Woodstock Triathlon Festival (Half iron and Olympic distance) - Bethel, NY - May 4, 2013

Not much other to say than Holy Hills. This course gets straight 10's when it comes to being aesthetically pleasing and vertically challenging:  A cool crisp lake swim, about 2100 feet of climbing during the 56 mile bike (this included plenty of woods, waterfalls, and roads sans traffic), and a run course that offered some lighter hills…with the exception of that rather unkind one Doug snuck in at the end of the run loops.
Packet pick-up, located at T1 the night before, was pretty simple. It made life much easier since they offered night before bike drop off (with guards, of course) especially considering this was a point to point race.  It’s just once thing less to worry about morning of with regard to time spent setting up and planning where you needed to be and at what time to use the provided shuttles from T2 to the start.

Race morning we still had to hustle.  While Job Johns were plentiful at T2, the last shuttle bus showed up late to take us remaining folks to the start.  We had a few short minutes to work our way into our wetsuits and I may have had a 30 second warm-up in the water – not exactly ideal when the water temp was mid 50’s at best.  Thankfully, the lake water was nowhere as cold as I had been anticipating from the surface temp reads during the preceding weeks.  We had a single swim wave for the long course participants since there were only ~35 of us (29 finished).  The swim went very well – I pulled off a 36:25 swim split that I was both surprised by and pleased with (maybe I can chalk up part of that to the full wetsuit that I borrowed from Maureen).  Either way, the heated changing tent provided by Split Second Racing was awesome.  It was warm and provided a great place to change so that we could get onto the bike partially dry.  The only downfall for me is that the wonderful comfort it offered pushed my T1 time just over 5 minutes….oops!

Group from the pre-ride.

Getting on the bike I was chilly but generally comfortable due to being pretty dry.  I had loaded my water bottles with a Perpetuem and carb mix, and had some shot blocks, a Honey Stinger waffle, and some cookies (with a little protein in them) in my rear jacket pocket.  Since I had come up to pre-ride the course a few weeks prior, I knew what kind of hills to expect and went at the course with a bit of caution (well sort-of…that was the intention at least). At the end of the 1^st loop I was having shooting pains through my stomach and I am pretty sure that my body was rejecting the amount of Perpetuem I had put in my bottles.  I was very thankful for the water bottle hand off where I took plain water.  My only gripe with the water bottle was that it was a bottle similar to what you would buy in a convenience store and it was too small for my cage.  I had to keep catching from falling out a few times when I took a funny bump or turn.  During, the second lap I backed off a little on the hills and skipped the cookies with protein to let my stomach settle going into the run.  Overall, the bike was pretty lonely with the exception of a female I had passed early on during my ride, or the few men that had caught me as I went into the 2^nd loop.  I managed a 3:25:35 bike split that I was relative happy with (plus I had achieved my goal of “relieving myself” on my bike – TMI, I know, but I am still pretty proud of it).

Post race & the finishers medal.

Coming in off the bike, I was greeted by the fellow I had started dating and who had volunteered to work the bike dismount area.  I’m sure I looked and smelled great...NOT.  My legs were jello and I may or may not have let an obscenity fly when describing the bike course.  T2 lasted just over a minute but it felt like forever.  As soon as I got out on the run course I realized that as long as I could keep it together and put in a decent run I could break 6 hours, which was my goal for the day…or for the year I guess.  The run course was also nice – some shaded roads and a great view of the Woodstock Amphitheater…not to mention some quad crushing down hills and obviously the up hills to compliment them.  I will admit the run was tough, mostly because it followed that dang bike course, but very much do-able.  Aid on the run was water and water only.  I had prepared well and brought my own carb sources, but if I hadn’t I would have been in trouble, as were some fellow racers who had expected the advertised Gatorade and bananas.  (Hopefully this support was only missing due to over consumption by the Olympic distance race group, but it was something I still found disappointing for this race distance.) With minimal cramping and an evenly paced run in 1:48:25, I finished as the 3^rd female (of 7 that finished) in 5:56:52.  Whoop whoop!  3 minutes to spare until my goal time.   

Overall, for an inaugural race I think it was decently done and I enjoyed the challenge the Catskill Mountains had to offer.  For anyone considering racing Timberman in mid-August, I would highly recommend this early season race if you have the time to be prepared for the ride (or the balls to risk a potentially very cold swim).  On paper, this course displays similar elevation gain to that of Timberman and can be a great (cheap-ish) practice race as part of training for other tough courses such as IM Lake Placid.