Force 5 Team Race

The annual Force 5 Sports sprint triathlon was this morning at 10:00AM.

At 9:50, I checked my iPhone because it was move in day at UNH for the college students. Long story short, after making great use of new features in the mail app with the iPhone 3.0 software I realised that I sent my staff in at 10AM, and they were supposed to be there at 9AM.

I was already worried. Move-in day is already one of the super-high stress days at UNH. Absolutely stratospheric stress, everyone is moved to alternate locations to do there jobs so it can be one stop shopping for the students.

For me getting in the water when I'm already stressed out is about the only thing I can do that is actually physically dangerous. I wanted to take off my wetsuit and bolt. The race was starting late, things at work might be a disaster. I'd run 2:15 yesterday in the soaring heat. I was asking for all sorts of trouble.

Then again, my phone hadn't rung. Everyone has my number, my staff is great (maybe late, but great).

I got in. I swam. Maybe a tad slow, but not so bad.

I got out just ahead of Henry Brown- a super athlete. The race is a 'handicapped' race, meaning we start in waves based on ability. I was in the seventh wave. He was in the ninth two minutes behind me. I preceded to give up 20 seconds by inexplicably going the wrong way on the first turn.

Always the gentleman, Henry made getting into his shoes an ordeal. We traded places on the bike three times, then he finally pulled away, but he was my rabbit the whole ride and of course it made me have a faster split.

I saw him head out with Dave Ellis, the other guy in my wave, starting their run as I dropped my bike in the grass. I started running hard, knowing I needed to catch Dave as quickly as possible. Other teammates also started to come back to me and I actually had a great run.

Of course, I missed the post-race party, because I did ride straight home, shower and drive into work, and judging from the pictures, it was a great time.

Oh well, I had a great time too.

I put together another solid, low-stress swim today and I climbed the ladder up out of the water with the mission accomplished. Regardless of how I rode or ran, I was going to be happy.

Kudos to Steve and Scott Casper for making the party and race a big success.