Tully Lake Triathlon

When I did the Josh in mid-Septmeber I was in rough shape and I had no idea when I’d be able to race or even train again. I’m very happy to say that since then I’ve gotten my Colitis under control. Digestion is almost back to normal, I’ve gained a whopping 20 pounds, and I feel great. A lot of that weight is water, a side effect of some of the medication. I’ll be pretty psyched when I’m off the meds. Training volume has been a lot lower than it would be if I were training for road season, but I think it’s good enough for short cross races and my current situation. 30 minute cardio workouts with as much time as possible at threshold and general core and strength conditioning has been my bread and butter. My bib shorts are no longer baggy in the thighs, so high five!

In the past week or two I started turning on my power meter while doing my intervals. Instead of being in the 160W range like at the Josh, I’m up around 240W. +50% baby! I figure I’d still get crushed in a cross race at this point, so I decided to hop into a triathlon that would be a little lower key.

Tully Lake Triathlon in Royalston, MA was on Saturday. It’s a canoe tri, and I love canoe racing. It also had a mountain bike leg, so that’s a bit different too. Perfect! Called up my brother Shawn and asked him to be my teammate because there’s no way I was going to try to run, and canoeing is more fun with two people.

The race starts with the 5-mile canoe leg. It’s a mass start in Tully Lake and you loop out around an island. The lake has plenty of width to handle 50-100 boats or however many there are before coming back and heading up a river. This gives the elite canoeists a chance to avoid the mayhem and race their race. In canoe racing there’s a drafting-life benefit to be had from paddling nearby other boats. Canoes create wakes in the bow, midpoint, and stern, and positioning your canoe correctly on the wake is like paddling downhill. I’m not a good enough paddler to make use of this but it’s pretty cool seeing the elites in action.

The second leg is a 4.5 mile trail run. You’re not going to set an PR’s on this leg (check out the results). I was told that it’s full of rocks, roots, streams, and sharp terrain changes.

The 7.5 mile mountain biking leg is last. I spent quite a while before the race trying to figure out how technical this course is. The website calls it “moderately challenging” but that seemed pretty vague to me. I emailed the promoter who replied that it’s not a hard course for an experienced rider and that the fastest time in 2008 was actually set on a cross bike.

Cross bike eh?! Just what this roadie wanted to hear! And just like that my decision was made to do the mountain bike course on my cross bike.

It was 37°F at the start of the race, but luckily it was sunny instead of rain. While waiting to pick up my number I was noticing lots and lots of mountain bikes, but no cross bikes. Actually most of the mountain bikes were full suspension rigs. Having never seen this course before, I figured it would be a good idea to get a solid warmup in on the few miles of single track. Warmup turned out to be a 45 minute ride. I did way more of the course than I had planned on. The single track never seemed to end and it just got more and more technical as I went on. Where are the fire roads?! It was right at the limit of what I could handle on my cross bike. My lower back and hands were already killing me by the time I was half done. Not a good start!

By the time I got back to the start it was 15 minutes to race time. Shawn was getting anxious to where I was, thinking I might have plowed head first into a tree or something. No worries, my timing was impeccable (yeah right!). We hop in the canoe, Shawn in the back, me in the front, and my Mom says we’re a little stern heavy. OK no surprise there, Shawn’s a big dude. Boat trim is important for steering and efficiency. He moves his seat all the way forward. I go to do the same, but my seat is duct taped into position. Not a chance of adjusting that position. Bummer. I figured with the bow high in the air at least we’d be able to keep it going straight easily enough. No big deal.

We pull up to the line, right next to elite canoeist Gloria Wesley in a C-1. She looks over at us, then her facial expression turns a little funny, and she says to us:

“You guys are really stern heavy.”

I reply, “I know, my seat is duct taped in position and I can’t adjust it any further forward.”

“Yeah, but you’re really REALLY stern heavy. Your bow is almost sticking out of the water!”

“ I wish I could adjust it but I can’t!” I say.

“Can you steer? Maybe you should paddle in the stern?”

Just then a voice comes over the loudspeaker and announces TWO MINUTES TO THE START. We’re in the middle of the lake, it’s less than 40 degrees out, and there’s no way I’m going to try and trade seats in the super tippy 3’ wide racing canoe with my brother. I tell Gloria that we don’t have enough time and that we’ll just have to be happy with what we got. Her response:

“A little more preparation next time perhaps…”

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, she’s right. Lesson learned. Very embarrassing. Yet somehow the whole interaction was very amusing to me and just seemed entirely appropriate. I haven’t sat in a racing canoe in 18 months, so I’m not exactly dialed in. I don’t even know when the last time Shawn and I sat in the same boat. Must have been years ago. Regardless, we were still capable of paddling in sync and making the boat move a reasonable (to us) speed, so game on baby!

The cannon finally goes off and we’re on our way! Our plan was to pin it at the start and avoid mayhem with the recreational kayaks. It seemed like we were instantly 10 meters back from the fastest guys. Not sure how they accelerate so quickly on the line. Once we got up to max speed we hung in there. The five fastest racing canoes or so were noticeably faster than we were, but we were pretty much right at the rear of the rest of the racing canoes. Not a bad place to be, those guys are fast and we were matching their speed.

We reach the turnaround island in good position with the rest of the racing canoes and most of the kayaks behind us. As everyone makes the left hand turn around the island, we continue charging dead straight ahead into the middle of the course. Shawn starts yelling “AHHHHH…. CAN’T…. TURN….!!!!” We’re a solid 100 feet past the turn and we’ve only managed to change our direction by 5 or 10 degrees at most. Finally we decide it’s necessary to drag paddles just to change direction. Not so fast. By the time we’re back on course the canoes that we were initially even with were a good 100 meters away. Ouch!

The course turns around and heads back past the start/finish to appease the spectators. It’s only 1 mile into the race but things are pretty sorted out by now. Mishaps are over and everyone has settled into their pace. The last of the racing canoes is dangling about 100 meters ahead of us still, and there are a few of the faster rec kayaks even with us. We were all moving at pretty similar speeds, but Shawn and I seemed to have ever so slightly more.

As the race went on, we got faster, and eventually reeled in the racing canoe that was ahead of us. Just as we came up behind them the course bottlenecked through a tight chicane. Not good for a canoe with a turning radius of 200 meters. We crush over some weeds on the first half of the turn and manage to keep moving. As the chicane turns the other direction, again we headed directly into weeds. This time we weren’t so lucky and the canoe bottomed out and we completely beached the boat. We had to push ourselves off backwards and blocked the entire bottleneck in the process. Some poor kayak was coming through just then and had no option other than stop. By the time we got going we were a good 100 meters back on our racing canoe rivals.

This trend of making up time on the straights and giving it all back on the turns continued until the end of the race. We just could not turn the boat sharply at all. Luckily the course has a small amount of turns to it, so our damage was minimal. It could have ended much worse than it did, especially just after the turnaround point when the river is narrow and you’re in danger of having head-on collisions. That was thrilling.

Ironically we finished the canoe leg pretty much exactly where we were after the 1-mile point, about 100 meters in back of our rival racing C-2. We went under the spectator bridge, Mom and Christian heckled us a bit, we pulled into shore, made the portage, and that was that. There were actually volunteers at the finish to take your boat for you. That was a nice touch, my forearms hurt too much to hold the boat any more. Shawn took his sweet time changing out his wet socks for dry ones (jk jk), and took off for the run. My legs were super tight and I was very glad I didn’t have to start running immediately.

While Shawn was out running I changed from canoe clothes to bike clothes. Check out his perspective of the race at snibbor.org. I’m pretty sure I was the only person there rocking the skinsuit but hey I was in cross mode. One other guy from NCC was on a cross bike, so at least I wasn’t the only one. Talking to him before the race he mentioned was a stupid idea it was to be on that bike. He must have been on a fast team because he started his bike leg a good 15 or 20 minutes before me. Not sure how he made out but I heard he finished in the top 3 so his ride couldn’t have been too bad.

Anywho, Shawn finishes up his run and I’m off. The first bit of the course is very turny, and I feel like I’m barely pedaling with all my adrenaline. I don’t know much (or anything) about mountain bike racing technique, but I got the impression it was better to take it easy and pick a smooth fast line rather than charge/brake constantly. On the early part of the ride I got into a nice smooth rhythm.

Before too long I came up on another rider. The course is tight single track, and there was really no space at all to pass. I don’t know what the proper etiquette is here, and she wasn’t going TOO slowly, so I just followed and rested for a minute or so. Before long we came to one of the many rollers in the course, and it all became clear where I had made up time. She practically came to a track stand trying to grind up the steep but short pitch, and it was painful to turn the cranks so slowly in my 39-25. As we crested the top she must have sensed my frustration and she pulled off to the side to let me pass.

With a clear track ahead of me, and having just had a solid minute of rest, I immediately when into hammer mode. Not a good idea, I should have stayed in my smooth rhythm. Before I got far at all, I came around a turn right into a rock garden that had eaten me during warmup. I grabbed the brakes for dear life, bunny hopped, but still crashed dead on into a rock the size of a toddler’s play chair. I launched off of the trail and it took me a minute to gather myself. In the meantime I got passed back. I realized the error in my way and vowed to keep it smooth from here on out.

Smooth was key. The next 10 minutes were great. I passed three or four more riders, each of which moved immediately for me when I came up behind them. Very nice. The course was a little rocky through here, but it was easy enough to find a nice smooth line for my cross bike. The descents were sketchy but I was making up great time on the risers.

I could see a racer that I met in the transition zone not far behind me. He was a local rider on a hardtail that seemed very familiar with the course. He was making up time on me when I slowed for rocky or rooty sections but I was getting time back on the smoother rollers. For a while we were pretty evenly matched.

One of the more technical parts of the course came up about 3 miles in. I had ridden it during warmup and knew it was coming. This section of the course was on the side of a hill and went right along the edge of the lake. The trail had large rocks in it and there was not much space to maneuver. I let my mtb’er rival pass me just before this because I figured I would surely be slower. Boy was I right…

There was an off-camber part of the trail that got really narrow due to a tree and some roots. Just after that was a small rock garden. I came into this way too hot and squeezed the brakes hard in a panic. The off-camber slope pushed me to the side of the trail, towards the lake, and my tires side-swiped a log that was down on the side of the trail. My body still had momentum towards the lake and I started falling over sideways. There was a 10” diameter dead tree sitting there and I reached out with my hand to catch myself. The tree snapped at the base and I somersaulted head first down the side of the hill right at the lake. I landed on the back of my head and the rest of my body snapped around, with my feet ending up in the lake. I was about 3 feet away from going for a swim. Such a spectacular crash and no one to witness it. What a shame.

It took me a minute to get going again. My back was whiplashed from landing on the back of my head and I wasn’t sure I was OK initially. I also had to crawl about 10 or 15 feet back up the hill to find my bike. It never came off of the trail.

After that crash I never really found a good groove again. It took a little while before I got my nerve back again too. I was dismounting every time I came to a rock garden. Running through a rock garden is not like running CX barriers either. The footing is uneven and it’s much more difficult to keep your speed. I had envisioned it going much differently in my head.

When I got to the parts of course that I didn’t see in warmup I started having issues staying on-course. I don’t think the course was necessarily poorly marked, I was just bad at trying to find the markers while trying to race over rocks and roots on a cross bike. Each time I made a wrong turn was very frustrating and it really threw off my concentration. That ended up being a real problem because I would make stupid decisions in the technical parts. Stupid decisions usually ended up with me crashing. I ended up crashing more times than I could count.

The fire road on the mid-point of the course was an awesome break, mostly because it let me regain my composure. The fire road was very bumpy though, and my back was in agony. I preferred the twisty single track because my back felt better when I got out of the saddle. I had planned on making up time on the fire roads with my cross bike and yet I couldn’t wait to get back onto the single track. Still, I think I did make up a little time at least on the fire roads as I caught two other riders.

The last half of the race was a blur. I was suffering badly, aerobically, legs, back, forearms, you name it. The course got technical again too. Lots of big rocks, or at least it seemed that way. I was hurting so bad it could have been silky smooth for all I know. What I know for sure is that I was off of my bike, a lot. I would do very well through some technical sections I never would have expected to clean, then lose focus and fail to hop a 4” log. Focus, focus, focus. So key yet I couldn’t do it. Getting lost didn’t help either. At one point I realized that the trail markers had disappeared completely and I couldn’t find one for the life of me. It probably didn’t cost me more than a minute or so, but it was more frustrating than anything else. Crashing, getting lost, suffering tremendously, it all just made me crash more, get lost more, and suffer even more. Yet somehow this was still all ridiculously fun. Sick pleasures…

Lucky for me the last mile or so was on a smooth(ish) and fast fire road. Boy was that nice. I felt like I was absolutely crushing it, but I imagine everyone felt that way too. Before I knew it I was making the turn onto the main paved road just a few hundred meters from the finish. I crossed the line with a finishing time of ~2h33m.

Results aren’t up yet so I don’t know how we did. Last year’s winning 4-man team time was about 2h7m, so we were well back from that. Regardless of how we placed, that race was FUN. The canoe course was great, I was told the running course was exciting and kept you on your toes, and obviously I felt the same about the mtb course. Taking all of these great courses and tieing it into one big team event is awesome. So much fun. Big thanks to the Trustees of Reservations crew for putting on a great event.