don’t, and especially when I see kids who are stricken with terminal illness I feel so very, very sad. But for those of us are lucky enough to have working bodies, there is nothing more empowering than putting them to work and realizing our potential.

My body has changed in the last 10 months. My weight has stayed right around 170, but my waistline has gotten a bit narrower (I went from a 34 waist to a 33 or 32) and my shoulders got a bit broader. I now have muscles in my legs that I didn’t even know existed, as well as my back. And my view of my body has changed as well. I always used to have a slightly negative view of my appearance. I knew I wasn’t hideous looking, but after 30 years of people constantly teasing me about being thin and tall, I also knew that I wasn’t an “ideal body type.” Well, fuck them! For triathlon, you’re supposed to be thin. In fact, at 6’3” and 170 lbs, I’m actually on the big side! Most elite triathletes are four or five inches shorter and 15 pounds lighter. I realize now that my body is just fine, in fact, it’s beautiful. And people who tease me are usually doing it because they’re jealous or ignorant.

Being physically fit has increased my confidence more than anything else. Not so much because I feel superior to the masses of fat, doughy people in the world (especially the U.S.A.), but more because it feels good to walk around and feel my muscles working. I don’t need any prescription drugs, I don’t need to use the elevator, and I definitely don’t need to whine about my back hurting or whatever. Okay, I’ll admit I do feel a little superior to the masses of unfit people, but I deserve that feeling, as do the millions of other fit people who work hard to stay fit. True, I’m blessed with genetics that make obesity hard for me, but no one is getting up for me at 5:00 a.m. to get in those workouts. That’s all me.

There are many ways for people to get fit, but for me this sport is a good fit. I like the complexity of the sport and I really enjoy the variety. Between the swimming, biking, running, weight lifting, yoga, hiking, etc, that go into training it’s impossible to get bored. I’ve also really enjoyed the social aspect of the sport. My closest friends are still the musicians that I went to school with and perform with (especially the Alarm Will Sound family), but it’s been nice to broaden my social circle. I’ve met some really fabulous people and I’ve developed some great friendships. I’ll never get tired of partying with AWS or my other musician friends, but the hedonistic musician lifestyle is becoming increasingly foreign to me. I suppose part of it is maturity, what with a family and all, but a big part of it has been getting fit.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with my musician friends about what makes a given person particularly creative. Especially Alan Pierson and I have talked about that a lot. The prevailing attitude in the arts still seems to be that the most creative people are screwed up in some way. They’re drug addicts, or mentally unstable, or socially backwards, or all of the above. That attitude is really a throwback to the 19th century when the Romantic era was in full swing and artists like Belioz, Liszt, Schumann, or Chopin had problems like that. But we don’t live in that era any more, despite Kurt Cobain. We now know that creativity takes many shapes and forms and creative people live many kinds of lives. I’ve noticed in the past year that as my fitness level has increased my music has become more free, less academic, and much more personal. In short, I’ve seen a direct coorelation between healthy living and more creative power.

That doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone, but it is definitely working for me. And with every day that passes I see my life coming into focus in a way that it never was before. I thank Keith Cook for his guidance, as well as Jason Santarcangelo and the other folks on Team NRGY. And of course I really thank Jessica, the most perfect woman on the planet.

For next year, this is what I want to accomplish:
1.) get my race swim pace consistently down to 1:30
2.) develop more strength for increased speed up hills when I’m on my bike, and start looking into getting a tri bike
3.) get my running race pace for Sprint distance down to 7:15 or better, get my Olympic distance down to 8:00 or better
4.) have fun and don’t take myself too seriously

Now for some time off for a few months. I’ll go into off-season training and focus on my various musical projects, and then start up again in January or February.