Philadelphia Race Report

I would love to say the best part of the Philadelphia Olympic Tri was that I got a best time. Or that the point-to-point swim was a cool new experience. Or even that the weather ended up being nearly perfect after a week of terrible rain.

But I think the best part of the weekend was getting to see the sights of Philadelphia. All of them. From the car. You see, Kara S. and I were both signed up to race and not knowing anyone else there we figured we could meet up, check-in and find something to eat as a pair, thus saving a little time and effort without confronting the city by ourselves. (Despite living in Philadelphia for six weeks during tour rehearsals, I am beyond clueless when it comes to the city’s geography…)

Things started off with promise. We managed to locate the expo with no problem and get checked in. (Even had a celebrity sighting when David Morse appeared at the T-shirt stand!) My hotel was only a mile or so from transition so we dropped my car there and headed out to find the house where she was staying. This is when we got the first hints there might be trouble. You see, I’m what you could call ‘directionally challenged.’ I get lost. A lot. If it weren’t for my Garmin, I’d probably be long since lost to the wilds of the Pennsylvania road system. But we figured between the two of us we’d be able to get around fairly efficiently… The plan was to drop her stuff and drive as much of the route ass we could. Shouldn’t be a problem with one driver and one ‘navigator.’

Wow, was that ever faulty logic! It would appear that two heads are NOT better than one when both are attached to people who get lost so easily. Finding the house where she was staying was fairly straightforward, but coming back over and attempting to get the car on the race course was a bit more challenging. (In fairness, it’s virtually impossible to drive much of it. Some parts were closed and others are ridden against the flow of traffic in the race.)

After a few poor attempts to get on the path we realized things were just not going our way. If I recall the conversation went something like this:
“Is this the way down?”
“I don’t know. It looks like it.”
“Oops, that’s blocked off.”
“Let’s try this way.”
“Hmm, OK, I don’t know what this street is.”
“Where are we now?”
“I think we make a right here.”
“Oops, missed that turn.”
Etc, etc…until at some point (I believe it was me given the language, but I suppose it could have been Kara) one of us said, “F^&% this, let’s just eat. They’ll have signs and volunteers on the course.”

And with that we pulled past Fairmount Park, made a left and promptly found ourselves in the middle of one of the City of Brotherly Love’s scariest ghettoes… After it became readily apparent this was NOT where we wanted to locate sustenance, we headed back – yet again – towards my hotel, knowing that at the very least there was a mall located nearby.

Of course, being the culinary snobs that we are, we were not going to be satisfied with ordinary chain food. After all, the is a major metropolitan city, surely there’s some cool, off-the-beaten path place where we can find a decent burger (Kara’s ideal pre-race meal) and some simple pasta (my own preference.) A trip down City Avenue brought us past a number of options before we hit St. Joseph’s University. Awesome! A college town! There’s got to be good eats here!

Well, I’m not sure where the student population is going for food when classes are in session, but wherever it is, they do an excellent job of hiding it. By the time we’d driven past the entire school, literally nothing appeared. We crossed Route 30 only half-joking that if we made a right, we’d eventually get to Lancaster and at least there we’d know where to get some food.

After a looong search – and helpful hostess at the Olive Garden – we learned the location of a local Houlihans. Perfect. And where was it? You guessed right. Basically across the street from my hotel…so pretty much exactly where we started! But at least we were on our way. We just had a few miles to go, but the highlight of this sightseeing tour had to be Kara’s exclamation just as we were about to reach our location:

“Oh wow!”

I only wish my words could convey the excitement in her voice. My head turned in anticipation as I expected Bruce Springsteen or the Pope or maybe Barack Obama himself to be passing by on our right…then Kara concluded: “It’s the Pennsylvania College of Osteopathic Medicine!” I guess exercise physiologists just see the world a little differently… (Sorry, Kara, but this part was simply to funny to leave out!)
But we had finally reached our destination. Houlihan’s sat just to our left off of City Avenue, just had to… Oops, not left turns from City Avenue! Looks like we were headed back across the Schuykill River again! But there IS a silver lining. Our combined lack of navigational skills DID allow us to see a bit of the bike course (as we attempted to relocate a restaurant we’d already spent an hour searching for) AND a full-size driving replica of KITT, the black Trans Am made famous by the TV series ‘Knight Rider.’ I have to tell you, I am such a Knight Rider nerd that I could have won the race and this moment would STILL be the highlight of the weekend!

As for the race itself (if you’re still even reading at this point!) my dad and I rose at the glorious hour of 4:30AM to arrive at the race by 5. Parking was a breeze and arriving so early almost left TOO much time. With my transition area set up quickly, I couldn’t help but wonder what I should do while waiting for my 7:10 swim start. Philadelphia has kind of an usual format that includes a point-to-point swim from the St. Joseph’s Boathouse up the river, which means you have to board buses in order to get to the start. I’m just glad the weather was decent as this meant a 45 minute wait at the boathouse (since all athletes were admonished to get there very early lest we miss our assigned start time.) Of course, given that mine was the third wave, the wait was relatively short. Some people wouldn’t leave for almost an hour after us. Despite having race amenities like bathrooms and drinks at the swim start, mostly it seems it would just be boring to wait around that long!

Finally, after a hilarious ‘Star Spangled Banner’ that was accompanied by – no joke – ‘Jungle Boogie’ due to some weird crosstalk in the PA, the pros were off and my wave made its way down to the dock at the start. The swim did have a slight current, though nothing like the torrent that graced a recent Harrisburg tri, so I got to T1 a little ahead of schedule. First male out of my wave (Though there was a fast girl who kept pace with me. I never did find out who she was…) but I had to do a bit of tricky maneuvering at the exit. Some people were so excited about completing the swim they stood at the exit celebrating. On the plus side, there is a great photo of me leaping an orange cone to get around somebody on my way to collect my bike!

Dashed out of T1 and onto the first of two loops of the bike course. Because of our poor recon the day before I really had no idea what to expect out there…and I was greeted by a big hill to start my day! A little tough on the legs to start, but the nice part was, being in such an early wave left me a nice clear path for the most part and I had some room to maneuver and pick decent lines on my first trip around the course, which would prove useful on the second loop, which out to be…

THE MOST CONGESTED BIKE RIDE IN ALL OF TRIATHLON! OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight. I’ve never seen anything like it. The large packs people stretched across the road actually aren’t that bad. No, much worse are the guys who think they’re cycling badasses, so they park themselves on the far left of the lane rather than have to swing out to pass people. Honestly, staying to the right is not all that hard. Much harder is trying to squeeze into the 3 inches of space between the yellow lines and some guy on his brand new P3C who’s holding about 16 MPH… (Apologies if that sounds elitist, but yelling ‘On your left!’ 500 times in 12 miles can put you in a bit of a mood…

But I did manage a pretty decent split and manage to hit T2 still leading my age group. Now if only I could hold it together for the run…
I have to say, while I had some issues with the course marking and general safety of the Philly bike course, at least the terrain was varied and interesting. The run was anything but. Leave T2, run a mile, turn around, run 3 miles, turn around, run 2 miles. Flat, fast…and boring. Only a half mile in and I was passed by a guy who was absolutely flying on the run, no hope of staying with him. It took the next guy until the 3 mile marker to pass me, but he was running quickly, too, no shame in not keeping that pace. But the one that hurt was being passed by the 3rd guy with only a mile to go. Mostly because he wasn’t a particularly good runner either, just ‘less worse’ than me. Perhaps if this hadn’t been my 5th racing weekend in a row I could have gone with him, or even not let him catch me, but in the end the legs didn’t quite have it and I had to settle for 4th in my age group, 15th overall amateur. On the plus side, I finished in 2:04:25, by far my fastest time at the Olympic distance, and I had my fastest 10K split yet. My ‘Sneaky Speed’ is very sneaky indeed. So sneaky most people don’t even realize I have it!

As a footnote, and not to editorialize too much, I would have to recommend against this race. For the money, it’s rather unspectacular and the crowding and organization really left a lot to be desired. Just my two cents for anyone thinking about their schedule for next year. Unless you can guarantee a Knight Rider sighting, I’d say pass…