Wahoo! Winning Vineyard Warriors!

I’m going to cut to one climax of this story:  After a comedy of errors this season, I got my first age group podium medal!  In fact, I think it may just be the first sporting medal I’ve ever won!  But just so you keep reading, there’s more to the story…

Mike and I spent much of our summer triathlon training at our favorite place on earth, Martha’s Vineyard.  Even before I got hooked on triathlons, I fell in love with this bucolic Island and over the years have biked most of the bike trails and roads of this 87 square mile triangle off of Cape Cod, Mass.  Once I became a triathlete, my love affair only deepened as I appreciated even more so the perfect swimming beach – State Beach, which is just a mile from our home.  I went from being in awe of watching an endurance swimmer easily glide from the lifeguard chair at one end of the beach to the “jumping bridge” (packed with kids and adults and acting like kids as they jump, dive and occasionally add an acrobatic stunt into the waters below) to myself becoming one of those open water endurance swimmers by the next season.  The usually calm waters in this stretch make for the perfect .9 mile Olympic swim training ground – throwing in some choppiness every once awhile for good training measure.

As we did our final swim, bike, runs over Labor Day weekend before our taper down week, I followed Diana Nyad’s endurance swim hoping this time she would overcome the jellyfish and prevail.  “Wishing you success from Martha’s Vineyard,” I posted on her Facebook call for support.  Meanwhile, another Diane and her husband Eric, who would be joining us for this year’s Mayone Vineyard Warrior Tri-fest, were doing their final training stints.  You may recall that earlier this summer a bunch of us descended on their Philadelphia home for the Tri Rock and Diane was my relay partner last year for the Martha’s Vineyard tri.

We all arrived on Friday and took a leisurely walk into town for a visit to our favorite harborside restaurant.  On Saturday, we rode the bike course and made our way to Oak Bluffs for registration and the most innovative race briefing I’ve seen to date – a Martha’s Vineyard sightseeing bus served as the venue as we got a tour of the course!  I have to hand it to Matt Brickman, our race director - this was a creative solution to counter last year’s issues with signs being blown away.  No excuses this year!  He had also made the course simpler, creating a 1 bike loop course for the Sprint and a 2 bike loop course for the Olympic so he would not require as many police officers and volunteers.  We did a warm up swim and felt good and confident to go.

As we assembled our numbers and readied our gear, Diane revealed I had her magic number – 411.  It’s her birthday and a sign that her father who passed away is with us in spirit.  We did our obligatory pasta dinner and then were down for our early bedtimes.

I had a great night’s sleep and awoke to a day that appeared to be good racing weather.  I had good feelings about this race until I arrived at the water and couldn’t believe the swim course was a .4 mile swim for the Sprint as a buoy kept looking like it was moving farther out to sea.  And for Mike, it would require 2 swim loops for his first Olympic distance race.  Mike was in one of the first waves, Eric in a wave after, and Diane and I were in the last wave.  I watched a male swimmer clearly struggling after the first buoy.  I assumed he just wasn’t a good swimmer.



Mike and me post race

Similar to the Mossman, the tide was fairly low and some people were taking up the sport of water running.  I decided to swim the whole distance, but many racers did get out in front of me as a result.  As I rounded the first buoy and began swimming parallel to shore I realized why the struggling swimmer had so much trouble – good swimmer or not, this was a tough current.  It took forever to get to the next buoy and only then did I realize, I still had another buoy to go!  I felt like I was in the water for a very long time, especially as some of the male Olympic swimmers lapped me.  As it turns out, I was – it took me 34:33 to complete the course, almost the time it normally takes me to do more than twice that distance.  For Mike, it was probably a 1.2 mile course and he completed it in 48:52 minutes.

The swim tired me out more than normally but I tried to quickly transition to the bike, which other than some head wind, proved to be a good ride as I knew the course well.  On to the run, I saw Eric returning as I was just getting going so I knew he was doing well.  And when I saw Diane, I let her know, “you may be the winning woman!”.

And she was!  Just as 64 year old Diana Nyad proved to us you are never too old to accomplish a new feat, my friend Diane won her first Sprint distance race, proving 50-somethings can kick many younger asses!  And her husband Eric, who somehow excels at this sport by training through activities like constructing the family’s driveway, took 3rd place overall, and 3^rd in his age group.

When they called my name as the third place winner for the 40-49 age group, I was truly surprised.  I was quick to assume that there were only 3 people in our age group, but there were actually 10.  And, I felt like I had truly earned the win with that tough swim!

Winning Warriors!