The Pot-of-Coffee Review:

I'm sorry this report is many weeks late, but with the move and current job-climate being above and beyond my control, only now have I found the time to sit down and write it. Since the time of the race I've relocated to a new home, and crashed squarely on my melon (taking down Steve Carrington in the process). Thus if the details appear to be a bit fuzzy, they probably are.

As most of you already know Tupper Lake is without parallel, my favorite race on the calendar. The combination of 8-hour road trip, the lunch stop at one of my Graduate School haunts (where I can look up at my former Psych Hall and revel in freedom from academia while sipping a beer, riverside), the Saturday race that allows a Saturday night feast with friends...what more could you ask for?

St. Lynda made the trip with me this time, and we'd planned on taking 4 days of R&R in Lake Placid following the race. After hearing me yammer on and on about it for 4 years, she'd finally get to experience the whole shindig for herself. I knew that Eric "Crash Test Dummy" Weiss would be bringing Amy along as well, so it was good to know they'd be able to laugh at us together while we tried to impress with our usual flair and daring do.

I had no real goals for this race. I had no goals, because I'd also accomplished nearly no training through most of June. Sure, I'd had that cracking race at Escape from Fort Delaware on June 8th, but since then we'd closed on the house and started the usual cleanpaintcleancleancleanpaint cycle that pretty much consumed our weekends, weeknights, and most other hours we weren't eating, sleeping, or working. Thus, I figured I had no pressure to perform, no fitness to put under pressure, and no worries about where I finished. I was completely clueless and detached - no brain, no pain!

"This is what it must be like to be George W. Bush..." I thought.

Eric was in a similar place, albeit through Pilot Error. During his last training ride the previous Sunday afternoon, he had attempted to find some common-ground for us to stand on by slowing himself down. In an act of selfless cycling artistry, he drove his beautiful Cervelo into a curb at 35mph, skittered along for quite some way, and then scored the maximum dismount points by rolling onto a sidewalk and destroying every single item of clothing he'd been wearing at the time (all without dinging his head).

Somewhat sore, bruised, battered, fried, and wearing the first open-toed Carnac's ever invented, he would still approach the line on Saturday morning, just hoping to enjoy the day as I was. Much of the fire of "The Duel" had quelled after 2001. I think we just got tired of trying so hard for so long, and life was more then obliging with new jobs, houses, and everything else that it could come up with to slow us down more.

The Race:

The swim at Tupper Lake doesn't really take place in Tupper Lake (much like Lake Placid's swim doesn't actually use Lake Placid - it must be an upstate thing), but in Raquette Pond, a shallow, rust-colored body of water. The swim goes straight out to a point, and then back to the exit in an inverted "V" shape. The trick to a good swim here comes in the return leg: Will it be sunny, or not? If there are no clouds, the rising sun simply renders all but the darkest goggles useless. Thankfully the race management has learned from previous years of scattering swimmers all over the shore, and now has buoys almost every 50 feet for the 6/10ths return.

I had originally signed up to race this as a Clydesdale (what the heck - when I signed up in February I WAS a Clydesdale), but at 190 pounds on race-day, there was no way I could do it. I e-mailed the RD and made sure they took me out of Clydesdale before I got there. I confirmed, and confirmed again - but I was still given a yellow cap to go off in the first wave with the Clyde's. I knew I'd be scored as Age Group, so going off with the first wave was just a bonus - I'd get to be on the road sooner, done sooner, and just be up there. Nice.

We lined up in the Yellow corral, and then headed down to the water. I found myself at the front, leading the flock to the water's edge whether I wanted to or not. As we started to wade in I asked the group, "Since y'all put me in front, how far should I take us in?"

"Keep going until you reach the first buoy!" was the best suggestion I heard. I just kept on wading until a kayak finally came up and told me I'd gone far enough, thankyouverymuch. With that the 30-second countdown began, and another 70.3 mile day poised it's brush before the blank canvas of an untold story. It was sunny, windless, and the lake before me was a sheet of glass. I smiled with anticipation - it was play time, again.

The siren sounded, and the stampede was on. I had wanted to catch the leaders and perhaps stay in the draft all of the way this time, and I fought up front to hug the buoys and take the short path, swimming as hard as I could dare. After about 200 yards, I could see a small train leaving ahead of me - 5 yards...10 yards...and soon I was alone. I hadn't hit it hard enough, but I was still within shouting distance. I settled back into my own rhythm, and just counted down the buoys to the turn.

Without a watch, I had no idea of pace, time, splits, or gaps. I didn't want to know - why worry? Don't think - just go. My goal was to be within one buoy of the leaders when I hit the turn around, perhaps closer. As I passed the second to last buoy, I could see the leading kayak halfway to the first return buoy: Mission Accomplished. I'd lost perhaps 1 minute on the way out, so I'd be ~ 2 minutes back depending on how the sunny return went. I couldn't help but smile at that - I'd be in the first wave, near the top, if only for awhile. It just felt cool.

I made the turn into the sun, and it was as brilliant as I'd remembered it to be. The beautiful thing this time for us was the complete lack of a ripple - I could see all of the buoys at once - all of them in one long, perfect line, all the way home. I put my head down and just got to it, focusing on not fading, finishing my strokes, and not getting caught by the next wave (who would start 5 minutes back). The shore crept closer, closer, and closer still. Soon I could hear the muffled bass of the sound system coming through the water, between my heartbeats and breaths. The final minute seems so cruel - you know you're almost there, but it always takes longer then you think it should...

...but when my hand touched sand, I'd made it. I hadn't been caught, and I'd finished strongly. The clock on-shore was ticking over 31:30 when I stood, so the swim had been a good one - yes! All I needed to do now was get out of the wetsuit and hit that bike...

I'd taken my wetsuit off in the shallow water in 2001 very quickly, and decided to do the same in 2002. My rack space was nearly 200 yards away at the farthest corner of the lot, so I was afraid the wetsuit might dry too much on the run there. Quickly I'd popped the top off and rolled it down to my waist, so all I had to do was get it off my legs.

And then, as they say, chaos and confusion reigned.

I tried to remove my left leg, but I'd bunched up the suit too thickly in one place, so it stuck there. I hobbled, hopped, wobbled, and moved to the right leg - same thing. I pushed, pulled, prodded, pried, but clearly the Battle of Neoprene was set to go the distance. The polite applause of the crowd turned to murmurs, then out and out giggles while I stood there, stuck. I looked like I'd stepped into a pile of tar with the suit firmly wrapped around both ankles, perfectly taut. Before I fell over I decided that I'd better think of something else, so I SAT down with my feet in the air and finally, mercifully, popped the suit off my feet. The crowd erupted! They all cheered as if they'd fought with me! As if they'd seen man overcome fashion, or...

...as if the leader of the next wave had come ashore, and blown by me like a Ferrari frosts off a station wagon. *sigh*

I'd lost 50 seconds in the fight, but I gathered up the insubordinate heap of buoyancy and took off for Apollo - my sights set on the road to come.

My T1 was smooth, and I was gone. The wide-open shoulder of Route 3 beckoned: 28 miles to Cranberry Lake, 28 miles back. No turns, no thinking. I settled down in the bars, tucked in, and had at it. I started picking off riders right away, but after the long, steep climb exiting the valley from Tupper Lake, there weren't that many people to catch. Being in the first wave gave me an open road - almost too open. While reconciling that the usual game of catch and chase would be a bit slower for me, I heard someone come up behind me and yell, "MAKE A LANE!" I wasn't blocking - I was way over to the right, but I damn nearly hopped the bike 4 feet sideways to give the microphone behind me all the room he needed.

Just as I was auditioning different replies in my mind, ("I bet you drive an SUV, too!", "No you didn't, fool.", "Anything else, Master?") the grinning face of my buddy Greg Sullivan smoked on by and tore up the road. It turns out he'd yelled, "Hurricane!" but with the wind noise, who could tell?

I tried to keep him in sight, but there was just no way - this was a guy that had gone to Hawaii in 2000 and 2001, so soon he was over the horizon and history. However, the passes never picked up after that, and I never caught anyone else. I was riding as hard as I could manage, but I wasn't closing down the distance to anyone - heck - I couldn't even SEE anyone ahead of me. Each mile was as empty as the one before it, and soon I came to terms that I was just dealing with the fact that I was losing ground to the fast people, but outriding the slower people...while all of us were well ahead of the rest of the race.

Before too long, I was lonely. I had to fight the urge to slip a bit on pace - it was so easy to get distracted and just drift, so I played Big Ring games: I wasn't going to shift out of the big ring, ever. After nearly grinding to a knee-popping halt on one of the steeper rolls near Lake Colden, I figured that maybe that wasn't such a good idea. I focused on eating, staying good on my hydration, and counting down the miles to the turn-around. As I neared the town of Cranberry Lake, I remembered where I was when the leader went the other way in 1999, and blew past it. I was on pace for a good ride - and soon I'd be counting down to just where I was.

The first few riders started to come at me from the other side of town, and I knew I was getting close. I counted to 15...16...Turnaround. Just like at the Escape a few weeks earlier, I'd crept up into the top 20. I grabbed a bottle of PowerAde, made the turn for home, and got ready to watch the oncoming traffic for anyone I knew. I also started the tense waiting game of, "When will I run out of leg?" I hadn't been on a ride longer then 30 miles since June 1st, so anything beyond 2 miles from the turnaround was going to be thin ice for sure.

Not too far back, Eric "Airbag" Weiss came hurtling up the road, cognizant enough to yell, "You're 16th!" as he flew by the other way...a mere 5 minutes back - roughly the wave gap he'd started with. Covered with scrapes, bruises, and twisted around in his bars so he could ride without leaning on the icky parts, Eric was doing what he always did - riding the wheels off his bike, even though he's not supposed to. I'm supposed to ride better, then he runs me down. *sigh* Why does he always insist on changing the script?

Soon I managed to catch the 17th placed rider, just about at mile 30. I put him behind me, and listened for the chase that would never come. I got back in rhythm, just like I'd had on the way out, dealing with the demons of boredom once again. I have spent plenty of time in no-mans land during my cycling career, and the thoughts are always the same: "Ride hard, but why? Why not back off, get some company, and make it eas- NO! FIGHT!" This cycle repeated itself over and over, mile after mile, for the next hour. For 60 solid minutes I didn't pass another bike...and nothing got near me. I was so bored, I wasn't afraid to admit that I couldn't wait for the run - at least there'd be people to chase for once.

At mile 52, I spotted a lone figure on the horizon, dropping just out of sight over a small crest. It was the first human on a bike I'd seen in 22 miles, and I shifted up and attacked out of the saddle like Cartman towards a Cheesy Poof. Over the next ridge I could see I was closing in - closer, closer - I was going to catch him! Yes! Finally - something to focus on!

In less then a mile, he was mine. As I got closer, I could see he wasn't riding well at all - he was weaving from one side of the shoulder to the other, stretching. As I passed him he looked over and said, "Back spasms. F*ck." All I could do was say, "Hang in there - T2 is just ahead!" as I rolled on, now in 15th.

Coming down the final descent into town, I was thankful to finally see the end of the bike coming my way. I had never spent so much time alone in a race before, and I desperately needed a change in motivation. I had no idea what my split had been, but I could tell just by how easily I'd been able to pick it up when I saw something to catch, I'd probably let it slide a bit.

I pulled off of Route 3 and hit my rack as I could see that 90% of the bike spaces were still empty. With a field of nearly 700 athletes racing the Tinman, those 585 missing bikes sure made me feel good for the moment. In less then 2 hours, it'd be pizza time - and things were going well! I grabbed my number, grabbed my hat, and tore off down the lane, following the route I'd carefully walked through the night before: Straight down the rack, out the gate. “Straight down the rack, out the gate...”

Straight down the rack, and into a snow fence? Not part of the plan, but there it was. Stretched across my exit route was now a 4-foot high wall of orange fencing, closing off the aisle in a dead end. It hadn't been there on Friday night, it was very much there on Saturday afternoon. I froze, and my brain simply said, “Well, that’s not supposed to be there.” Two guys that had raced the sprint just stared at me as if to say, "Dude, that's like so wrong."

Faced with a sudden and unplanned hurdle my brain, completely unable to deal with a dead-end, rebooted. I stood there while everything came back on-line, and then I spun on my heels and took off in a full-tilt retreat back towards where I came from. In my reverse attack, I blew straight by the aisle I needed to head down. While running hither and yon like a Muppet on crack, my frantic pursuit of any exit caught the attention of a volunteer who frantically started yelling at me to come back his way.

At the same time, another volunteer three racks over pointed to the right, while one ahead of him rushed in to help and summarily pointed to the left. I followed each direction in the order that they were received, and ended up spinning a perfect two-footed 720 within a three foot circle, somehow ending up headed back in the same direction I’d started, only somewhat dizzier.

By now race announcer Kevin McKinnon had noticed the influx of pointing, running, and shouting volunteers, and added to the mix the missing element that takes small moments of stupidity and makes them big moments – the required dose of public humiliation.

“Whoa! Look out! Looks like athlete number 16 is lost in transition…lets hope he finds his way out of there…right! No, right! Left! Go, go!” If I had found a shovel, I’d have dug a tunnel at that point. When I finally got headed the right way, I’d run almost a full minute without actually getting anywhere on the course, and adding a chunk of time to my bike (as Tupper Lake counts T1 and T2 as parts of your bike split). I’d pulled a 2:36:28 with both transitions, so I was somehow still on pace for a decent race – so long as I could keep myself from getting lost and ending up at the Canadian border during the next 13 miles.

The run started well (once I was running ON the course, I mean), as my legs didn't feel all that bad. I was surprised: Considering that I'd run all of 5 bricks all season (two of them in races) anything that didn't feel like I was on my very last step was pretty good in my book. Climbing out of town I managed to settle into about what felt like a 9:00 pace, give or take 8 minutes. I unzipped my DeSoto to deal with the increasing heat, and to make sure that (once again) I sunburned a perfect, inverted, isosceles triangle into my un-sunblocked chest.

I was getting passed now by every fast runner in the world that had started in waves behind me, and the breeze as they smoked by was pretty nice. I knew that eventually my legs were going to either fall off, lock in place and send me toppling over like Lot's wife (I was already covered in salt), or I'd maybe (just maybe) finish the run with strength to spare.

Right.

The run took its usual turn into the woods, and I danced the best that I could over the former Waubeeck Road. It always breaks up the run so well: You run 3 miles on roads, then you dance, skitter, hop, trundle, sashay, straddle, traverse, and canter over the rocks, roots, roadbed, holes, and crevices for 4.5 miles, and then you bake, broil, simmer, and survive the last 5 miles (the run is a tad short) on the shoulder of Route 30. Three easy steps to completing your Tinman.

The one surreal moment I look forward to each year is my meeting with the Chairman. Chair Man sits in the woods, precisely at the point where he is as far from civilization as he can be on all sides - basically, in the middle of the woods. He sits in a chair 3 feet off to the right with 2 gallons of water, 3 gallons of Deep Woods OFF!, a clipboard, a pen, and a small radio. His job is to say, "Number?" to runners as they pass, and scare the ever-living daylights out of them since they aren't expecting a human being to speak to them while they're in the middle of an abandoned road in Upstate New York. I knew he was coming, and waved as I piped up, "16!" on the way by.

Just after I'd passed the chairman, I head a clatter coming up from behind that sounded like a combination of Mardi Gras, Canada Day, and the Storming of the Bastille. It turned out to be two young ladies in black bathing suits and shorts, running along with cowbells and pennants, cheering people up through the run. "You're awesome! Go!" they both yelled as they sped past, working their way up the trail. It made me smile for a moment...

...until I realized that I was also being *dropped* by two women carrying cowbells and noisemakers, wearing backpacks, running faster then I had all season. So it goes - they meant well.

As I entered the blast furnace of Route 30 I remembered the sudden rainstorm of the year before, and how welcome I would be for that to happen once again. The sky was still cloudless, and the wind had been missing all day. I was beginning to suffer - I was baking, but I didn't really mind. I was 5 miles from the end of my 14th Half-Ironman - it wasn't supposed to feel easy. I knew that. In a way, I welcomed the heat: Like Mark Allen had once said, "Love the heat - it's real. It's nature's truth serum." Indeed.

My legs began their fade at mile 10, right on schedule. I hadn't run more then 10 miles since April, and I knew those last three miles had he potential for the greatest collapse I'd seen since Enron. Sure enough the clock struck 12, my strides closed up, and my version of the Alii Shuffle began. As I kept moving forward (kind of like Artie Johnson on that tricycle in "Laugh In") I guess I began to hold my breath...because I immediately developed some righteous side stitches.

I walked with both hands over my head, no joy. I picked up a rock, squeezed my hand, and exhaled - trying to deflate the cramps. Nothing worked. I remembered Tony DeBoom being hobbled by stitches as he led IM-USA in 2000, stopping to massage them out as he groaned, "Ohhh, mannnnn..." to ESPN as they watched the implosion from the front row. I wasn't leading, but I was coming apart just the same. I'd run, cramp, walk, stretch, work it out, then run again for about 2 minutes...repeat.

The last 2.5 miles probably took me almost 25 minutes (maybe more), but without a watch I really had no idea. I could tell I was slowing down, but since I didn't really expect to challenge my PR of 4:51 on this course in 2001, I wasn't too bothered about it. As I came near the "One Mile to Go!" sign my friend Robin Jefferis caught me (you probably remember her from my Escape report - she ran me down like a dog there, too), and YELLED at me. "C'mon Bob! Pick it up! No slacking here!"

I wanted to explain that I was undertrained, cramping, tired, salty, hungry, but all-in-all feeling rather OK with things for the distance, but I didn't have time. I just replied, "With what?" As she bolted out of sight (to win her AG by something absurd, again). I jogged past the one mile sign, and entering the final downhill stretch for home, I got slammed by one more cramp. I was reduced to WALKING the downhill - and to no-one in particular I asked, "Who the hell walks downhill with 99% of the race done? Sheesh!"

I made well and sure that I'd worked enough of the stitch out so that when I ran for home, I could run all the way in without doubling over in front of the crowd at the finish (that would be, like, embarrassing and stuff). With about 1/2 mile to go, I picked it back up into a full-tilt, max-effort-slow-shuffle, and headed for the finishing field, and home.

The DJ was just queuing up The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" as I entered the field with 300 yards to go, and the string intro was a perfect musical ending to my day. Gliding across the grass at the end of a good - not a great - but a very good day, I was just happy to have covered another 70.3 in fine style, making the most of what my body could give me. I waved to Lynda and Amy as I rumbled in, and I crossed the line in 5:08:28 after a 1:59 run split - my second-fastest time for this distance, just a tick ahead of the 5:08:53 I'd clocked in 1999.

Another proud medal went over my head, and I headed back to wait with Amy and Lynda for Eric (whom I was surprised also hadn't run me down). Sure enough, about 8 minutes later came Eric "Bactine" Weiss to finish in 5:11:20 - less then 3 minutes back once you took out the 5 minute wave start difference. It was an amazing display of pain tolerance, but it didn't surprise me - I've seen him go farther and faster on less training, so this is becoming pretty commonplace from my point of view. I figure if we both stop training next year, we'll be going to Hawaii by 2004.

As usual there was the post-race feast at Shaheen's, where war stories were shared by Lynn and Tommy Kapusta, John Faith and his mate Sharon, Michael Parente, Alain Bienvenue, Neil and Julie Cook, Cathy and Bill Taylor, and anyone else that happened to walk by at the time. While the pizza order was effectively micro-managed (by a certain un-named Lisa Miller) into a surplus of Pizza that Michael Parente managed to share with 30 other folks camped near him, and there was the usual promise that we'd all be back again...surely.

It's just too much to pass up, isn't it? http://www.tupperlakeinfo.com/tinman.htm

See you there!

Hurricane Bob

* Ride it like you stole it! *

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